Selected Writings on Race and Difference

Stuart Hall: Selected Writings

by Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy (Editor), Ruth Wilson Gilmore (Editor)

In Selected Writings on Race and Difference, editors Paul Gilroy and Ruth Wilson Gilmore gather more than twenty essays by Stuart Hall that highlight his extensive and groundbreaking engagement with race, representation, identity, difference, and diaspora. Spanning the whole of his career, this collection includes classic theoretical essays such as “The Whites of Their Eyes” (1981) and “Race, the Floating Signifier” (1997). It also features public lectures, political articles, and popular pieces that circulated in periodicals and newspapers, which demonstrate the breadth and depth of Hall's contribution to public discourses of race. Foregrounding how and why the analysis of race and difference should be concrete and not merely descriptive, this collection gives organizers and students of social theory ways to approach the interconnections of race with culture and consciousness, state and society, policing and freedom.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Race, Cultural Studies, Philosophy

456 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 2, 2021

About the author

Stuart Hall was an influential Jamaican-born British sociologist and cultural theorist. He was Professor of Sociology at the Open University, the founding editor of New Left Review, and Director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham.

Reviews

[Zach Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really learned a lot from this collection of essays that spans 50 years of Stuart Hall's scholarship. Part I (Riots, Race, and Representation) does a great job of defining how race operates, and his focus on race relations in Britain was interesting to compare to the United States, particularly at the height of radicalism in the 1950s/1960s. Part II (The Politics of Intellectual Work Against Racism) covers really great pedagogical theory and ethnic identity in the Caribbean, as well as one of my favorite essays, C.L.R. James, A Portrait. Part III was BY FAR my favorite, titled Cultural and Multicultural Questions, with essays like Gramsci's Relevance, Making Diasporic Identities, Why Fanon?, and Europe and Its Myths. There's so much material in this collection (and I'll eventually get through his other collection just published on Marxism), but it's absolutely worth the time to sit with and engage. I'll definitely be revisiting many of these essays in the future. Stuart Hall was a giant.

[Jenya Cassidy · Rating 5 out of 5]

My book group spent months reading Sturar Hall's essays and we're all better for it. So much food for thought and eerily prescient of what we're experiencing today. Great writing on globalization, race, immigration, and multiculturalism with a focus on Britain, but the ideas apply to situations in the US now. Thoughtful and provocative. Loved these essays!

[HadiDee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn’t read this cover to cover, and it’s a bit too academic for me. Despite that it’s a useful introduction to Stuart Hall

[gaverne Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still illuminating!