Colleagues,
On the passing away of Stuart Hall many people will feel a great loss, not just from our intellectual life, but in the loss of a central component of how many of us grew to understand (and continue to comprehend of) the nature of power, culture and politics in the contexts of our lives and of our activism.
Hall's work has been recently re-energised for a new generation via The Stuart Hall Project, a testament to the legacy of Hall in British political and social life: http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/bfi-film-releases/stuart-hall-project
There is a really good interview with Hall by Sut Jhally from 2012 which captures the old geezer in fine contemplative flow, but which misses none of his capacity for fine insight and rigorous critique and analysis: http://vimeo.com/53879491
There is a great paragraph in today's obituary of Hall in The Guardian which accurately portrays my personal recollection of his impact on my understanding of what shapes society and of why we must all play an active part in shaping it for ourselves, both collectively and individually:
Hall was always among the first to identify key questions of the age, and routinely sceptical about easy answers. A spellbinding orator and a teacher of enormous influence, he never indulged in academic point-scoring. Hall's political imagination combined vitality and subtlety; in the field of ideas he was tough, ready to combat positions he believed to be politically dangerous. Yet he was unfailingly courteous, generous towards students, activists, artists and visitors from across the globe, many of whom came to love him. Hall won accolades from universities worldwide, despite never thinking of himself as a scholar. Universities offered him a base from which he could teach – a source of great pleasure for him – and collaborate with others in public debate (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/10/stuart-hall)
In Solidarity and Memory
Ian
No comments:
Post a Comment