How to understand Stuart Hall’s “identity” properly?
Liang ZHANG
ABSTRACT Some scholars specializing in racial issues attempt to explain ethnic “identity” and its awakening as the intrinsic logic that runs through Stuart Hall’s academic life. My paper disagrees with this explanation and finds three problems in it: firstly, it has not fully understood the applicable object of Hall’s politics of “identity,” thus it leads to the inappropriate employment of the theory; secondly, it does not fully recognize the involvement of Hall’s academic research, and exaggerates the effect of one’s early experience on the development of his/her academic thoughts; thirdly, there is a tendency to use essentialist reductionism in the attempt to find an essential Hall or the essence of Hall. In my eyes, one needs to comprehend three key words in order to understand the “guarantee-free” Hall, that is, “resistance,” “openness” and “articulation.” Therefore, if one wants to grasp Hall’s “identity,” he/she must go back to the social history and its evolving process where Hall existed.
KEYWORDS: Stuart Hall, “identity,” race, “identity” politics, “resistance,” “openness,” “articulation”
Note on the contributor
Liang Zhang is professor of Philosophy at Nanjing University, China. His main research interests include Marxian Philosophy, the British New Left and Current Radical Ideologies. He is working on a collection of translated essays Comprehending Stuart Hall.