'I want to disturb my neighbour' - Stuart Hall and the role of the public intellectual

The following was submitted by the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at the University of the West Indies.

There have been many tributes to the Jamaica-born thinker, Stuart Hall - a testimony to his influence across political, academic, artistic and media spheres. Hall was remarkable for his ability to move between the worlds of the academy, politics and popular media, with both elegance and authority, be it in his political writings, television and radio appearances, or guest lectures.

In reflecting on Stuart Hall's life, one cannot help but think about the role of the intellectual in society. An intellectual often stands outside of society and its institutions, actively disturbing the status quo. However, at the same time, an intellectual is a part of society and should strive to address his/her concerns to as wide a public as possible.

Stuart Hall may be described as a public intellectual: actively involved in the politics and issues of his day, critiquing the society around him, and disseminating new insights through various media to a wider public. He was also deeply concerned with making education more widely accessible.

Arriving in post-war Britain as a young Rhodes Scholar, Hall did not return to Jamaica to live. Colonial society and the Eurocentric middle-class environment in which he grew up seemed too constricting. His socialisation, early colonial education and the culture shock of migrating to race-strained Britain in 1951 no doubt shaped his particular concerns.

He once said in a debate with a conservative political figure in London, "You cannot have at the back of your head what I have in mine. You once owned me on a plantation."

Hall remained on the side of the oppressed, the marginalised and the exploited - a perspective shaped by his Caribbean roots. This was clearly his role as a public intellectual: to make room for the voice of the powerless.

Godfather of Multiculturalism

Hall's broader recognition in Britain came when, along with a handful of intellectuals, he helped to form the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in 1964 at the University of Birmingham, eventually becoming its director. Emerging as one of the country's leading cultural theorists, he helped to define some of the major changes and cultural shifts occurring in 20th-century Britain. It was a relatively new idea at the time to take the study of popular culture seriously and, in particular, to analyse its relationship to politics and power.

The new academic discipline of cultural studies spread from Britain to the United States, to Latin America and the Caribbean, and even to Australia and East and Southeast Asia. Although some might argue that cultural studies is on the decline, the discipline has generated a wealth of significant work and set the stage for an entire line of theory, critique and political action which is still very influential, especially in the anti-globalisation movement.

Hall's writings linking racial prejudice and the media became key works, making him an inspirational figure for young black artists and film-makers from Britain. His studies on post-colonialism asked the question of how a modern, multicultural British society could be created that respected cultural differences among people - thus he is often referred to as 'the Godfather of Multiculturalism'. He observed that increased diversity within nations and the need to accommodate different sets of demands by various cultural groups posed challenging questions about the meaning of equality.

When Hall later moved to the Open University as professor of sociology, he continued his engagement with major issues of the day relating to British politics, culture and race. Indeed, he is often credited with the phrase 'Thatcherism': a term used to describe the politics, policies and political style of Margaret Thatcher, Conservative Party leader from 1975 to 1990.

Yet, his views were never extreme. He urged his comrades not to dismiss Thatcherism; that they should try to understand it and its popular appeal. For Hall, Thatcherism was a new phenomenon, an authoritarian populism that needed to be understood before it could be contested.

Hall was a political actor: he was involved in protests, the campaign for nuclear disarmament, and political writing. He insisted on linking intellectual and cultural work to political struggles rather than pretending that the former is an end in itself.

Marxist ideology

He maintained strong ties to Marxist thinking and to radicalism in general, but he also critiqued Marxism, especially its Stalinist versions. While he insisted on the connection between theory and political practice, he wanted it to be a flexible one that provided space for intellectual, cultural and political creativity.

This search for ideological flexibility and freedom within Marxism is the wellspring of his work and impact.

Key to Stuart Hall's thinking was his refusal to reject completely the impact of economics in people's daily lives, something lacking in many contemporary cultural theories. Yet, he was not an economic determinist - in other words, our consciousness, ideas, and cultural creations have a degree of independence and agency outside of economic realities.

However, some critics have suggested that the confinement of the economic factor in Hall's writings to "the first instance" meant that serious economic analysis was sometimes missing from his writings. For example, Hall did not consider the material basis of Margaret Thatcher's political power, nor was he able to articulate convincing alternatives to the present global capitalist order. But he rightly understood that we could not grasp contemporary realities without studying the workings of capitalism.

Hall's contribution to issues of race, ethnicity and identity are well respected and far-reaching. Given the genealogy of Stuart Hall - his parents' ancestors were English, African and Indian - his take on race and race relations was influenced by this cosmopolitan, consanguineal mix. His view was that race, ethnicity and identity are social constructions. If they can be constructed by human beings, they can also be challenged and torn down.

Hall argued that race had more in common with language than with biology. In other words, race is a moving, shifting conundrum defined by the environment, social structure and the people involved in the social relations of production and speech.

Hall was not afraid to express his dialogic view about race in his writings. He acknowledged the power of race and ethnicity to shape social interaction and the ways in which particular objects are viewed - for example, how works of art are read.

His deep and independent post-colonial thoughts will surely be missed. However, may they carry on, in the words of Bob Marley, to "disturb my neighbour".