Diasporic reasoning, affect, memory and cultural politics: An interview with Avtar Brah

Abstract

This interview explores the intellectual contours of Stuart Hall's work through the insights of Professor Avtar Brah, Emerita, Birkbeck College, whose feminist post-colonial voice has shaped generations of scholarship on diaspora thinking, achieving public intellectual status. Her Cartographies of Diaspora (1996) received international acclaim, challenging nationalist feminisms to engage diasporic cultural politics. The longest standing member of the Feminist Review editorial collective, Brah's intertwining of feminist theorisation with transformative pedagogies is well known. It is rare that feminists of colour or diasporic feminists are celebrated as ‘public intellectuals’, even when they are exceptionally accomplished in multiple spheres of intellectual life. Thus, we have chosen to interview Professor Avtar Brah, whose transnationally recognised work both owes a debt to and extends Hall's work in some surprising directions. Our interview explores some questions together as a ‘we’ and others individually to respect and highlight our own respective theoretical, socio-political and transnational experiences. This approach to interviewing acknowledges our different voices, as well as our affinities through this collaboration.

Keywords:

• Stuart Hall
• diaspora
• transnational
• affect
• memory
• race
• gender

Notations for interview transcript
AH:	=	Questions asked by Annette Henry
LGR:	=	Questions asked by Leslie G. Roman
AH & LGR:	=	Grouped questions in which one of us sparked the other to ask additional related questions
AB:	=	Responses and reflections of Avtar Brah
T:	=	Questions asked together from a shared perspective

Notations for interview transcript
AH:	=	Questions asked by Annette Henry
LGR:	=	Questions asked by Leslie G. Roman
AH & LGR:	=	Grouped questions in which one of us sparked the other to ask additional related questions
AB:	=	Responses and reflections of Avtar Brah
T:	=	Questions asked together from a shared perspective

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Avtar Brah is Professor Emerita at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is a member of the Academy of Social Sciences, UK and the Editorial Collective of Feminist Review. She was born in India but grew up in Uganda. Since then, she has lived and worked in Britain and the USA. She is committed to intersectional politics of equality and justice. She is the author of Cartographies of Diaspora, Contesting Identities (1996), and co-author of Thinking Identities: Ethnicity, Racism and Culture (1999); Global Futures: Migration, Environment, and Globalization (1999); and Hybridity and Its Discontents: Politics and Science and Culture (2000). Her most recent article co-authored with Aisha Gill, “Interrogating cultural narratives” about ‘honour’-based violence’ is published in the European Journal of Women's Studies 21(1), May 2014.