The very notion of Great Britain's 'greatness' is bound up with empire. Euro-scepticism and Little Englander nationalism could hardly survive if people understood whose sugar flowed through English blood and rotted English teeth.
Stuart HallRead
I thought I might find the real me in Oxford. Civil rights made me accept being a black intellectual. There was no such thing before, but then it was something. So I became one.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the journey of self-discovery and the influence of civil rights on personal identity.
Stuart Hall's reflection conveys how his experiences in Oxford and the civil rights movement allowed him to embrace and define his identity as a black intellectual. This transformation highlights the importance of social movements in shaping personal and collective identities, asserting that one’s understanding of self can be significantly influenced by broader socio-political contexts.
Themes
IdentityCivil RightsIntellectualSelf-DiscoveryOxford
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on identity politics, I quoted Stuart Hall to illustrate the impact of civil rights on individual identity.
More from Stuart Hall
All quotes →People have to have a language to speak about where they are and what other possible futures are available to them.
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The question of hegemony is always the question of a new cultural order.
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I'm the blackest member of my family. You know, these mixed families produce children of all colors, and in Jamaica, the question of exactly what shade you were, in colonial Jamaica, that was the most important question. Because you could read off class and education and status from that. I was aware and conscious of that from the very beginning.
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The nature of power in the modern world is that it is also constructed in relation to political, moral, intellectual, cultural, ideological, sexual questions.
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