Stuart Hall’s Diaspora and the Binary Structures of Cultural Identity

A look into cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s views on the Caribbean diaspora and The Black Triangle.

For Black Liberation with Prof. Jayna Brown - Spring 2020.

Hall’s 1990 essay ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’ describes two views of cultural identity and the binary structure of representation. Similar themes are discussed in his 1999 essay ‘Thinking the Diaspora: Home-Thoughts from Abroad’, but with a focus on place (The Black Triangle), overlapping culture, and culture separated by sea. Hall, being a part of the “Windrush” generation (the post-war, mid-20th-century era of West Indian migration to the UK) speaks heavily on the meaning of “home” to the diaspora.

Francis, Armet. The Black Triangle: The People of the African Diaspora. London, U.K.: Seed, 1985.

Hall, Stuart, and David Morley. “Thinking the Diaspora: Home-Thoughts from Abroad [1999].” In Essential Essays, Volume 2 : Identity and Diaspora, Vol. 2. Duke University Press, 2019.

History.com Editors. “Marcus Garvey.” HISTORY, January 26, 2021

Hsu, Hua. “Stuart Hall and the Rise of Cultural Studies.” The New Yorker, July 17, 2017

Mary Chamberlain. Narratives of Exile and Return. Memory and Narrative Series. London: Routledge, 2017.

Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora [1990].” In Selected Writings on Race and Difference. Duke University Press, 2021.