How to correctly understand Stuart Hall’s “identity”

Racializing Hall, that is, deeply describing Hall's "black" skin, and constructing racial "identity" and its awakening as the internal logic throughout Hall's life as a scholar, is a key issue at the turn of the new and old centuries. One understands Hall's prevailing sentiment. The problem with this view is that: it does not fully understand the applicable objects of Hall's "identity" politics, and inappropriately appropriates this theory; it does not fully understand the interventional nature of Hall's academic research, and exaggerates the impact of personal early experiences on academic research. Influence on the development of thought; there is an essentialist reductionist tendency, trying to find an essential Hall or the essence of Hall. To correctly understand Hall, we need to grasp three key words: resistance, openness and engagement, and at the same time return to the social history and its changes in which he lives.

Keywords: Hall; British New Left; cultural studies; "identity" politics

Stuart Hall (1932-2014) is a famous figure in the academic field Che Guevana. His academic image or "identity" is multiple: in the late 1950s, he was a figure in the second generation of the British New Left; in the 1960s and 1970s, he devoted himself to the development of cultural studies and was regarded as the leader of the Birmingham School. The founder and the real "Father of Cultural Studies"; in the 1980s, he took the lead in criticizing the Thatcher regime and was the originator of the concept of "Thatcherism"; after the late 1980s, he began to reflect on his "people of color and immigrants" "Identity" has strongly promoted the sudden rise of "identity" politics and cultural pluralism. The differences between these "identities" are so great that it is difficult to find a clue that can internally unify them. So, how should we correctly understand Hall’s “identity”? This article intends to make some preliminary thoughts.

One

"Black" skin cannot constitute Hall's "essence"

Hall is a "black" skinned person of color from Jamaica. Before 1987, he had only a handful of remarks involving race and immigration issues. More importantly, the targets of those remarks were the lower-class immigrants of color who were in the whirlpool of social conflicts, and had nothing to do with him as an intellectual elite. In the 1987 short autobiographical material "The Smallest Self," Hall, then 55, spoke positively about his origins as a person of color and his immigrant status for the first time. In subsequent articles and interviews, he has returned to this theme many times. The most systematic account is undoubtedly the interview he conducted with Taiwanese scholar Chen Guangxing in 1992, "Displacement: Hall's Intellectual Formation Trajectory" (published in 1996 ). It was during these seven or eight years that Hall "integrated" the theories of Althusser, Foucault, Derrida, Fanon, Said and others, reinterpreted concepts such as race, and constructed his own "identity" politics. Then he vigorously advocated cultural pluralism, defended and fought for the cultural rights of ethnic minorities in Western society.

The flowers inside the wall are fragrant outside the wall. Hall's autobiography aroused the strong interest of American cultural studies scholar Grant Farred. Fareed came from apartheid South Africa and was also "black" skinned. At the time, he was studying for a PhD at Princeton University, focusing on Caribbean literature. In 1996, based on his interpretation of Hall's autobiography, he proposed that despite long-term suppression of his early personal memories, the race, color, and class conflicts in the Caribbean had intrinsically shaped his self. His life as a scholar was an escape from the Caribbean but Finally, he returns to the dialectical process of the Caribbean, or in other words, the dialectical process of becoming black and realizing that he is black again [1]. Fareed's point of view is undoubtedly novel and attractive: first, he provides an internally consistent interpretation that stitches together Hall's fragmented academic history and academic "identity", satisfying people's expectations. knowledge needs; secondly, his explanation has "reason", that is, he uses Hall's own "identity" politics to explain Hall's own formation and development; thirdly, his explanation has "evidence", that is, he uses Hall's own "identity" politics to explain Hall's own formation and development. To narrate Hall’s own story in his own words; finally, his interpretation complied with the surging wave of post-colonialism and cultural pluralism at that time, and was obviously “politically correct”. Therefore, Fared's views spread quickly as soon as they appeared and became the mainstream view of Hall's understanding at the turn of the new and old centuries. It is worth noting that this view is also very popular in Britain where Hall lived. In Stuart Hall (2003), the first monograph on Hall, British cultural studies scholar Chris Rojack said: "Over the years I have tried to explore Hall's academic interests. The complex clues of transfer, from which I concluded that we must face up to Hall's experience of growing up in Jamaica" [2] 47 in "Stuart Hall" (2004), published a year later, UK. Scholar James Proctor also believes that origin is essence, "The Caribbean childhood life that Hall refused to face pointed to their own important influence on the development of his later thinking, perhaps most notably in shaping his Theoretical concerns about class, race and identity politics” [3] 5 In “Understanding Stuart Hall” (2004) published in the same year, British scholar Helen Davis, who had interviewed Hall, also said. : "Although Hall did not start his work with thoughts on ethnicity and race. However, his work itself is a long journey of (self-)discovery.

"[4]3

How does Hall himself feel about the new "identity" given to him with "black" skin? Judging from the sporadic information leaked out, Hall's reaction is "disappointment" 〔5〕473. He obviously does not think that his new ethnic theory and "identity" politics can be directly applied to the interpretation of his academic "identity" and academic process. So, what exactly is this approach of racializing Hall? What is the problem? Hall and his supporters have not been able to give a clear and systematic answer. From the perspective of intellectual history research, this approach has the following problems that must be faced: First, Hall's "identity" politics is not fully understood. In Hall’s view, “identity” is the product of the struggle and compromise between the subject and the discursive power, and is the self-imagination of the subject under the control of the discursive power: “They (identity) Identity) stems from the narrativization of the self. Although the nature of this process is necessarily fictional, this in no way undermines its discursive, material or political efficacy, even if the ascribed part of the identity that is 'sewed into the story' remains imaginary (and symbolic). and thus always partly constructed in fantasy, or at least in the realm of fantasy. ” [6] 4 In the politics of “identity”, Hall “joins” many contemporary theories, the most important of which is Foucault’s theory of discourse power. It is clear that what Foucault reveals and criticizes is the relationship between discourse power and The control of the masses, he himself is not among the controlled masses. What Hall’s “identity” politics reveals and criticizes is the control of the mainstream Western (white) culture on ordinary immigrants of color, and he himself is not among them. Column. Therefore, trying to use Hall's own politics of "identity" to interpret his own "identity" formation is an inappropriate and even illegal appropriation. Second, it fails to fully appreciate the interventional nature of Hall's academic research. Exaggerating the impact of personal early experiences on the development of academic thought. Under the influence of Freud’s psychoanalysis, people began to pay attention to the excavation and revelation of the biography’s early life experiences in biographical research after the 1920s. The rationality and effectiveness of this approach have been fully proven. However, in later biography practices, some people often like to over-explore and research the early experiences of the biography, and try their best to find them. The "secrets" that determine the subject's later intellectual development are clearly forgotten when they do this: psychoanalysis is pathology, not physiology, and not everyone's early experiences are important to their later intellectual development. Meaning. Generally speaking, Hall has always used his academic research as a means of intervention to promote the development of society to a more reasonable state. He maintains a strong sensitivity between the development of his thoughts and the development of society. In this case, over-emphasis on his Jamaican childhood experience is putting the cart before the horse.

Third, there is an essentialist reductionist tendency, trying to find an essential Hall or the essence of Hall. Most of the scholars who focus on Hall’s racial “identity” have a background in cultural studies or postcolonial studies. In terms of philosophical concepts, they are all anti-essentialist and deny the existence of a priori universal and eternal essence of things. However, in the process of studying Hall. , the essentialist way of thinking re-controlled them in a new way, because they just wanted to prove that "black" skin is Hall's essence. No matter how conscious or unconscious suppression, Hall finally obtained his own essence. , that is, discovering his "black" skin and becoming a black man! There is no doubt that Hall did eventually become a black man. However, this is by no means the realization of transcendental essence, but the product of self-learning and self-construction: " In fact, 'black' is never just there either. Spiritually, culturally and politically it has always been an unstable identity. At the same time, it is a narrative, a story, a history. It is something that is constructed, narrated, talked about, rather than simply discovered... Black identity is an identity that needs to be learned, and can only be learned at a particular moment. ” [7] 45

II

Three key words for understanding Hall

Hall’s multiple “identities” are reminiscent of his very preferred The word "without guarantees" comes from the title of a 1983 article, and Hall uses it to express the idea that although it does emerge from given material conditions, ideologies are never the same. The product of the linear and ultimately decisive role of non-economic foundations. On the one hand, this is because ideology is continuously generated and transformed according to its own development and evolution laws. On the other hand, it is also because ideology always moves towards the history of practice and struggle. Development maintains its own openness [8] 83 People - including Hall himself - later discovered that Hall himself is "unguaranteed"? He is not a person with a predetermined "essence". The "seed" is a bare PC with unlimited possibilities. It is always detecting the problems of the times, "joining" the most effective resources according to the problems, and "installing" itself; and then "self" according to the changes of the times and the transformation of problems. Formatted, rejoined, and reinstalled. Because of this, Hall has such a different "identity"! To understand the "unwarranted" Hall, you must grasp three key words.

The first is resistance. Hall has been active in the academic field throughout his life and is famous as a scholar or intellectual.

However, he was not an intellectual in the traditional sense, but what Gramsci called an "organic intellectual." Hall's friend Said once commented: "Grasci tried to show that people who perform the role of intellectuals in society can be divided into two categories: one is the traditional intellectual...the other is the organic intellectual, who According to Gramsci, such people are closely associated with classes or causes that use them to organize their interests, win more power, and gain more control…Organic intellectuals actively intervene in society…. Expand the influence of his own ideas." [9] 4 As an organic intellectual, although he has never entered the political field in the traditional sense, Hall's academic research has a distinct political nature, and its essence is political scholarship. Practice, or politics as academic practice. From this point of view, if we re-examine Hall's colorful academic history, we can see that although his "identity" is multiple, it is by no means fragmented, because no matter how his "identity" changes, there is one thing that remains the same. Change is his resistance to the contemporary capitalist system or power. This is actually Hall's "source code" that has always been Hall.

The second is openness. Among Hall's contemporaries, there were many organic intellectuals who held a similar position of resistance. Why is only Hall's "identity" so changeable? This involves the open stance that Hall has always adhered to. As an organic intellectual, Hall always maintained his openness to the historical development of practice and struggle, and determined his academic research topics according to the needs of practice and struggle. In other words, he mainly decided his academic research topics based on the needs of resistance practice: wherever resistance existed, he went to conduct research; with the historical development of practice and struggle, when the resistance position shifted, he also moved with it. , restart research. His changeable and diverse academic "identity" was gradually constructed and accumulated in this constant movement of "guerrilla warfare."

The last step is joining. Articulation is a term that Hall borrowed from Laclau and Mouffe. Its original intention is to explain why the formation of ideology and its struggles is contingent, rather than always inevitable, determined, absolute, and essential. 10〕140. This term can equally effectively explain the formation and continuous changes of Hall's own theoretical and methodological system. As a scholar, Hall denies the existence of universal tools and universal methods that can cure all diseases and apply to all problems. Even if some theories and methods are proven to have greater applicability, it does not mean that they can be unconditionally applicable to Practices and struggles that are changing rapidly and drastically. Facing the changing research objects, he believes that the most appropriate choice is to consciously adjust theories and methods, and find and use the most suitable tools to analyze and solve problems. Therefore, he always maintained a high degree of openness to contemporary theories, and combined various theories and methods specifically and sometimes accidentally according to the needs of the task to form a temporary unity. The flaw of Hall's approach is inevitable, that is, there are inevitably deviations and even errors in his understanding and application of some of the combined theories and methods. However, its ideological stimulation effect is even more interesting. *Seeing: "This openness provided a broad space of theoretical possibilities for later researchers of cultural theory. It is this outstanding style that has always attracted many people to Hall's works." [11] 28

Three

Pictures of Hall's identity

After understanding the basic mechanism of Hall's "identity" construction, and then looking back at his colorful and diverse life, It is not difficult to see: what is constantly changing is "identity", and what remains unchanged is Hall's keen control and control of the trends of the times. He is like a god who rides the waves, always standing at the forefront of contemporary leftist thought. The tide. Therefore, if we want to truly grasp Hall's "identity", we must go back to the social history and its changes in which he lives.

Hall was born into a middle-class family of color in Kingston, the capital of Jamaica, which was still a British colony at the time. The racial composition of his family was highly mixed. He received a complete British education at a local elite high school, and later received a Rhodes Scholarship in 1951 to study for a degree in literature at the University of Oxford, England. In an interview in 1992, Hall broke his silence and detailed his family and early experiences for the first time. He specifically described that his sister suffered from mental illness because her black boyfriend was not accepted by the family, and her entire life was ruined. During the conversation, Hall was full of remorse. The tendency to racialize Hall is based on an overinterpretation of this delayed recollection and self-blame. In fact, a complete reading of Hall's account of his early experiences basically shows that: First, many issues such as skin color, race, social class, etc. all had an impact on Hall's early experiences, but the key to all these influences is that His subjectivity is very strong, "I feel more like an independent Jamaican boy. However, in my family's culture, such a subject position has no place at all." [10] 487 Second, as the awakening of subjectivity, nature As a result, Hall developed a clear political consciousness of anti-colonialism, which was the dominant context for the development of his early thoughts [10]489. Third, the real reason that made him decide to "disperse" himself was not so much his "dark" skin as his desire to escape from the control of his mother who was very dominant [10]491 and to find a life of his own.

In other words, what was cultivated by Hall’s early experiences was by no means Hall’s so-called racial consciousness, but the sense of resistance that he later carried out throughout his life. Hall lived in Oxford from 1951 to 1957. There, in addition to literary research, he also participated in the activities of the Socialist Club and met a group of young left-wing intellectuals like him from the fringes of the British Empire. He also studied Marxism and studied the theories of the older generation of left-wing intellectuals. His new works explore current issues, and his political and theoretical stances become increasingly clear. After the rise of the British New Left movement in 1956, he actively participated in it and moved to London in 1957. In the same year, he co-founded the magazine "University and Left Review" with his friend ***, and became famous in one fell swoop. He became a leader among the second generation of New Leftists and effectively promoted the development of the New Left movement. Like other second-generation New Leftists at that time (12), he basically agreed with the political and theoretical positions established by the first-generation New Leftists. However, he has also shown some unique spiritual temperament and ideological characteristics at this time.

First of all, he has amazing theoretical intuition, is able to see the subtleties, and keenly grasps major theoretical themes that have not been fully exposed. In "The Uses of Literacy" published in 1957, Richard Hoggart, after describing the impact of the advent of affluent society and the rise of mass culture on the class consciousness and cultural identity of British workers, proposed a new A hotly debated assumption on the left: "We are becoming culturally classless." [13] 142 At that time, most New Leftists criticized this assumption, but he defied all objections and wrote the article "The Idea of ??Classlessness" to discuss it. He made theoretical arguments [14] 26-33 [15] 153-171, and led the "University and Left Review" to pioneer the research on youth culture, subculture, urban planning, television advertising, art criticism, film criticism, and the working class. The study of a series of emerging popular cultural phenomena and related social issues such as differentiation and educational reform provides necessary academic preparation for the subsequent development of cultural studies.

Secondly, he is extremely reflective and critical, and advocates an open approach to Marxism. In his view, Marxism is a tradition that itself needs to be examined, and it is not closed but open. Facing the ever-changing reality of capitalism, the New Left must keep pace with the times, introduce new resources, and discover Create new theories and construct new strategies. Thirdly, he has a broad theoretical vision and is good at learning, accepting, and applying new theoretical resources. This is well reflected in "The Idea of ??Classlessness".

Finally, he has extraordinary charisma and is able to seek common ground while reserving differences, unite and lead colleagues to achieve his mission. Under his leadership, the University and Left Review achieved great success. One of the important reasons for this success was that he united authors from different generations and different positions to write for the magazine. In fact, he was also an important bridge connecting the first and second generations of the New Left. Because of this, in 1959 "University and Left Review" and "New Rationalist" merged and reorganized into "New Left Review", and he was appointed as the first editor-in-chief of the new publication [16]. In a sense, the familiar figure of Hall as an organic intellectual had already been formed during the University and Left Review period.

In 1958, Hall gave up writing his doctoral thesis on the American writer Henry James (1843-1916) and turned his full attention to the study of contemporary popular culture. From 1961 to 1964, he taught film and media studies at Chelsea College, University of London. In 1964, he collaborated with film producer Paddy Warner on the book "Popular Art". In this book, he follows the theoretical path opened by Hoggart and Raymond Williams, rejects the binary opposition between high culture and popular culture, and insists on understanding and examining the relationship between mass and popular culture from the perspective of popular culture itself. relationship, emphasizing that this relationship has become increasingly meaningful and important due to the explosion of pop music and television and the proliferation of youth culture. While his contemporaries only saw the ideological control of popular culture, he discovered the possibility of resistance within it (17)273. Based on Hall's creative research during this period, Hoggart, who was about to be transferred, invited Hall to join the Center for Contemporary Cultural Research at the University of Birmingham, which he founded, and served successively as Acting Director (1964-1968) and Director (1969-1979). It was during this period that Hall led a group of younger New Left scholars who started from the cultural Marxism of the first generation of New Left and combined it with Western Marxism (Althusser, Gramsci), structuralism, and semiotics. and many contemporary theoretical resources, conduct interdisciplinary research on contemporary media, youth subculture, daily life of the working class, modern countries, historical theory and ideological theory, and the relationship between class and gender and other practical issues, and repeatedly explore advanced capitalism Possible space for political resistance in society, while founding the Birmingham School, he also established himself as the true "father of cultural studies".

In 1979, Hall moved to the Open University as professor of sociology. In the same year, the Conservative Party under the leadership of Thatcher won an unexpected general election victory, beginning the long-term rule of the Conservative Party.

Why could the Conservative Party, which lacked a sufficient public base, win the election? Hall, who was undergoing a Gramscian shift at the time, believed that in addition to the Labor Party’s poor governing record, the key was that the Conservative Party focused on constructing ideological hegemony and disintegrated the support that had supported the Labor Party after 1945. The foundation of social knowledge has realized the reversal of social values. To this end, he opened the "State and Society" course at the Open University and organized a new academic community based on a critical examination of post-Fordism and the history, reality and political nature of Britain since the 19th century. A systematic analysis was carried out to give sufficient connotation to the term "Thatcherism" that he invented. So why does Hall study Thatcherism so deeply and systematically? The answer is that he hopes that the Labor Party or the left in a broad sense can "learn from Thatcherism" [18] 271-283, get out of trouble as soon as possible and win Revitalize yourself with difficulty. This was the closest Hall came to traditional politics.

In 1987, when the criticism of Thatcherism was not yet over, Hall published the short autobiographical material "The Minimal Self", which kicked off the construction of "identity" politics. So why did he turn to racial issues at this time? Historically, in 1948, in order to solve the labor shortage problem, Britain began to import black labor immigrants on a large scale from colonies such as the Caribbean. Hall had already observed sporadic frictions and conflicts between black immigrants and mainstream British (white) society in the late 1950s, but he basically remained silent. One explanation consistent with his theoretical stance at the time is that he seemed to view these conflicts as a new manifestation of the class problem, which would therefore be resolved with the resolution of the class problem. However, with the rapid growth in numbers, conflicts between black immigrants and mainstream (white) society became increasingly frequent and intense after the late 1960s. Immigration and race have thus become unavoidable issues in British society. Therefore, in the cultural studies of the 1970s, Hall inevitably touched on immigration and racial issues, and in 1978's "Surveillance Crisis", he profoundly and systematically revealed the important role of hegemony in racial conflicts and the construction of racial identity. . After the 1980s, with the long-term rule of the Conservative government, the traditional left-wing political movement represented by the working class movement gradually declined, while new social movements targeting non-political social identity (race, gender, ecology, etc.) suddenly emerged. , replacing the traditional working class movement and becoming the main form of struggle against capitalism. Through critical research on Thatcherism, Hall actually came to a pessimistic but realistic conclusion, that is, the capitalist countries are still strong, and the upcoming 1990s is still a "new era" of capitalism: "Capital It is still global, and more so today than ever before. Moreover, the old inequalities that have accompanied it still determine people's life experience and limit the hopes and sorrows of all people, all classes, and all ethnic groups. Along with the new era, new social divisions, new forms of inequality and disempowerment are being produced, which overwhelm the original forms.”[19]17 Under the conditions of this new era, the shift is taking place. The racial and immigration issues that he is closely related to, and finding new possible spaces of resistance have become Hall's only choice. Based on this historical and by no means inevitable choice, Hall constructed his latest (later) "identity" that was directly related to his "black" skin.