Stuart Hall on racism and the importance of diasporic thinking

Abstract

In this article, I want to show how my initial encounter with the work of Stuart Hall was grounded in my reading of the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and was shaped by my interest in understanding the nature of racism across the three countries in which I had lived. Over the years, Hall's various writings have helped me to make sense of the shifting logics of racism, especially his insistence that racism cannot be understood in its own terms, but requires a conjunctural analysis of the contested processes of historical and political formation. I argue moreover that Hall does not so much as write about racism in or from diaspora, but rather he thinks diasporically, a notion that has significant implications for public pedagogy.

Keywords:

• Stuart Hall
• Wittgenstein
• racism
• conjuncture
• diasporic thinking
• public pedagogy

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Leslie Roman for her invitation to write this article, to her and Bob Lingard for their very helpful feedback, and to Nima Sobhani for his editorial assistance.