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claire_michelle18's review against another edition
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
This was an engrossing read, Stuart Hall reflects on his early life in Jamaica and his move to England as a young man. His reflections on colonialism, identity and the foundations of his intellectual career are fascinating - a vital story of the end of empire and the foundations of Black British consciousness.
amalgamemnon's review against another edition
5.0
This is a little dense and academic in places, but Hall's brilliant insight into the complexities of racial identity and belonging in (post)colonial Britain makes it well worth it. I was surprised by the time covered - basically, Hall's life up until he moved to Birmingham to join the Centre for Cultural Studies in 1964 - but there are plenty of issues covered and it doesn't feel lacking. What a shame we will not get to read a second volume that continues from there.
elisita's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
2.75
jhatrick's review against another edition
5.0
This book changed my life. By page 60 I was ready to devote sermons to it.
jacob_wren's review against another edition
5.0
Stuart Hall writes:
"Contrary to common-sense understanding, the transformations of self-identity are not just a personal matter. Historical shifts out there provide the social conditions of existence of personal and psychic change in here. What mattered was how I positioned myself on the other side - or positioned myself to catch the other side: how I was, involuntarily, hailed by and interpellated into a broader social discourse. Only by discovering this did I begin to understand that what black identity involved was a social, political, historical and symbolic event, not just a personal, and certainly not simply a genetic, one.
From this I came to understand that identity is not a set of fixed attributes, the unchanging essence of the inner self, but a constantly shifting process of positioning. We tend to think of identity as taking us back to our roots, the part of us which remains essentially the same across time. In fact identity is always a never-completed process of becoming - a process of shifting identifications, rather than a singular, complete, finished state of being."
"Contrary to common-sense understanding, the transformations of self-identity are not just a personal matter. Historical shifts out there provide the social conditions of existence of personal and psychic change in here. What mattered was how I positioned myself on the other side - or positioned myself to catch the other side: how I was, involuntarily, hailed by and interpellated into a broader social discourse. Only by discovering this did I begin to understand that what black identity involved was a social, political, historical and symbolic event, not just a personal, and certainly not simply a genetic, one.
From this I came to understand that identity is not a set of fixed attributes, the unchanging essence of the inner self, but a constantly shifting process of positioning. We tend to think of identity as taking us back to our roots, the part of us which remains essentially the same across time. In fact identity is always a never-completed process of becoming - a process of shifting identifications, rather than a singular, complete, finished state of being."
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