The Stuart Hall ProjectSignifying Diaspora

At the panel discussion “The Black Intellectual in the African Diaspora: The Example of Stuart Hall,” Joan Anim-Addo presented these remarks.

John Akomfrah’s pioneering The Stuart Hall Project (2013) skillfully opens up for another generation the very important contribution that the black intellectual Stuart Hall (1932–2014) has made to contemporary critical discourse. It is certain that The Stuart Hall Project is of global importance, not the least for the crucial access that the documentary affords to Hall’s important legacy. In other words, I am emphasizing, firstly, that the film format will greatly assist the process allowing Hall’s legacy to be widely understood throughout the diaspora and this can only be applauded. Secondly, given that film circulates differently to books, Akomfrah’s documentary effectively creates a new audience for Hall’s intellectual project. At the same time, central to my acknowledgment of the significance of Akomfrah’s documentary is an understanding that The Stuart Hall Project is vital for audiences in the UK, particularly the next generation, who remain starved of representations of black UK intellectuals of such far-reaching influence, both within the academy and in the wider society.

As a scholar of African descent, myself, within the UK’s university system, the “next generation” is of particular concern. Statistically, such scholars represent a minuscule proportion of the profession and this is further exacerbated by gender. Two years before Akomfrah’s The Stuart Hall Project, the headline, “14,000 British professors – but only 50 are black,” in The Guardian (27 May 2011) sent a few ripples, if not through the nation, then at least through a few corridors in the UK’s ivory tower. It seems that perhaps the academy had not noticed its black underrepresentation. Noticeably, though—this being the UK—there is no rush to address the issue. While the headlines continue with little change, updated information concerning this and other matters of race is offered from time to time by the Runnymede Trust, “the UK’s leading independent race equality think tank.”¹ As the race debate continues intermittently in the wider society, university students—including black students who had begun to be let into higher education in (comparatively) greater numbers—have not only noticed the absence of black academics and curricular content, but are also speaking out against this situation. The “Why isn’t my professor black?” reported in the Times Higher Education (21 May 2015) attests to a critical moment of voicing of dissent and to black students weighing their hefty tuition fees against the white reality of academic life in the UK.²

In adding my considerable appreciation of Akomfrah’s diligent and caring portrayal of Hall, therefore, I must foreground specifically the documentary’s impact on the next generation given that the underrepresentation of black intellectuals in the UK’s academy remains problematic. In light of this and without attempting to fix a chronology of interest, I would like to suggest that it is useful to consider the generation of particular concern as the Why-isn’t-my-professor-black generation. In this group, a discernible body becomes evident, one that is not only yearning for the kind of equality and justice that remains due, but is insistent that equality and justice be achieved now. Additionally, here is a generation brought up on the media in ways that Hall’s own pioneering work surely anticipated. More specifically, Stuart Hall’s cultural studies work seems so pertinent to this moment with the burgeoning of social media and its prominent place within everyday lives, especially the lives of young people. All of which seem to link, also, to Akomfrah’s own speaking out as film.

Indeed, such a turn on the part of black individuals and groups chimes with the broader change of mood announcing a new age in Britain that Hall, himself, recognized and addressed in his lifetime’s project, as Akomfrah’s film reflectively shows. Such a project might alternatively be referred to as the black intellectual’s work, which as experience attests, all too often needs to be accomplished in the most difficult and...