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David Scott: The Life and Work of Stuart Hall
September 8, 2016 @ 4:30 pm - 6:30 pm
ARC Seminar: David Scott: The Life and Work of Stuart Hall
This presentation will explore the relevance of Stuart Hall’s Jamaica years for understanding his subsequent intellectual trajectory. The presentation will explore his familial context as well as the cultural-political context of the early years of decolonization.
My work, especially since Refashioning Futures (1999) and Conscripts of Modernity (2004), has been concerned with the reconceptualization of the way we think the story of the colonial past for the postcolonial present. This has involved a variety of kinds of inquiry (taking the Caribbean as my principal “field” of engagement), into tradition and generations, dialogue and criticism, self-determination and sovereignty, tragedy and temporality, and transitional justice and liberalism. I’ve recently completed a book called Stuart Hall’s Voice: Intimations of an Ethics of Receptive Generosity (based on lectures I gave at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, in November-December 2013), and am now working on a biography of Stuart Hall. I am also working on a study of the question of reparations for the historical injustice of New World slavery. I continue to edit Small Axe, and direct the Small Axe Project, which is involved in a number of special initiatives around visual, translation, literary, and historiographical issues.