‘At the risk of theoretical eclecticism, I am inclined to prefer being ‘right but not rigorous’ to being ‘rigorous but wrong.’’

This comment by Stuart Hall is explicating why he often prefers to work with more tentative, contradictory texts, which contain germs of ‘rightness.’

And it’s a really, really lovely thought: the texts which can be best to think with aren’t those which present the complete system, but those which—‘thorough’ in their own way—evinced the struggle of thinking. So, why not allow oneself to write like that as well?

It’s not, after all, ‘sloppy’ to try extremely hard to work through perhaps contradictory thoughts in a perhaps inchoate manner, driven by instinct as much as ‘method.’ (This perfectly describes, for my money, how Wittgenstein writes, for example). It’s harder, in its way.

And the world it presents is a different kind of inviting.

Anyway, both types of text should exist imo, and both are extremely helpful. But I love this counter-balance to the ‘finished’ and ‘refined’ as markers of intellectual worth.

(From Cultural Studies,1983, p.122 btw!)