Growing Echoes in His Head: Through the Prism of Stuart Hall’s Life

In later life, Stuart Hall occasionally felt obliged to reflectively consider the senses in which his mature thinking owed something to the Jamaica of his birth and early life. For example, on one significant occasion, Hall remarked, somewhat enigmatically it is true, that before he ever got into what became “Cultural Studies” he had had to grapple with the question of Jamaican culture. This paper reflects on one dimension of the way in which Jamaica never stopped “growing echoes” in Hall’s head. Specifically, the it considers an attempt by Hall in the early 1950s, when he was still an undergraduate studying English literature at Oxford, to intervene in a polemical debate about the status of Jamaican vernacular language and culture in the pages of a Jamaican newspaper. Scott suggests that here one can see some ways in which Hall’s formative Jamaican experience shaped the kinds of understandings he later brought to the now-familiar arena of Cultural Studies. If the biographical challenge is to track the connections between a life and its work, this paper suggests how, in a rather pronounced way, the story of the arc of Stuart Hall’s life is a generative or constituting frame in which to properly appreciate the contours and motivations of his work.

This event is presented in partnership with the Political Theory Workshop, and Anwār Omeish will serve as respondent.

Please note: A paper will be precirculated one week ahead of the workshop, and registration is required.