Keywords: lobby; British new left; Cultural studies; "Identity" politics
Stuart Hall (1932-2014) is Chegwana in the academic field. His academic image or "identity" is multiple: in the late 1950 s, he was the man of the hour in the second generation of the British new left; In 1960s and 1970s, he devoted himself to the development of cultural studies and was regarded as the founder of Birmingham School and the real "father of cultural studies". In the 1980s, he took the lead in criticizing the Thatcher regime and was the initiator of the concept of "Thatcherism". After the late 1980s, he began to reflect on his "identity" of colored people and immigrants, which effectively promoted the emergence of "identity" politics and cultural pluralism. The differences between these "identities" are so great that it is difficult for people to find a clue to unify them internally. So, how to correctly understand Hall's "identity"? This paper intends to do some preliminary thinking.
one
The "black" skin cannot constitute the "essence" of Hall.
Hall is a black race from Jamaica. Before 1987, his remarks about race and immigration were few and far between. More importantly, those remarks were aimed at the immigrants of lower colored people who were in the whirlpool of social conflicts, and had nothing to do with him as an intellectual elite. In the article "The Youngest Self", a short autobiographical material from 65438 to 0987, Hall, who was 55 years old at that time, first talked about his colored background and immigration status. In subsequent articles and interviews, he also returned to this topic many times. The most systematic account is his interview with Chen Guangxing, a scholar from Taiwan Province Province, China, in 1992 Displacement: The Path of Hall's Knowledge Formation (published in 1996). It was during these seven or eight years that Hall "synthesized" the theories of Althusser, Foucault, Derrida, Fanon and Said, reinterpreted the concept of race, constructed his own "identity" politics, and then vigorously advocated cultural pluralism, defending and fighting for the cultural rights of colored people as ethnic minorities in western society.
Flowers bloom inside the wall, and fragrance is outside the wall. Hall's self-report aroused the strong interest of Grant farid, an American cultural scholar. Fared comes from apartheid South Africa and has the same "black" skin. At that time, he was studying for a doctorate at Princeton University, and his research direction was Caribbean literature. 1996 Based on the interpretation of Hall's self-report, he pointed out that although he suppressed his early personal memories for a long time, the conflict of race, color and class in the Caribbean internally shaped his self. His life as a scholar is a dialectical process of escaping from the Caribbean but eventually returning to the Caribbean, or a dialectical process of becoming black and re-recognizing himself as a black [1]. Farid's viewpoint is undoubtedly novel and attractive: firstly, he provides an internally consistent explanation, which sews together the academic process of Hall's fragmentation and academic "identity" to meet people's cognitive needs; Secondly, his explanation is reasonable, that is, Hall's own "identity" politics is used to explain his own formation and development; Thirdly, his explanation has "evidence", that is, telling a story about Hall himself in his own words; Finally, his interpretation conformed to the surging wave of post-colonialism and cultural pluralism at that time, and had obvious "political correctness". Therefore, as soon as farid's viewpoint appeared, it spread quickly and became the mainstream viewpoint for people to understand Hall at the turn of the new century. It is worth noting that this view is also very popular in Britain where Hall lives. Chris Rojak, a British scholar engaged in cultural studies, said in stuart hall (2003), the first book devoted to Hall: "For so many years, I have been trying to explore the complex clues of Hall's academic interest transfer, and I have come to the conclusion that we must face up to Hall's growing experience in Jamaica." [2] 47 One year after stuart hall (2004) was published, British scholar James Proctor also realized that origin is the essence. "The Caribbean childhood that Hall refused to face shows their own important influence on the later ideological development, and perhaps the most remarkable point is to shape his theoretical concern about class, race and identity politics." [3] 5 In Understanding Stuart Hall (2004) published in the same year, Helen Davis, a British scholar who interviewed Hall, also said: "Although Hall did not start his work by thinking about race and race. However, his work itself is a long journey of (self) discovery. " 〔4〕3
What does Hall think of the new "identity" given to this "black" skin? Judging from the scattered information, Hall's reaction was "disappointment" [5] 473. Obviously, he does not think that his new national theory and "identity" politics can be directly applied to the explanation of his academic "identity" and academic course. So, what's wrong with Hall's racist approach? Hall and his supporters failed to give a clear and systematic answer. From the perspective of ideological history research, there are several problems that must be faced squarely: First, the applicable object of Hall's "identity" politics has not been fully understood, and this theory has been improperly misappropriated. In Hall's view, "identity" is the product of the struggle and compromise between the subject and the discourse power, and it is the self-imagination of the subject under the control of the discourse power: "They (identity) originate from the self-narration. Although the essence of this process must be fictional, it will never destroy its discourse, material or political effects. Even if the part of identity that can be' stitched into the story' is in imagination (and symbol), it is always partially constructed in fantasy, or at least in the field of fantasy. " [6] 4 In Politics of Identity, Hall "combined" many contemporary theories, among which Foucault's theory of discourse power is the most important. Obviously, Foucault reveals and criticizes the control of discourse power over the public, and he himself is not among the controlled public. Hall's "identity" politics reveals and criticizes the control of the mainstream western (white) culture on ordinary colored immigrants, and he himself is not among them. Therefore, it is an inappropriate and even illegal misappropriation to try to explain the formation of Hall's own "identity" politics. Second, he did not fully understand the involvement of Hall's academic research and exaggerated the influence of his early personal experience on the development of his academic thought. Under the influence of Freud's psychoanalysis, after the 1920s, people began to pay attention to the excavation and revelation of the early life experiences of biographies in order to find the key to understanding the later ideological development. The rationality and effectiveness of this practice have been fully proved. However, in the later biographical practice, people often like to excessively explore and research the early experiences of the master, and try their best to find the "secret" that determines the later development of the master's thoughts. In doing so, they obviously forgot a basic fact: psychoanalysis is pathology rather than physiology, and not all people's early experiences are of great significance to the later development of ideas. Generally speaking, Hall always takes his own academic research as an intervention means to interfere with social injustice and promote the development of society to a more reasonable state. There is a strong sensitivity between his ideological development and social development. In this case, overemphasizing his Jamaican childhood experience is suspected of putting the cart before the horse.
Thirdly, there is a reductionist tendency of essentialism, trying to find an essential hall or the essence of the hall. Most scholars who pay attention to Hall's racial "identity" have the background of cultural studies or post-colonial studies. In philosophy, they are all anti-essentialists, and they all deny the transcendental universal eternal essence of things. But in the process of studying Hall, the essentialist way of thinking regained control of them in a brand-new way, because they just wanted to prove that "black" skin is the essence of Hall. No matter how consciously or unconsciously depressed, Hall finally got his own essence, that is, he found his own "black" skin and became a black man! There is no doubt that Hall did become black in the end. However, this is by no means a realization beyond the essence, but a product of self-learning and self-construction: "In fact, the' black people' never appeared there out of thin air. Mentally, culturally and politically, it has always been an unstable identity. At the same time, it is also a narrative, a story and a history. It is something that is built, told and talked about, not simply discovered ... Black identity is an identity that needs to be learned and can only be learned at a certain moment. " 〔7〕45
two
Understanding Hall's Three Key Words
Hall's multiple identities are reminiscent of his favorite word "no guarantor". This word comes from the title of an article in 1983, and Hall uses it to express the following meaning: Although ideology is indeed produced from given material conditions, it is by no means a linear and ultimately decisive product of economic foundation. On the one hand, it is constantly produced and transformed according to its own development and evolution law, on the other hand, it is also because ideology has always maintained its openness to the historical development of practice and struggle [8] 83. People-including Hall himself-later discovered that Hall himself was "not guaranteed". He is not a "seed" with a predetermined "essence", but a bare-metal PC with unlimited possibilities, constantly detecting the problems of the times, "joining" the most effective resources and "installing" himself according to the problems; Then, according to the changes of the times and the transformation of problems, the self is "formatted", "joined" and "reloaded". Because of this, Hall has such a distinctive "identity"! If you want to understand the "no guarantee" hall, you must grasp three key words.
The first is resistance. Hall has lived in the academic field all his life and is famous as a scholar or intellectual. However, he is not an intellectual in the traditional sense, but an "organic intellectual" as Gramsci said. Hall's friend Said once commented: "Gramsci tried to show that people who perform the role of intellectuals in society can be divided into two categories: one is traditional intellectuals ... and the other is organic intellectuals. In Gramsci's view, such people are closely related to classes or undertakings, which use them to organize interests, win more power and gain more control. ... organic intellectuals actively participate in society ... and expand the influence of their thoughts. " [9] 4 As an organic intellectual, although he has never set foot in the traditional political field, Hall's academic research has a distinct political nature, and its essence is as a political academic practice or as a political academic practice. It can be seen that Hall's colorful academic course is multiple, but it is by no means fragmented, because no matter how his "identity" changes, one thing has never changed, and that is his resistance to the contemporary capitalist system or power. This is actually the "source code" that Hall has always regarded as Hall.
The second is openness. Among Hall's contemporaries, there are many organic intellectuals who hold similar resistance positions. Why is only Hall's "identity" so changeable? This involves Hall's consistent open position. As an organic intellectual, Hall has always maintained an openness to the historical development of practice and struggle, and determined his own academic research topics according to the needs of practice and struggle. In other words, he decided his academic research topic mainly according to the needs of the practice of the Anti-Japanese War: wherever there was the Anti-Japanese War, he went to carry out research; With the historical development of practice and struggle, the position of the Anti-Japanese War has shifted, so has he, and he has resumed his research. His changeable and diverse academic "identity" was gradually constructed and accumulated in this constantly moving "guerrilla warfare".
Finally, the joints. "Engagement" is a term that Hall borrowed from Laclau and Murphy. Its original intention is to explain why the formation of ideology and its struggle are accidental, not always inevitable, certain, absolute and essential [10] 140. This term can also effectively explain the formation and constant change of Hall's own theoretical method system. As a scholar, Hall denies that there are universal tools and methods that can cure all diseases and apply to all problems. Even if some theories and methods are proved to be more applicable, it does not mean that they can be unconditionally applied to the ever-changing and rapidly changing situations in practice and struggle. Facing the changed research object, he thinks that the most appropriate choice is to consciously adjust the theory and methods, and find and use the most appropriate tools to analyze and solve problems. Therefore, he always maintained a high degree of openness to contemporary theories, and combined various theories and methods pertinently and occasionally to form a temporary unity according to the needs of his task. The shortcomings of Hall's practice are inevitable, that is, his understanding and application of some joining theories and methods are inevitably biased or even wrong, but his ideological motivation is more obvious: "This openness provides a broad theoretical space for later cultural theory researchers. It is this unique style that has always attracted many people to appreciate Hall's works. " 〔 1 1〕28
three
Draw the identity of Hall.
After understanding the basic mechanism of Hall's "identity" construction and reviewing his colorful and varied life, it is not difficult to see that what is constantly changing is "identity" and what remains unchanged is Hall's keen control and control of the trend of the times. He is like a god who braves the wind and waves, always standing at the forefront of contemporary leftist thought. Therefore, to truly grasp Hall's "identity", we must return to the social history and its changes in which he lives.
Hall came from a colored middle-class family in Kingston, Jamaica, when Kingston was still a British colony, and his family was highly ethnically mixed. He received a complete British education in a local elite middle school, and then won a Roche scholarship at 195 1 to study for a literature degree at Oxford University in the UK. In the interview with 1992, Hall broke the silence and described his family affairs and early experiences in detail for the first time, in which he specifically told his sister that his black boyfriend was not accepted by his family, which led to mental illness and then ruined his life. Between words, Hall is full of remorse. The tendency to racialize Hall is based on over-interpretation and self-blame of this delayed memory. In fact, after reading Hall's account of his early experiences, we can basically see that: first, many problems such as skin color, race and social class have influences on Hall's early experiences, but the key to all these influences lies in his strong subjectivity. "I feel more like an independent Jamaican boy. However, in the culture of my family, such a theme has no place at all. " [10] 487 Second, as a natural result of the awakening of subjectivity, Hall formed a distinct anti-colonial political consciousness, which was the dominant context of his early ideological development [10] 489. Third, the real reason for his decision to "diaspora" is not so much his "black" skin as his desire to escape from the control of his powerful mother [10] 49 1 to find his own life. In other words, the early experience is not Hall's so-called racial consciousness, but a lifelong sense of resistance. Hall lived in Oxford from 195 1 to 1957. There, in addition to literary studies, he also participated in the activities of the socialist club, met a group of young left-wing intellectuals from the edge of the British Empire like him, and * * * studied Marxism, studied the new works of the older generation of left-wing intellectuals, discussed the current situation, and became increasingly clear in political and theoretical positions. After the rise of the British New Left Movement from 65438 to 0956, he actively participated in it and moved to London from 65438 to 0957. In the same year, he and his friend * * * co-founded the magazine "University and Left Review", which became famous in one fell swoop and became the leader of the second generation of new leftists, effectively promoting the development of the new leftist 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. But he has also shown some distinctive spiritual temperament and ideological characteristics at this time.
First of all, he has amazing theoretical intuition, can see the micro-knowledge, and keenly grasp the major theoretical topics that have not been fully exposed. Richard Hogart described the influence of the arrival of the affluent society and the rise of popular culture on the British working class consciousness and cultural identity in The Use of Literacy published in 1957, and put forward a hypothesis that triggered a heated discussion among the new left: "We are becoming a cultural classless." [13] 142 At that time, most of the new leftists were critical of this hypothesis, but he pushed the herd and wrote the article "The Concept of Classlessness", which theoretically proved this hypothesis [14] 26-33 [15]/kloc. He also led the university and Left Review to creatively study a series of emerging mass cultural phenomena and related social problems, such as youth culture, subculture, urban planning, TV advertising, art criticism, film criticism, working class division, education reform, etc., which provided the necessary academic preparation for the great development of cultural research later.
Secondly, he is highly reflective and critical, and advocates an open attitude towards Marxism. In his view, Marxism is a tradition that needs self-examination. It is not closed, but open. Facing the changing reality of capitalism, the new left must keep pace with the times, introduce new resources, discover new theories and construct new strategies. Thirdly, his theoretical vision is broad and he is good at learning, accepting and using new theoretical resources. This is well reflected in the concept of classlessness.
Finally, he has extraordinary personality charm, can seek common ground while reserving differences, and unite and lead fellow travelers to realize their mission. Under his leadership, The University and the Left Review has achieved great success. An important reason for this success is that he united writers of different ages and positions to write articles for the magazine. In fact, he is also an important bridge between the first generation and the second generation of new leftists. Because of this, 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, Hall, who is familiar with others and is an organic intellectual, has been formed in the period of university and Zuo Ping.
1958, Hall gave up writing doctoral thesis about American writer Henry James (1843- 19 16) and turned to study contemporary popular culture. 1961-1964 He teaches film and media studies at Chelsea College, University of London. From 65438 to 0964, he published the book "Popular Art" in cooperation with the film producer Paddy Warnax. In this book, along the theoretical road pioneered by Hogart and Raymond Henry Williams, he rejects the binary opposition between elegant culture and popular culture, insists on understanding and investigating the relationship between the masses and popular culture from the perspective of popular culture itself, and emphasizes that this relationship has become more and more meaningful and important because of the explosive growth of pop music and television and the spread of youth culture. When his contemporaries only saw the ideological control of popular culture, he found the possibility of resistance [17] 273. Based on Hall's creative research during this period, Hoggart, who is about to be transferred, invited Hall to join the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies of Birmingham University, which he founded, and served as acting director (1964- 1968) and director (1969- 1979) successively. It was during this period that Hall led a group of younger new leftist scholars to conduct interdisciplinary research on contemporary media, youth subculture, daily life of the working class, modern country, historical theory and ideological theory, and the relationship between class and gender, starting from the cultural Marxism of the first generation of new leftists and combining many contemporary theoretical resources such as western Marxism (Althusser and Gramsci), structuralism and semiotics, and repeatedly exploring the possible space for social and political struggle in developed capitalism.
From 65438 to 0979, Hall transferred to the Open University as a professor of sociology. In the same year, the Conservative Party under Thatcher unexpectedly won the general election and began to be in power for a long time. Why can the Conservative Party, which lacks sufficient public opinion base, win the general election? Hall, who was experiencing Gramsci's turn at that time, believed that apart from the poor ruling record of the Labor Party, the key lies in the Conservative Party's efforts to build ideological hegemony, disintegrating the social knowledge base that supported the Labor Party after 1945, and realizing the flip of social values. For this reason, he opened the course of "State and Society" in the Open University, organized a new academic group, and based on the critical examination of post-Fordism, systematically analyzed the historical, realistic and political essence of Britain since19th century, so that the word "Thatcherism" invented by him gained sufficient connotation. So why did Hall study Thatcherism so deeply and systematically? The answer lies in his hope that the Labour Party or the leftists in a broad sense can "learn from Thatcherism" [18] 27 1-283, get rid of the predicament as soon as possible and win their own difficult revitalization. This is a period when Hall is closest to traditional politics.
During the period of 1987, when the criticism of Thatcherism was not over, Hall published a short autobiographical material, The Smallest Self, which started the political construction of "identity". So, why did he turn to racial issues at this time? Historically, from 65438 to 0948, in order to solve the problem of labor shortage, Britain began to introduce large-scale black labor immigrants from colonies such as the Caribbean. Hall observed sporadic frictions and conflicts between black immigrants and mainstream (white) British society in the late 1950s, but remained basically silent. One explanation that accords with his theoretical position at that time is that he seems to think that these conflicts are new manifestations of class problems, so they will be solved with the solution of class problems. However, with the rapid growth of the number, conflicts between black immigrants and mainstream (white) society have become increasingly frequent and intense since the late 1960s. Immigration and race have therefore become unavoidable issues in British society. Therefore, in the cultural studies in 1970s, Hall inevitably touched on the issues of immigration and race. In Monitoring Crisis 1978, he profoundly and systematically revealed the important role of hegemony in ethnic conflicts and the construction of ethnic identity. After the 1980s, with the long-term ruling of the Conservative government, the traditional leftist political movement represented by the working class movement gradually declined, while the new social movement aimed at non-political social identity (race, gender, ecology, etc.) suddenly appeared, replacing the traditional working class movement and becoming the main form of struggle against capitalism. Through the critical study of Thatcherism, Hall actually came to a pessimistic but realistic conclusion, that is, capitalist countries are still strong, and the coming 90' s is still a "new era" of capitalism: "Capital is still global, and today is better than before. Not only that, but the old inequality that comes with it is still determining people's life experiences and limiting the hopes and sorrows of all people, all classes and all people. With the advent of the new era, new forms of social division, new inequalities and power deprivation are emerging, which cover the original forms. " [19] 17 in this new era, it is Hall's only choice to turn to the race and immigration issues closely related to him and find new possible resistance space. Based on this historic choice, Hall constructed his latest (later) "identity" directly related to his "black" skin.