Saluting Prof Stuart Hall

[Sir X]

Saluting Prof Stuart Hall
Wednesday, February 12, 2014

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HALL… was ill for some time and had retreated from public life

MANKIND has been blessed by many brilliant thinkers, scholars and intellectuals who have pushed the boundaries of knowledge in their disciplines. The best of them have added to our knowledge by an innovation or an accretion of knowledge. Only few, the most brilliant, actually change the way a subject or a whole field of study is approached.

The late Professor Stuart Hall was such a scholar and original thinker. His field is known as cultural studies.

Few know that Prof Hall was a Jamaican, because he lived in Britain since 1951 until his death in London on Monday. Born in Kingston in 1932, he was educated at Jamaica College where, by his own description, he received a very good classical education. He won the Rhodes Scholarship and attended Oxford University, completing an MA in English.

He abandoned his PhD for political activity, becoming one of the founders of New Left Review, a Marxist academic journal, and later was active in Marxism Today.

Prof Hall made several seminal contributions from the Centre for Contemporary Studies at the University of Birmingham where he was appointed director in 1968. He was professor of sociology at Open University from 1979 to 1997.

His legacy is known as the British School of Cultural Studies or the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies of which he was one of the founders and leading exponents. His numerous books and publications range widely over racial prejudice in the media by a philosophic approach he called "encoding and decoding", diasporic identities of black migrants contending with multiple cultures, modernity, popular arts and cultural identity, race and ethnicity. He also wrote on more overtly political topics such as policing, Marxism and Thatcherism.

His central concern and approach start from the premise that culture is site and space for human action. People are simultaneously producers and consumers of culture, and in so doing culture is the context in which social relations of power, consent and coercion are established, mediated and changed. Social and political issues are contested and resolved through culture.

His thinking may seem esoteric, but we must recall that many of the foundational ideas of our culture and today's society were, at first, disparaged as too abstract and too radical. All new ideas go the route of being too different to be quickly appreciated, but some later become core methodologies of analysis.

In 2012, as part of the events to mark the Diamond Jubilee of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, 60 persons were selected to be honoured. Two were Jamaicans, one of whom was Professor Stuart Hall. We are pleased that his life and work were celebrated by the Centre for Caribbean Thought of the University of the West Indies at a major conference, and publication of a book of the conference papers available as Caribbean Reasoning: Culture, Politics, Race and Diaspora. The Thought of Stuart Hall.

As a society, we do not give as much attention to our scholars as we do to our entertainers and athletes. Today, we invite all Jamaicans to join us recognising Prof Stuart Hall, a distinguished Jamaican who delivered to the world a genre of cultural studies from the launch pad of Jamaica where his early intellectual promise was nurtured.

[Sir X]

Jamaica: 100 years of black consciousness advocacy

Louis MOYSTON

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

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John Brown Russwurm

JAMAICA has had a rich history of creative resistance during slavery. Similarly, during the post-slavery era, many Jamaicans have played pioneering roles in the development and the advancement of the black consciousness idea and movement. This article seizes the opportunity of black history celebration to open a window into stories of some Jamaicans who have made their mark on the idea and movement. The article focuses on those to whom very little attention has been paid, such as John Brown Russwurm, Dr T E S Scholes and Una Marson. It is important to pay special attention to the quality of their contribution in order to ask, how well have we built on what they started? It is important for us to explore how some of these ideas may awaken the "years of lethargy" among black people in Jamaica.

Before and after 1776, Jamaica had an active trade relationship with North America. Port Antonio was one of those active trading ports; it was the setting in which John Brown Russwurm's father, a white American businessman, lived. Winston James (2010) in The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm, 1799 to 1851, writes about his birth to a black woman and his journey to the USA, with his father, where he attended school. The writer notes that, at the time of his graduation from Bowdoin College, he may have been the earliest or one of the earliest blacks to graduate from a tertiary institution in America. James notes that it was during his years in college that he began writing on black struggles. Inspired by the Haitian Revolution and the black Republic, he made it his duty to defend the young black regime against propaganda depicting the Haitian people as savages. He moved to New York after graduation. There he developed and published his ideas instilling greatness in racial pride and the back-to-Africa message. He emerged during the earlier period before another early pan-Africanist and back-to-Africa advocate Edward Wilmot Blyden (1823-1912).

Russwurm met Samuel Cornish, a fellow African-American, in New York during the 1820s. They established Freedom's Journal, the first newspaper to be owned and operated by Africans in the USA. According to James, the editors announced in their opening statement if the Journal that "we wish to plead our own cause, for too long have others spoken for us". Russwurm saw the paper as an "organising force" among unorganised blacks in America, aiming to "awaken African-Americans from the lethargy years". His writings advocated the role of family and the cultivation and growth of industry among blacks by way of education and training. He saw education as that driving force towards higher achievements in science. He guided black people in America along the path of race consciousness through which they could become useful and responsible citizens. He became disillusioned with America and went to live in Liberia, where he was established as a governor of that new Republic. A few years after his death, in 1851, and in one of the neighbouring parishes to Portland, the Paul Bogle movement advanced the black consciousness struggles in another context at Morant Bay, St Thomas.

During the 1850s the systematic programme of land deprivation among the black masses continued; the setting in St Thomas and Jamaica was characterised by high taxation, high unemployment, high prices for basic food stuff, and severe and oppressive injustice. Thee clarion call for "skin for skin", black unity was condensed into an assault against the agents of the planter/colonial power relations in that parish. This violent insurgency of 1865 may have inspired a new thrust of black consciousness among a few emerging black intellectuals: Dr Robert Love (a Bahamian who resided in Jamaica) and Dr T E S Scholes. Both thinkers noted the role of the colonial/planter society and its systematic deprivation of the black masses' access to land. They saw this as a deliberate strategy to keep blacks and the country underdeveloped. Gordon K Lewis (1968) in The Growth of the Modern West Indies, describes Dr Love as the publisher of the old Jamaican Advocate newspaper calling for black representation in the Legislative Council, as well as, his advocacy of black consciousness. According to the writer, he lived in Haiti, where he encountered 'negritude' and black political representation. In the book, The Jamaican People 1880-1902 Race, Class and Social Control, Patrick Bryan (2000) describes Dr Love, an Anglican pastor, as a secular-pragmatist; and Dr Scholes, a Baptist, as another secular intellectual, and that they expressed their concerns about the land for the ex-slaves of Jamaica. Bryan writes that Scholes placed the question of land tenure in the broader context of the imperial system of the appropriation of "native resources", and that it was a conspiracy by the British Empire to systematically deprive the black masses access to land in Jamaica. Noting the endless sources of labourers among the black masses, Bryan writes that Scholes spoke about the high rate of taxation, land hunger, and the ignorance of scientific agriculture as hindrances to the development of the black masses and the country. Scholes was a significant Jamaican scholar; his major works are: Sugar in the West Indies and The British Empire and Alliances. This tradition, especially the role of spirituality and religion in politics, continued at the level of the role of revivalist preacher, such as Alexander Bedward, his native Baptist tradition rooted in the race thinking of Paul Bogle.

Marcus Garvey, the most popular pan-Africanist, whose movement excelled in the USA, inherited the rich legacy from Bogle to Love and Scholes, among others. After Garvey was Leonard P Howell, who showed the black masses that there was no hope in the colonial/planter Jamaican society, called for a rejection of the dominant European values and the wrong doctrine advanced by the Church. He inspired a new awareness among that black lower class that in part ushered a new era of black unity, setting the foundation for the emergence of the powerful trade union movement. Una Marson emerged during the rise of this movement. She was an early pan-Africanist and one of the earliest black feminists of international proportion during the 1930s. She lived in England where she worked with the likes of other pan-Africanist such as George Padmore, Jomo Kenyatta, and C L R James among others. She was also secretary to His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie, whom she accompanied to the League of Nations conference where the Emperor submitted his case on the Italian aggression and occupation of Ethiopia.

These persons have set the standard. It is important that we take note of their worth and refine and expand on their works. They are important sites for historical excavation by young scholars.

Louis E A Moyston


thearchives01@yahoo.com

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[Sir X]

EDITORIAL - Rediscovering Stuart Hall
Published: Wednesday | February 12, 2014 0 Comments
That not much has been made in Jamaica of the death this week of Stuart Hall should not, maybe, be surprising. After all, Professor Hall was 82 and had not lived here for 63 years.

But our ignorance of Stuart Hall, at all levels of society, perhaps says more of national inattention to ideas and the people who generate them - especially the big ones. For as a thinker, Professor Hall would, in our view, be the equivalent to the likes of Usain Bolt.

Significantly, Stuart Hall was born in Jamaica, attended Jamaica College, and left here in 1951, aged 19, as a Rhodes Scholar to study English at Oxford. He was a member of the Windrush Generation.

His early experiences in colonial Jamaica would have helped to shape the man who emerged as the UK's foremost cultural theorist, dubbed the 'godfather of multiculturalism' in Britain, and an influential critic of the country's politics.

Indeed, Stuart Hall, as a man of the Left, but not a slavish follower of any tendency, was in 1958 the founding editor of New Left Review, a magazine devoted to the critique of politics, economics and culture.

But his broader recognition began in 1964 when, with a handful of other intellectuals, he helped found the Centre of Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, becoming its first research fellow, and four years later, its director for eight years.

popular culture, politics and power

It was a relatively new idea to take popular culture seriously and to follow its relationship with politics and power. As the Guardian newspaper noted, when Stuart Hall started: "Cultural studies was then a minority pursuit: half a century on, it is everywhere, generating a wealth of significant work even if, in its institutionalised form, it can include intellectual positions that Hall would never endorse."

Professor Hall's next move was to be professor of sociology at Britain's Open University for the next two decades, while being a major voice on the big issues of day relating to British politics, race and culture. Indeed, he is credited with coining the phrase 'Thatcherism' to describe the politics, and its likely effect, on the policies of Margaret Thatcher, ahead of her election as Britain's prime minister in 1979.

In some respects, Professor Hall's work has similarities with that of a Jamaica-based contemporary, the late Rex Nettleford. Both had wide interests and a capacity not to make enemies, even of those with whom they had sharp intellectual differences.

Jamaica's contemporary cultural thinkers/ researchers such as Donna Hope and Carolyn Cooper would acknowledge a thread between their own efforts and those of Professor Hall. Even though he operated from the other side of the Atlantic, he would have helped to expand their space by his efforts that helped to deepen the legitimacy of such intellectual pursuits.

In any event, while he did not live in Jamaica, Professor Hall, the public intellectual, was not divorced, or removed, from Jamaica. He was often a contributor on global affairs to the radio show 'The Breakfast Club'.

Yet, this intellectual treasure had neither popular nor official embrace in Jamaica. Maybe Professor Hall's old school can begin to change that by bringing attention to him and others of the type who passed through its halls. Nor is it too late for the Government to pay attention.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.

[Don1]

EDITORIAL - Rediscovering Stuart Hall
Published: Wednesday | February 12, 2014 0 Comments
That not much has been made in Jamaica of the death this week of Stuart Hall should not, maybe, be surprising. After all, Professor Hall was 82 and had not lived here for 63 years.

But our ignorance of Stuart Hall, at all levels of society, perhaps says more of national inattention to ideas and the people who generate them - especially the big ones. For as a thinker, Professor Hall would, in our view, be the equivalent to the likes of Usain Bolt.

Significantly, Stuart Hall was born in Jamaica, attended Jamaica College, and left here in 1951, aged 19, as a Rhodes Scholar to study English at Oxford. He was a member of the Windrush Generation.

His early experiences in colonial Jamaica would have helped to shape the man who emerged as the UK's foremost cultural theorist, dubbed the 'godfather of multiculturalism' in Britain, and an influential critic of the country's politics.

Indeed, Stuart Hall, as a man of the Left, but not a slavish follower of any tendency, was in 1958 the founding editor of New Left Review, a magazine devoted to the critique of politics, economics and culture.

But his broader recognition began in 1964 when, with a handful of other intellectuals, he helped found the Centre of Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, becoming its first research fellow, and four years later, its director for eight years.

popular culture, politics and power

It was a relatively new idea to take popular culture seriously and to follow its relationship with politics and power. As the Guardian newspaper noted, when Stuart Hall started: "Cultural studies was then a minority pursuit: half a century on, it is everywhere, generating a wealth of significant work even if, in its institutionalised form, it can include intellectual positions that Hall would never endorse."

Professor Hall's next move was to be professor of sociology at Britain's Open University for the next two decades, while being a major voice on the big issues of day relating to British politics, race and culture. Indeed, he is credited with coining the phrase 'Thatcherism' to describe the politics, and its likely effect, on the policies of Margaret Thatcher, ahead of her election as Britain's prime minister in 1979.

In some respects, Professor Hall's work has similarities with that of a Jamaica-based contemporary, the late Rex Nettleford. Both had wide interests and a capacity not to make enemies, even of those with whom they had sharp intellectual differences.

Jamaica's contemporary cultural thinkers/ researchers such as Donna Hope and Carolyn Cooper would acknowledge a thread between their own efforts and those of Professor Hall. Even though he operated from the other side of the Atlantic, he would have helped to expand their space by his efforts that helped to deepen the legitimacy of such intellectual pursuits.

In any event, while he did not live in Jamaica, Professor Hall, the public intellectual, was not divorced, or removed, from Jamaica. He was often a contributor on global affairs to the radio show 'The Breakfast Club'.

Yet, this intellectual treasure had neither popular nor official embrace in Jamaica. Maybe Professor Hall's old school can begin to change that by bringing attention to him and others of the type who passed through its halls. Nor is it too late for the Government to pay attention.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.

Miggle Passage tuh di Whirl!!!!

[Sir X]

Yet, this intellectual treasure had neither popular nor official embrace in Jamaica. Maybe Professor Hall's old school can begin to change that by bringing attention to him and others of the type who passed through its halls. Nor is it too late for the Government to pay attention.


I would describe his influence as a quiet Marcus Garvey.

[Don1]

Yet, this intellectual treasure had neither popular nor official embrace in Jamaica. Maybe Professor Hall's old school can begin to change that by bringing attention to him and others of the type who passed through its halls. Nor is it too late for the Government to pay attention.


I would describe his influence as a quiet Marcus Garvey.

Hmmmmm.... Nope... Not in Marcus' category.. he was an academic

But he was a great Miggle Passage Soldier... Marcus was the Miggle Passage Field Marshal

[Sir X]

Thus quiet.