“Fanon was angry. His readers should still be angry too. Angry that the wretched of the earth are still with us. Anger does not in itself produce political programs for change, but it is perhaps the most basic political emotion. Without it, there is no hope,” (Macey 2000, 503).

The past decade has seen an increase in both popular and scholarly interest in the work of Frantz Fanon. What has brought about this revival in interest in Fanon, who is now discussed at numerous conferences and colloquia and whose work is increasingly featured in both academic and media literature? What are the conditions of our contemporary moment that compel some of us to turn towards Fanon and revisit his now classic texts, from Wretched of the Earth to Black Skin, White Masks? And just as importantly, how are misreadings of Fanon’s work contributing to the dilution of the revolutionary nationalist potential inherent in most of his writing? Two examples of seminal works that have been recently published include Lewis Gordon’s What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction to his Life and Thought and David Macey’s Fanon: A Biography. These works look at Fanon through the events that happened in his life to understand the ways in which he viewed and analyzed social reality. Just as important, although seldom referenced, is work by Neil Lazarus (1999, 2011) and Benita Parry (2004). Lazarus’ chapter on Fanon in his excellent work, The Postcolonial Unconscious and Parry’s analysis of Fanon’s work in her book Postcolonialism: A Materialist Critique constitute important interventions in the way Fanon has been misread by multiple scholars.

Our contemporary moment is characterized by the constant drive towards capitalist accumulation through an increasing process of neoliberalization in the current setting of late capital.[1] This material reality, that is universal but that has a multitude of particularities across the globe, conditions the social categories that produce experience, from class, race, and gender, to (dis)ability and sexuality. However, this has come alongside a tendency within academia to shy away from discussing this very material reality. This is largely due to the turn away from Marxism, as well as to the popularity of both postcolonial and postmodern approaches. The role of the neoliberal university is also important to note, as it pushes for more specialization, more profit, and therefore less critique and less radical thinking. This tendency has meant that although important events such as the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa have been interpreted through numerous lenses, what is absent is usually analysis employing a lens that engages the global capitalist system and that analyzes social justice with particular attention to neoliberalism and neocolonialism.

This hesitance within academia when it comes to a discussion of neocolonialism (especially through a Marxist lens) is what has driven me towards Fanon as an important scholar within the long tradition of anti-colonial scholarship. It is unfortunate that it has often been scholars who identify as postcolonialists who have rejected the concept of neocolonialism and posited that global relations in our current moment are nuanced and complex, and that we should be wary of repositing a binary of East and West. Here Derrida’s argument that binary oppositions are a violent hierarchy that must first be inverted before they can be decimated is useful, as it shows the need to use binaries solely in order to invert them—without this inversion, they cannot be done away with (Parry 2004, 16). Moreover, as both Benita Parry (2004) and Neil Lazarus (2011) have deftly argued, calls for “complexity” and “nuance” can often serve power by softening the critical edge of critique and should thus be approached with caution. Fanon’s work can certainly be seen as falling within the so-called “trap” of reproducing binaries. He has touched on questions of race, capitalism, nationalism, and neocolonialism, through an analysis that clearly articulates the power relation between the West and the colonial (and neocolonial) world. His background in psychiatry has meant that he often highlighted the psycho-social effects of colonialism and racial domination, even while noting the economic and political processes underlying this domination. Indeed in his work we see the intersecting of these various structures, all through the lens of his involvement in the Algerian war of independence, of which he was a part. His work often relies on psychoanalytical assumptions, although, as Gordon points out, for Fanon the psychoanalytical emphasis is on the racial rather than the sexual.

It seems clear to those of us working within a Marxist framework that many of the problems Fanon addressed in the 1950s and 1960s continue to reproduce themselves in the contemporary moment, albeit at times expressing themselves differently. Indeed the Arab uprisings are a testament to this; would it be possible to argue that neocolonialism, capitalism, and nationalism are not part of the story? (That said, apparently it is indeed possible, judging by the state of Middle East studies today.) Thus it is clear that Fanon remains relevant. The question, then, is: which Fanon? In this article I want to discuss two readings of Fanon’s work that approach him from divergent perspectives and yet still maintain his revolutionary potential. The first is Lewis Gordon’s forthcoming book on Fanon entitled What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction to his Life and Thought, which highlights the analyses of racial domination present in Fanon’s work. The second is Neil Lazarus’ chapter on Fanon in The Postcolonial Unconscious and his chapter on Fanon in Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the Postcolonial World and Benita Parry’s discussion of Fanon in her book Postcolonialism: A Materialist Critique, which focuses on the question of nationalism. These two sets of texts highlight the way in which Fanon can be read differently according to where emphasis is put, and yet still be acknowledged as an anti-colonialist revolutionary thinker whose work remains relevant today.

Lewis Gordon and the question of race

Lewis Gordon begins his book What Fanon Said with a superb introduction that clearly articulates the role of race in how Fanon has been received. He writes,

We should step outside of the tendency to reduce the thought of African intellectuals to the thinkers they study. For example, Jean-Paul Sartre was able to comment on black intellectuals such as Aimé Césaire, Fanon, and Léopold Sédar Senghor without becoming ‘Césairian,’ ‘Fanonian,’ or ‘Senghorian’; Simon de Beauvoir could comment on the work of Richard Wright without becoming ‘Wrightian’; Max Weber could comment on the work of W. E. B. Du Bois without becoming ‘Du Boisian.’ Why then is there a different story when black authors comment on their (white) European counterparts? Standard scholarship has explored whether Du Bois is Herderian, Hegelian, Marxian, or Weberian; whether Senghor is Heideggerian; and whether Fanon is every one of the Europeans on whom he has commented – Adlerian, Bergsonian, Freudian, Hegelian, Husserlian, Lacanian, Marxian, Merleau-Pontian, and Sartrean, to name several (2015, 18).

This is related to the tendency to reduce black intellectuals to their biographies; or, in other words, to assume that white intellectuals produce ideas and theory, while black intellectuals relate experiences. The point here is not to simply say Sartre is Fanonian or de Beauvoir Wrightian; the point is to emphasize that the opposite is always the case: that black intellectuals are always read and understood through white intellectuals. Thus from the outset Gordon is setting the stage for the centrality of race in his book. Indeed the first few chapters focus explicitly on the ways in which Fanon discussed race, particularly from a psychological perspective. Fanon’s first brutal experience with racism in France—when a French child told his mother he was afraid when he saw Fanon—plays a central role here, as does Fanon’s analysis of interracial relationships. It is clear that Gordon has a soft spot for Fanon’s work and that he sees its continuing relevance today: there are multiple points throughout the book where he points out how Fanon’s analysis of the Martinique or Algeria of the early twentieth century continues to be relevant today.

Gordon also produces a very nuanced analysis of Fanon’s gender politics, which have been subject to much heated debate.[2] Fanon has been attacked by many white feminists (and non-white feminists working within the liberal tradition) for his comments on Mayotte Capécia’s Je Suis Martiniquaise. These feminists saw Fanon’s analysis of Capécia’s inferiority complex as sexist and dismissed his work in its entirety based on that reading. I would posit that Fanon’s reading of this particular work is not sexist but rather shows the reality of how race and gender intersect to produce complicated forms of desire. Here Capécia’s desire for white men—and white men alone—is seen as a desire to be white, to attain whiteness. It is clear for Fanon that this form of desire is therefore to be criticized. Fanon’s reading is in effect one that analyses gender through a critical race perspective and thus it is no surprise white feminists were uncomfortable with it. While Gordon dismisses claims that Fanon’s reading of Capécia was sexist, he does, however, critique Fanon for his “epistemic sexism.” Here he argues that Fanon’s work is clearly indebted to Simone de Beauvoir, and that despite this he did not cite her or mention her influence in any form. Gordon writes, “I cannot excuse Fanon’s failure to articulate his indebtedness to de Beauvoir…it is clear de Beauvoir not only offered much intellectual sustenance to Fanon’s thought but also that he was well aware of at least her two major contributions at the time of writing Black Skin White Masks. Her presence at the level of ideas but exclusion at that of citation is a form of epistemic sexism,” (Ibid, 58). Thus Gordon condemns readings of Fanon that posit his sexism and dismiss him based on that and yet simultaneously notes that there are traces of sexism in Fanon’s work. In addition, it is useful to note the problematic way in which Fanon at times discussed Algerian women, repositing a Western separation between the public and private sphere and over-emphasizing the role of the veil.

Nevertheless, it is clear, as Gordon demonstrates, that Fanon’s theoretical analysis of the position of Algerian women within the battle for independence is correct. Gordon writes: “Whether Fanon’s portrayal of the facts are accurate does not affect the main point of his analysis: how could liberating Algerian women be taken seriously when the approach to doing so is to impose a structure that makes the women (1) subordinate to all French and other European peoples and (2) only of value to the extent to which their plight could be used to maintain subordination of Algerian men and women,” (Ibid, 150). Fanon’s analysis of the relationship between the French settler-colonizers and Algerian women is a heavily psychoanalytic one, where he posits that white French settlers dreamed of ripping the veils off Algerian women and penetrating them—in other words, deflowering the country (Ibid). What is notable here is the way in which Algerian women are part and parcel of the Algerian revolution, as Fanon himself constantly pointed out. Gordon writes that this shows how these women’s fight for the freedom as women is an outgrowth of struggles against colonization and slavery, a point that has been made by both Assia Djebar in the Algerian context and Angela Davis in the American one (Ibid, 155). This is not to say that women only fought for independence and not for gender justice or an end to patriarchy, but rather to demonstrate the ways in which these various struggles are interconnected.

The unwillingness on the part of many feminists to engage with Fanon should be seen as a missed opportunity to enrich the field of postcolonial feminism. Fanon’s analysis of capitalism, class relations, neocolonialism and nationalism can greatly enhance the work of feminists working in contexts that were formerly colonized. In an excellent article, Ashley Bohrer points out that many anti-imperialist Marxist feminists in particular have used Fanon to discuss colonialism and neocolonialism, noting in particular Silvia Federici and Mariarosa Dalla Costa. By looking at the ways in which Fanon influenced these two feminists—who are indeed central to Marxist feminism—Bohrer shows “how his thought is foundational for a contemporary Marxist analysis of capitalist patriarchy,” (2015, 379). Fanon argues that colonialism should, above all, be analyzed from the perspective of economics: “The colonized world is one structured by economic violence, and in particular, the violent and coercive appropriation of the labour of the oppressed,” (Ibid, 380). This economic exploitation is internalized by the colonized through complex webs of socialization. Thus cultural imperialism is part and parcel of economic imperialism.

While Fanon has rarely been labeled a Marxist, it is clear from the above passage that his work contains important analyses of colonial capitalism. I argue that Fanon’s call to “stretch Marxism” should be seen as a useful for feminists working in the Global South because it calls for both a centering of Marxism while at the same time acknowledging the ways in which capitalism conditions life in the colonies (as opposed to the métropoles). In other words, I believe “stretching Marxism” here can be seen as a means of dislodging Eurocentric Marxist accounts that do not consider colonialism as central to capitalist accumulation and that do not account for how capitalism in the postcolony (Mbembé 2001) is different. Here Bohrer’s point that Fanon’s analysis had a lasting effect on Italian Marxist feminism shows the importance of his materialist critiques of capitalism. Silvia Federici, for example, arguably one of the most important feminists today, cites Fanon as one of her major influences alongside Samir Amin and Andre Gunder Frank. Marxist feminists have long critiqued Marx’s exclusion of the social reproduction carried out by women in the home; feminists such as Federici and Dalla Costa also noted the exclusion of the distinctive form of labour carried out in the colonies (a point that had previously been made by Rosa Luxemburg). Alongside critiques by Marxists from the Global South that center colonialism within capitalist accumulation, it is clear that Marxism can and should be stretched. This is precisely why I believe Fanon remains an important inspiration for feminists working in the Global South: his work on capitalism and colonialism, both at the level of materiality and ideas, is now more crucial than ever in light of the continued dominance of liberal feminism globally.

Lazarus, Parry, and the “Postcolonial” Fanon

So how has Fanon been read by postcolonial theorists, whose work is focused on the Global South? Here the readings have been less than promising. Neil Lazarus begins his chapter in The Postcolonial Unconscious by pointing out that Fanon is an exception among anti-colonial writers writing during the era of decolonization because of the extent to which he has been engaged with by postcolonial scholars. This engagement, however, has often meant a specific kind of reading of his work that has turned it into a “post”-theoretical discourse that addresses subject formation (2011, 122). How to account for this shift in the Fanon that propagated Third World nationalist anti-colonialism to the Fanon in the work of Homi Bhahba[3] and others who focused on the subject?[4] Lazarus writes, “The containment of the historic challenge from the ‘Third World’ that had been expressed in the struggle for decolonization in the post-1945 years must be seen in the light of the global reassertion and consolidation of what (Samir) Amin calls ‘the logic of unilateral capital’,” (Ibid, 124). The triumph of neoliberalism and reassertion of a neo-imperialist world order—with the US at its head—meant that a new reading of Fanon was needed: a ‘postcolonial’ Fanon; “…not only post-colonial, but also post-nationalist, post-liberationist, post-Marxist, and post-modern,” (Ibid). In other words, the opposite of the revolutionary Fanon that preceded this shift.

A second major difference between the first Fanon and the second is the focus on nationalism in the former and its conspicuous absence in the latter. Fanon was greatly influenced by the Algerian war for liberation. This meant that nationalist anti-colonialism, violence, class, ideology, and the ‘Third World’ in general were major themes in most of his work. This goes against the general tendency, however, to see nationalism as a deeply destructive force. As Benita Parry has noted, there is a tendency to disparage nationalist discourses of resistance within postcolonial studies (2012, 35). More than simply disparaging nationalism, Parry rightly points out that the field of postcolonialism often analyzes colonialism as a cultural event, mediated through texts, rather than focusing on the concrete, material, socio-economic and state-based processes that also made up colonialism. Indeed, reading Fanon, it is difficult to understand how he is been appropriated by a field so heavily influenced by postmodernism (postcolonialism) given his emphasis on precisely the material, the socio-economic, and the national.

Regarding nationalism, Lazarus writes: “Some contemporary theorists of ‘postcoloniality’ have attempted to build upon Fanon’s denunciation of bourgeois nationalism. Yet Fanon’s actual standpoint poses insuperable problems for them. One fundamental difficulty derives from the fact that far from representing an abstract repudiation of nationalism as such, Fanon’s critique of bourgeois nationalist ideology is itself delivered from an alternative nationalist standpoint,” (1999, 78). In other words, although many within postcolonial studies view nationalism as a thoroughly modern and negative force, Fanon instead saw it as a means to liberation while simultaneously warning us of the pitfalls of bourgeois nationalism. The national project could also become a socialist one, rather than a capitalist one. This emphasis on capitalism and imperialism further distinguishes Fanon from those within postcolonial studies who see Marxism as being of little use to contemporary analysis. What I find especially important here is that Fanon’s anti-colonialist nationalism allowed for a bridge to an internationalism that was anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist in nature. This bridge is precisely what is missing in much of the work being done today.

I conclude with a quote from Lazarus about the importance of anti-colonialism: “It is important to try and keep alive the memory of the ‘revolutionary heroism’ that was everywhere in evidence in the struggle for national liberation. Even more important is to insist that the concrete achievements of this struggle are still intact and continue to provide a vital resource for present-day social and cultural practice. It is not only that the lives of hundreds of millions of people throughout the world were changed decisively by the experience of anti-colonial struggle. It is also that these changes are irreversible. No matter how great have been the defeats that have had to be endured since decolonization, the perduring solidaristic significance of the anti-colonial struggle has not been erased,” (1999, 120-121). This quote, as well as Lazarus’ and Parry’s readings of Fanon, show that for them his greatest contribution has been to the anti-colonial struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, in particular the Algerian war of independence. This is the frame they read him through, and to do this they have engaged in much-needed critiques of postcolonial attempts to sanitize Fanon and render him part of a postmodern canon that is often severely lacking in material analysis. For Lewis Gordon, Fanon’s greatest contribution appears to be his work on race and the ways in which the world is structured by anti-Black racism. Moreover, where Gordon emphasizes the centrality of Fanon for scholars and activists fighting against anti-Black racism, David Macey instead emphasizes that Fanon’s allegiance, first and foremost, was to the Algerian war of independence. Thus we see here three slightly different framings of Fanon: one where Fanon is an anti-colonial, anti-capitalist revolutionary, one where Fanon is a global anti-Black racism scholar; and one where Fanon is above all an Algerian revolutionary. This is not to say that all of these writers do not acknowledge the many dimensions of Fanon’s work. Parry and Lazarus write about Fanon’s views on race and his deep commitment to the Algerian struggle; and Gordon affirms the centrality of Algeria for Fanon as well as his clear materialist critiques of the global system. The point is simply that each writer places the emphasis somewhere else; each reads Fanon through a different lens.

Some may argue that this ability to read Fanon in such diverse ways is a benefit; but this would fall into the liberal trap of seeing pluralism as constructive. Indeed as I have shown, Lazarus’ and Parry’s demonstration of how postcolonialists such as Bhabha have mis-read Fanon shows the dangers of accepting all readings as equally valid. Looking back at Fanon’s work, it is clear that there are central themes that cannot be ignored: his anti-racism, his nationalism, his class analysis, and, above all, his incessant call to others to fight against oppression.

The post Reading and Mis-Reading Frantz Fanon appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

… I think that anyone seriously engaged in cultural studies, as intellectual practice, must feel, in the skin, its transience, its unsteadiness, how little they register, the bit we accomplish to change or to encourage throughout (to) action. If you do not feel it as a tension in the work they produce is because the theory has left him in peace. Stuart Hall (2003a, p. 213).

I encountered the writings of Stuart Hall in the mid-1990s. At the time, I was pursuing my master’s degree in Education in the Graduate Program of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, under the advisement of Professor Maria Lucia Castagna Wortmann. At that time, I experienced the period of the creation of the above referenced program, as well as the research area “Cultural Studies in Education”. I remember that the circulation of Stuart Hall texts between teachers and students triggered an enthusiastic movement of research articulation in education with cultural analyses stemming from the Birmingham group, an anthropophagic movement of absorbing concepts, modes of writing and researching. We came to see our own questions and contexts with other eyes.

Studying the writings of Stuart Hall in the 1990s, in a Department of Education, opened up an enormous potential range of investigation that put into action educational research in a broader more visible manner with regards to cultural issues of ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, identity and consumption. With this, the focus on categories (strongly inspired by Marxist theories) such as those related to social class, labor, production and social reproduction, had their centrality challenged.

It is impossible to forget the poor translations (made ​​only for internal circulation among students and teachers) of Hall’s texts and the texts of other authors and researchers at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS). I have been involved with the translation effort, together with other colleagues, for a book by Paul du Gay, Stuart Hall, Linda Janes, Hugh Mackay and Keith Negus titled, “Doing Cultural Studies: the Story of Sony Walkman”. We studied these materials and many others through a seminar taught by Professor Tomaz Thaddeus. The year was 1996. At the time, my English was not strong enough for such a difficult task. This weakness, however, allowed me to anticipate the scale of the effort devoted to studies of the texts that motivated us, driving new questions and new paths of research. That book marked a turning point in my training as a researcher able to articulate, in an engaging language, discussions about culture, media and identity. The notion that we negotiate our identities daily, in asymmetric networks of knowledge-power, (re) inventing them incessantly, without this process ending or being defined, impacted me deeply at the time. I had previously imagined carrying around an essence, an identity that was entirely mine, forever housed in my “soul”.

Stuart Hall (2000) taught me that the identities have to do “with the question of using the resources from history and language, as well as from culture, to produce not what we are, but what we become” (p.109). Thus, the construction of identities may be linked to a process of “invention of tradition” and, therefore, whatever we become has little connection with a pretentious possibility  ‘back to the roots.’ Such a process would be thus linked to “a negotiation with our routes“, in other words, with everything that went into constructing ourselves at different times in our history.

In the words of Hall (2000), identity is a concept “under erasure”, that is, inappropriate, unstable and non-necessary. Thus, according to this thought-provoking author, the concept of identity needs to be questioned as a problem on its essentialist and deterministic productions, and also with regard to its own development, in order to widely mark its provisional character as well as its political character. Hall (2003a) argues that it was racial issues, along with feminism, that checked the work of British cultural studies, while (until the 1980s) they were mostly “struggling” with Marxist theories. At a time in which issues related to race, sexuality, and gender in culture came to the foreground, cultural studies took a “linguistic turn”, that is, such studies, under the influence of Hall’s work, began to highlight the “crucial importance of language and linguistic metaphor for any study of culture” (HALL, 2003a, p. 211). According to the intellectual, “racial issues were important extrinsic sources in the formation of cultural studies” (p. 210), this “necessary deviation” from the field to the discovery of textuality, being then configured as key axes of cultural practices for those who have been interested in cultural studies while committed to a political agenda in tune with minorities (in terms of symbolic power).

I would also like to briefly focus on the question of the subject in the theories of Stuart Hall, approximating him to Michel Foucault, because for both of them the subject is taken in articulation with the discursive and non-discursive formations. Although Hall (2000), follows the theories of Michel Foucault with respect to the notion of the subject, he problematizes the thinking of the philosopher – both in its archaeological stage (centered on studies of discursive practices) as well as genealogical dimension (centered on the study of the relationship of knowledge-power) – with respect to limited discussion about the ways by which to interrupt, impede or disturb “the quiet insertion of individuals in positions of-subject constructed” by discourses (p.122). For Hall, it will be in his last phase (ethics) that the philosopher, concerned about the “technologies of the I”, emphasizes the practices “that might prevent this subject becomes, forever, just a docile, sexualized body” (p.125). Hall points out that the decentering of the subject does not mean its destruction, and, according to that, proposes that we think about it as articulated to discursive practices. The author seeks then, to highlight an active role of the subject in negotiation, transformation and reconstruction of meaning, assuming, according to Foucault, the notion of a historical subject (not a person who would be the source of all knowledge, or even transcendental) that is linked in a contingent way to the discursive practices of his time.

It is interesting to note, also, that Hall’s texts were important not only for my research papers, but also for the initiation and continued education of teachers of science and biology. I activated, through Hall (1997), an understanding of cultural practices that infinitely increased all articulatory possibilities starting with the thematic ones, until then seen as “the property” of biology and its teaching. This meant assuming the understanding that different cultural institutions or contexts (cinema, school, television, newspaper, advertising, literature), producers of artifacts (films, textbooks, television programs, newspaper articles, brochures) that we consume daily are also implicated, far beyond the science that takes place in laboratories, in the ways in which we learn to see, to read and to narrate the living world. In fact, Hall’s very own biology began to be seen by me as a cultural practice.

Finally, I would now like to point out some brief notes I made in pencil (at different moments during my professional career) in two texts by Stuart Hall (2003a and 2003b) that I greatly enjoy, “Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms” and “Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies.” Both were published in the book “From Diaspora: Identities and Cultural Mediations,” organized and compiled by Liv Sovik. The first edition appeared in Brazil in 2003, quite a distance from when I initially encountered the works.

In the first, I noted in the text’s margins, “it is interesting to see how Hall’s focus is on the relations”; “he runs away from an approach of causes and effects”; “the culture becomes ordinary”; “there is a deliberate escape from Marxism.” In the second, I sketched: “there is a rejection of meta-narratives”; “the project of cultural studies is open to the unknown, and there is a desire to connect and an involvement with the choices one makes”; “it’s amazing the idea that the theory that is worth retaining is the one that we have to contest and not that one that we speak with fluency”; “what would we like to stop within ourselves?”; “structuralism spoke about the institutional role of language, but with post-structuralism the issue of power and its effects were emphasized ;” “there is a recognition in Hall of the production of social movements”; “Something always escapes” …

What seems not to escape is the actuality, the political relevance, the effects upon us and in our practices that make so captivating the texts of one of the most exciting and challenging authors of the second half of the twentieth century: Stuart Hall.

Florianopolis/Brazil, April 1^st, 2014.

The post A Brazilian Take on the Writings of Stuart Hall appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

… penso que qualquer pessoa que se envolva seriamente nos estudos culturais como prática intelectual deve sentir, na pele, sua transitoriedade, sua insubstancialidade, o pouco que consegue registrar, o pouco que alcançamos mudar ou incentivar à ação. Se você não sente isso como uma tensão no trabalho que produz é porque a teoria o deixou em paz. Stuart Hall (2003a, p. 213).

Conheci os escritos de Stuart Hall em meados dos anos 1990. À época, eu estava cursando o mestrado no Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil, sob orientação da professora Maria Lúcia Castagna Wortmann. Vivi o período de criação, no referido Programa, da Linha de Pesquisa “Estudos Culturais em Educação”. Lembro que a circulação entre professores e alunos dos textos de Stuart Hall desencadeou um entusiasmado movimento de articulação das pesquisas em educação com as análises culturais provenientes do grupo de Birmingham. Um movimento antropofágico de deglutição de conceitos, modos de escrever e pesquisar. Passamos a ver nossas próprias questões investigativas, nossos contextos, com outros olhos.

Os estudos dos textos de Stuart Hall nos anos 1990, em uma Faculdade de Educação, abriu um enorme leque potencial de investigações que colocaram em cena nas pesquisas educacionais, de forma mais evidente e ampliada, questões culturais de etnia, de raça, de gênero, de sexualidade, de identidade, de consumo. Com isso, o enfoque em categorias (sob forte inspiração nas teorizações marxistas) como as de classe social, de trabalho, de produção e de reprodução social, tiveram sua centralidade contestada.

Impossível deixar de lembrar das traduções precárias (feitas apenas para circulação interna entre os alunos e os professores) dos textos de Hall e de outros autores e pesquisadores do Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS). Estive envolvido com o esforço da tradução, conjuntamente com outros colegas, de um livro de Paul du Gay, Stuart Hall, Linda Janes, Hugh Mackay e Keith Negus chamado: “Doing cultural studies: the story of Sony walkman”. Estudamos este material e muitos outros através de um Seminário ministrado pelo professor Tomaz Tadeu. O ano era 1996. À época meu inglês era muito insuficiente para tão árdua tarefa. Isso permite antever a dimensão do esforço dedicado aos estudos dos textos que nos empolgavam, nos mobilizavam, nos remetiam a novas perguntas, a novos traçados de pesquisa. Tal livro marcou minha formação de pesquisador ao articular, em uma linguagem envolvente, discussões sobre cultura, mídia e identidade. A noção de que negociamos cotidianamente, em redes assimétricas de saber-poder, nossas identidades, (re)inventando-as incessantemente, sem que esse processo cesse ou se defina, impactou-me muito à época. Antes eu imaginava carregar uma essência, uma identidade que era só minha, desde sempre grudada em minha “alma”.

Stuart Hall (2000) ensinou-me que as identidades têm a ver “com a questão da utilização dos recursos da história, da linguagem e da cultura para a produção não daquilo que nós somos, mas daquilo que nos tornamos” (p.109). Assim, a construção de identidades estaria vinculada a um processo de “invenção da tradição” e, dessa forma, aquilo que nos tornamos tem ligação pouco estreita com uma pretensiosa possibilidade de volta às raízes. Tal processo estaria, assim, vinculado a “uma negociação com nossas rotas”, ou seja, com tudo aquilo que nos foi formando em diferentes momentos de nossa história.

Nas palavras de Hall (2000), a identidade é um conceito “sob rasura”, ou seja, impróprio, instável e não-necessário. Dessa forma, segundo esse instigante autor, o conceito de identidade necessita ser problematizado em suas produções deterministas e essencialistas, bem como em relação a sua própria necessidade de elaboração, de modo que seja amplamente marcado o seu caráter provisório e, também, político. Hall (2003a) argumenta terem sido questões raciais, juntamente com o feminismo, que colocaram em xeque o trabalho dos estudos culturais britânicos, quando ainda (até os anos da década de 1980) estavam predominantemente “em luta” com as teorizações marxistas. Ao mesmo tempo em que passavam a tematizar questões relativas à raça, à sexualidade e ao gênero, os estudos culturais passaram a assumir a “virada lingüística”, ou seja, tais estudos, sob a influência dos próprios trabalhos de Hall, passaram a destacar a “importância crucial da linguagem e da metáfora lingüística para qualquer estudo da cultura” (HALL, 2003a, p. 211). Segundo o estudioso, as “questões raciais foram fontes extrínsecas importantes na formação dos estudos culturais” (p. 210), nesse “desvio necessário” do campo à descoberta da discursividade e da textualidade, sendo, então, configuradas como eixos importantes das práticas culturais para os quais os estudos culturais têm estado interessados enquanto comprometidos com uma agenda política sintonizada com as minorias (em termos de poder simbólico).

Gostaria também de enfocar, brevemente,  a questão do sujeito nas teorizações de Stuart Hall, aproximando-o de Michel Foucault, pois em ambos o sujeito é tomado em articulação com as formações discursivas e não-discursivas. Hall (2000), embora siga as teorizações de Michel Foucault a respeito da noção de sujeito, problematiza o pensamento do filósofo – tanto em sua fase arqueológica (centrada nos estudos de práticas discursivas) como, também, genealógica (centrada no estudo das relações de saber-poder) – com relação a sua pouca argumentação a respeito dos modos de se interromper, impedir ou perturbar “a tranqüila inserção dos indivíduos nas posições-de-sujeito construídas” pelos discursos (p.122). Para Hall será em sua última fase (ética) que o filósofo, preocupado com as “tecnologias do eu”, destacará práticas “que podem impedir que esse sujeito se torne, para sempre, simplesmente um corpo sexualizado dócil” (p.125). Hall chama a atenção que o descentramento do sujeito não significaria sua destruição e, nessa direção, propõe pensá-lo como articulado às práticas discursivas. O autor busca destacar, então, um papel ativo do sujeito na negociação, transformação e reconstrução do significado, assumindo, seguindo Foucault, a noção de um sujeito histórico (não de um sujeito que seria fonte de todo conhecimento ou, ainda, transcendental) que está ligado de forma contingente às práticas discursivas de seu tempo.

É interessante registrar, ainda, que os textos de Hall foram importantes não apenas para meus trabalhos de pesquisa, mas com a formação inicial e continuada de professores de ciências e de biologia. Pude acionar, através de Hall (1997), um entendimento das práticas culturais que ampliava, quase infinitamente, as possibilidades articulatórias a partir das temáticas, até então, vistas como “próprias” à biologia e ao seu ensino. Isso significou assumir o entendimento de que as diferentes instâncias culturais (cinema, escola, televisão, jornal, publicidade, literatura) produtoras dos artefatos (filmes, livros didáticos, programas televisivos, reportagens jornalísticas, cartilhas) que consumimos diariamente também estão implicadas, para além da ciência que transcorre nos laboratórios, nos modos como aprendemos a ver, a ler, a narrar o mundo vivo. Aliás, a própria biologia passou a ser vista por mim como uma prática cultural.

Por fim, gostaria agora de apontar algumas breves anotações que fiz à lápis (talvez em diferentes momentos da minha trajetória profissional) em dois textos de Stuart Hall (2003a e 2003b) que gosto muito: “Estudos Culturais: dois paradigmas” e “Estudos Culturais e seu legado teórico”. Ambos publicados no livro “Da diáspora: identidades e mediações culturais” organizado e compilado por Liv Sovik. A primeira edição do mesmo no Brasil se deu em 2003, ano distante dos tempos em que já nos debruçávamos nos textos do autor.

No primeiro anotei (escrevi ao lado das páginas dos textos): “é interessante ver como o foco de Hall está nas relações”; “ele foge de uma abordagem de causas e efeitos”; “a cultura passa a ser ordinária”; “há um escape deliberado do marxismo”. No segundo rascunhei: “há uma recusa das metanarrativas”; “o projeto dos estudos culturais está aberto ao desconhecido e há uma vontade de conectar-se e há um envolvimento com as escolhas que se faz”; “é incrível essa ideia de que a teoria que vale a pena reter é aquela que temos que contestar e não a que falamos com fluência”; “o que gostaríamos de interromper em nós?”; “já no estruturalismo se falava do papel instituidor da linguagem, mas com o pós-estruturalismo ressalta-se a questão do poder e de seus efeitos”; “há um reconhecimento em Hall das produções dos movimentos sociais”; “algo sempre escapa”…

O que parece não escapar é a atualidade, a pertinência política, os efeitos em nós e nas práticas que nos enredam dos textos de um dos autores mais instigantes e desafiadores da segunda metade do século XX: Stuart Hall.

Florianópolis/Brasil, 01 de abril de 2014.

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The first piece I read by Stuart Hall was Cultural Identity and Diaspora, published in 1990.[1] His call to analyze the subject positions from which we speak resonated deeply with me, especially as I could easily draw parallels between that and feminist calls to situate oneself vis-à-vis our research and our praxis in order to challenge the assumption of neutrality. Hall writes, “We all write and speak from a particular place and time, from a history and a culture which is specific. What we say is always ‘in context,’ positioned,” (1990, 223). He then went on to talk about his own cultural and racial background[2], and how this impacted his work. While this may seem commonplace within postcolonial and feminist writing, I remember being quite taken aback by his decision to share such personal information in an academic space. Having had a background in sociology—which has been described by some as a collection of writings based on the work of men from five European countries —Hall’s insistence on openly situating oneself as both a product and agent of culture seemed to go against most of what I thought to be “good academic writing.” And yet, it made complete sense.

The second time I came across Stuart Hall was in a class I took for my MA in Gender Studies. This time the focus was on his work on representation: the ways in which power relations construct and reproduce the kinds of knowledges we have about specific places, peoples, and so on. Through the lens of representation, Hall addressed the extreme trauma of colonialism: “The ways in which black people, black experiences, were positioned and subjected in the dominant regimes of representation were the effects of a critical exercise of cultural power and normalization,” (1990, 225). He goes on to draw on Edward Said’s conceptualization of the colonized being constructed as different and Other, as well as Foucault’s reminder that every regime of representation is a regime of power/knowledge. What struck me at the time, and continues to register as extremely relevant to the field of postcolonialism, is Hall’s emphasis on how these representations of the colonized were internalized by the colonized: “They had the power to make us see and experience ourselves as ‘Other’,” (Ibid). This is similar to Fanon’s work on the psychological effects of colonialism, a subject that unfortunately remains somewhat understudied in the field of postcolonialism. As Hall writes, “It is one thing to position a subject or set of peoples as the Other of a dominant discourse. It is quite another thing to subject them to that ‘knowledge’,” (Ibid). It seems to be that we are still struggling with the effects of these legacies, as well as the reality that neocolonial processes continue to produce and reproduce these representations, and that these representations have very material effects. One only needs to be reminded of the ways in which Orientalist[3] representations of Afghan women served to partly justify the American invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

When I began researching Antonio Gramsci and his work on hegemony, I was especially excited to find that Stuart Hall had written an article on how Gramsci relates to studies of race and ethnicity.[4] Hall unsurprisingly finds some affinity with Gramsci, as Gramsci also drew largely on his experiences and his connections to society and the worker’s movement. In other words, he situated his theorizing within these lived experiences, as did Hall by constantly positioning and contextualizing himself in relation to his work. Hall rightly points out that Gramsci did not write on the colonial experience. Nevertheless, the concepts he developed can be applied to several pertinent questions in the field. One example is the way in which Gramsci theorizes the state as exercising moral and educative leadership. “It is not a thing to be seized, overthrown or ‘smashed’ with a single blow, but a complex formation in modern societies which must become the focus of a number of different strategies and struggles because it is an arena of different contestations,” (Hall 1996 435). Hall rightly goes on to apply this to the postcolonial context, where it is clear that revolutionary movements need to conceptualize the state in a more complex manner if they want to truly disrupt hegemony. This resonated with me particularly in relation to the 2011 Egyptian uprising, and the complex ways in which the Egyptian state is imbricated with specific social forces and economic interests, and the extremely complicated and layered nature of the state apparatus itself. Another example is Gramsci’s conceptualization of ‘common sense,’[5] which presents itself as truth but which is in fact a product of historical processes. Common sense is fluid and constantly shifting, and yet has immense ideological power. Again, it is clear that this can be linked to questions of race, representation, and the postcolonial conditions. Hall’s work on representation, for example, attempts to unpack some of these ‘truths’ and situate them as historically produced. Importantly, Hall concludes the piece by showing that despite Gramsci’s Eurocentrism, many of his formulations remain invaluable to the field of postcolonialism and race studies.

Years later, I find myself returning to Stuart Hall and still finding new concepts and ideas to consider. As my own research interests shift and grow, it seems as if the knowledge found in Hall’s work and life provide endless inspiration. Thinking about current events in Egypt and the role of nationalism made me once again revisit Hall and his work on cultural identity, and its explicit link to anti-colonial struggles, as “Our cultural identities reflect the common historical experiences and shared cultural codes which provide us, as ‘one people,’ with stable, unchanging and continuous frames of reference and meaning, beneath the shifting divisions and vicissitudes of our actual history. Such a conception of cultural identity played a critical role in all the postcolonial struggles that have so profoundly shaped our world,” (Hall 1990, 223). He links this to Fanon’s work on culture and the anti-colonial struggle, and I find both of these extrapolations extremely pertinent today as we see nationalist rhetoric become increasingly visible in multiple postcolonial settings.

In writing this piece, I found myself repeatedly going back to my childhood experiences of watching specific television shows (Disney movies come to mind straight away), viewing film,, and reading specific kinds of literature, and am keenly aware of how my exposure to this Westernized body of media conditioned certain representations of who I was. Looking back, I can somewhat delineate what I thought the Netherlands was and what I thought Egypt was, and by extension, what I thought it was to be Dutch or Egyptian, despite growing up in Zambia and only visiting both countries once or twice a year. Yet these representations were so strong that I continue to struggle with them today as I attempt, consciously and unconsciously, to unlearn both the positive representations of the Netherlands and the negative representations of Egypt, both of which lacked nuance. This is precisely what Stuart Hall speaks of when he says that representations are powerful because they not only are imposed by a dominant force, but become internalized and almost constitutive of the ways in which being dominated conceptualize themselves and the world. Moreover, these representations do not just have effects on personal identification. They also have deep and lasting material consequences that are expressed economically, politically and socially.

I will conclude with a final quote from Stuart Hall on the Caribbean, to emphasize just how important his work is to postcolonial studies across regions as well as to the millions of people around the world who have been touched by colonial process:

“Where Africa was a case of the unspoken, Europe was a case of that which is endlessly speaking—and endlessly speaking us. The European presence interrupts the innocence of the whole discourse of ‘difference’ in the Caribbean by introducing the question of power. In terms of colonialism, underdevelopment, poverty and the racism of colour, the European presence is that which has positioned the black subject within its dominant regimes of representation: the colonial discourse, the literatures of adventure and exploration, the romance of the exotic, the ethnographic and traveling eye, the tropical languages of tourism, travel brochure and Hollywood, and the violent, pornographic languages of ganja and urban violence. How can we stage a dialogue with Europe so that we can place it, without terror or violence, rather than being forever placed by it?” (Italics mine. 1990, 233).

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