Stuart Hall was the most important public intellectual of
the past 50 years. In an age where having a TV show allegedly makes someone a
public intellectual and where the status of the university you work at counts
for more than what you have to say, Hall’s work seems even more urgent and his
passing, somehow, even sadder.
But for Hall I wouldn’t have become an academic. There was
no space for someone like me before Hall. Discovering the field of Cultural
Studies as an undergraduate, I found validation and recognition. Suddenly, my
background and way of life as a working-class black kid mattered and was
important beyond the confines of south London. It’s taken for granted now that
culture matters, that popular culture is a site of politics, that politics
saturates everyday life, and that these things can and should be studied in a
serious manner. But despite their claims, it was not Sociology, or History, or
Economics, or even Anthropology that created this space. It was Cultural
Studies. Most intellectuals are known for contributing to our knowledge on a
particular topic or specific theme. Hall was different. He created an entire
new academic discipline, and then mentored just about every significant scholar
that came through Cultural Studies in the 1970s and 80s.
Hall did not give me my voice, but he created the conditions
under which it was possible for me to speak, be heard and to do so with an
enriched conceptual vocabulary. This is the point that pompous French
sociologists and supposedly leftist Anglo-American scholars fail to understand
when they dismissively disparage the irrelevance of “Cultural Studies” or
“multiculturalism” (sometimes used as code words for Hall himself) as mere
marginalia. He made it possible for at least two generations of black British
scholars to see ourselves as “thinkers” and not mere objects of sociological
curiosity. In so doing, Hall forever transformed white academia and
intellectual life in Britain and elsewhere.
Hall is also the figure that most makes apparent the
critical distinction between being a professional academic committed to career
advancement and an engaged intellectual who tries to make a difference through
political work. For Hall, the university was always a location but not the
destination for the production of ideas. Yet despite this, and the ever-present
temptation for self-aggrandizement and inflated self-importance, conditions
that afflict contemporary academia, Hall was incredibly generous.
I did not know Hall well but I heard him speak many times
and we met on a few occasions. I remember the second time I spoke with him. I
had recently taken up my first position as a lecturer at Brighton University. I
reintroduced myself and reminded him that I worked on sports and race among
other things. Hall gently replied, “I know who you are Ben, I like your work.”
I could have happily retired from academia then and there, in my late 20s: “Ben
Carrington, author of a few pieces, Stuart Hall knew of him.” At the time I
mentioned this story to friend of mine, Garry Whannel whose father, Paddy, had
co-authored Hall’s first book The Popular Arts. I assumed that Hall was just
being polite; I couldn’t imagine he really knew my work but I appreciated the
gesture none the less. Garry immediately corrected me: Hall would have read my
work, he wouldn’t have engaged in such false niceties, and if he liked my work
he meant it. I felt a sense of embarrassment at projecting my own shallowness
onto Hall and a renewed confidence that my own thoughts could matter too. Hall
had that affect, a point often lost in commentaries about him. His impact
should not just be measured (and remembered) in relation to his own writings
but in terms of what he has made possible in the work of countless others.
A few years ago I wrote a piece on black British
intellectuals for South Atlantic Quarterly. I emailed Hall a copy. A couple of
months later Hall replied. He apologized for the delay saying that he was
finding it hard to sit and write because of his health but that he had enjoyed
my essay and offered some thoughts on what I had written. In the midst of his
deteriorating health, he’d taken the time to respond with a lengthy email. And
not just the usual “Thanks for the email Ben, good luck with your work” but
with a measured and thoughtful engagement. I can’t think of many (any?) leading
intellectuals who would give such time to someone that they barely knew or to
someone who couldn’t do something in return for them.
My stories are not unique. I’d guess there are hundreds,
likely thousands, of scholars with similar accounts. But what I take away from
such memories, in this moment, as sadness threatens to overwhelm, is the deeply
committed, deeply humanistic, deeply caring nature of an intellectual who made
mentorship and collaboration a defining characteristic of what we should all
strive for.
Right now I can see those who have been impacted by Hall’s work
rushing to organize symposia and special issues of journals in his honor. That
is all fine. He deserves to be remembered within academic spaces. But he was
first and foremost an intellectual and an educator committed to socialist
politics. Truly wrestling with and celebrating his life’s work means
recognizing that truth. Ultimately, like the tradition of radical intellectuals
of the left to which he belongs and to my mind now stands above, Hall’s legacy
is one that implores us to always confront the political … and to do so with a
smile and a generosity of spirit.
Ben Carrington, February 10th, 2014
