Stuart Hall, image by Dawoud Bey.
On the 8th April, 2013, Margret Thatcher died.
The world’s media mourned. World leaders made statements about how tragic the
loss, how she had fought for liberty and freedom, how strong she was, how she
was a symbol for women’s rights… But she was an extremely controversial figure.
She was infamous to many, and signalled a change in politics, the like of
which, say some, had not been seen since Winston Churchill. On the streets of the United Kingdom parties
were held, people shouting that at last, this woman who had caused so much
suffering to so many had died… I have not seen one balanced report of this in
the mainstream news.
Stuart Hall is one of the reasons I am here today. I needed
to bring my children into work on more than one occasion last week… Stuart Hall has long been a champion of women’s
rights in the workplace and in education. His directorship of the Open
University for many years has enabled not only women, but many people access to
higher education. People that may not otherwise have been able to further their
knowledge or careers. He is one of the people that has changed the way in which
women and mothers are viewed in the workplace.
Without getting into the overt politics of these cases in
point, I cannot think of a more fitting time to bring in John Akomfrah’s “The Unfinished
Conversation”. This film is a poetic story of a man that lived through the time
when Margret Thatcher was in power as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He
spoke of the empowerment of people, of the media and how it presented the world
to its viewers. He spoke about its potential power and the interpretation of
those images, televisual and documented, through mainstream and alternative
media, through the arts and through political activism. He spoke about the
voice of minority groups and individuals and how this could be made stronger.
His work commented on institutional racism and reasons for social unrest. He
spoke about the need for theory to be put into practice. I don’t have enough
time to do justice to his life’s work now, but hope to give you a flavour of
some of this work. He is now failing in health, so I feel it is the moment to
celebrate and discuss his work, so that the unfinished conversation can go on
and make new conversations that help us to change his world, our world…
Who is Stuart
Hall?
A great deal of Stuart Hall’s thinking was inspired by his own
life experience. Described as
teacher, activist and writer, Stuart Hall’s thinking has been attributed (by
himself as well as others in the field) and formulated largely from his own
personal experiences as a child, growing up in Jamaica, being of dual heritage,
and subsequently whilst he spent time at Oxford University.
A Rhodes
scholar, Hall has never considered himself to be the authority on the subject
of culture, and believes in the relativity of the discussion of culture as to
the context in which it is being discussed. Hence possibly the title “The
Unfinished Conversation”, hence the nature of the debate that is being put
forward today vis a vis his thinking and practice. Indeed, he believes that
theory is useless unless used and put into a practical and accessible debate
and more importantly, political intervention. It explains why he consistently wrote in
collaboration with other theorists – A negotiation, a discussion…
Main terms that may be associated
with Hall’s writing:
Dominant structures: Mainstream media – institutions
(police, gvmt bodies etc) – ruling stratas of society
The concept of power to the people: that people are highly media literate and are
able if given the tools, to decode and recode the messages that they are being
given by those dominant structures – that they can question them and discuss
them, that they can change them
Coersive messaging: so that there are messages given to
us that are designed to persuade us of their integrity. That this is done
through subtle representation of certain groups of people and individuals so
that they appear in the light that they wish… That it is suggested that these
messages are logical and normal, that they are common sense… The black guy
running down the street must be a criminal running from a crime scene.. this is
made to seem logical to us as an audience based on crime “figures”. Of course
these figures bear no relation to other factors that might affect a certain
area, social/political group. They play on our fears, they layer and manipulate
information so that we might believe what we are seeing as fact. This thinking
is also linked to Hall’s commentary throughout the term of Margret Thatcher as
prime minister.
Identity – who are we? Simply
Asian/women/gay/straight/old/young… for example, or a mixture of these
things…..
Common-sense knowledge is based on the theory
that we are led to believe that certain things are accepted norms, for example
that one uses a knife and fork to eat dinner, when this is simply a practise
that we use in the culture in which we live. Or that it is normal, logical and
common knowledge that we should uphold Christian values, when perhaps we
actually have other beliefs that may contradict this.
(“common-sense” – Gramsci – “A mode of
conformist thinking, signalling consent to the dominant social order”)
Theory into Practice
Hall
believes that theory should be an attempt to “bend language” in order to
question common-sense knowledge, rather than a retreat into private languages
ie putting theory to work.. to make it useful in our everyday lives, which
gives it meaning.
Hall’s
belief is in the power to change –
that though dominant cultural structures aim to manipulate and coerce, that the
reader/viewer of the media, has the ultimate power to decode messages and
recode them. This in turn potentially allows significant cultural intervention
on the part of the viewer/reader, making them producers of their own
narratives. So, we see an image, based on our own experience we make sense of
it, and that this then gives us the potential power to reinterpret and
communicate our own understanding of that message within our own personal
context.
Eg and
simply put, A pregnant artist sees a
film about the death of a child. She reads it with her unborn child in mind,
added to her own experiences as a child, and things she has observed throughout
her own life to this point. So, she makes sense of the film. It may have
touched her in a way so as to inspire her to tell someone about the story. That
communication is her reading of the points that were important to her based on
her own experience. If she is an artist, she may go through a process of
communicating through her artform. This process is called recoding!
Hall also rejects
the condescension of “ordinary folk” as manipulable. He believes that we are
all highly literate in this way.. That we have the power to question the things
we see and experience.
He uses the Idea
also that audiences do not discover meaning, but generate meaning
All of this
theory was extremely important in the world of popular culture, as:
1968: the
first year of televised war… Vietnam, protest/violence and riots – the media
communicating to our living rooms events going on all over the world. So for
him to say that we could and should question these representations was really
crucial. It was in this year that he took over as Director of the Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham.
You might
say that this is easier said than done. How do we know truth from lie, fact
from fiction. Referring back to where we started, if unaware of the reign of
Margret Thatcher, one might be forgiven for thinking that we are a united
world, mourning the death of a great leader. Not the case! So, where does this
leave Hall’s theory? He believes that there are certain representations in the
media that lead us to believe that they are reality, not a representation of someone’s
reality. In this way, theory, when put in a way that can be readily understood
can give power to the individual: The mere thought that the dog on the screen
can bark but it cannot bite, allows us to realise that what we see is an
interpretation of a fact, not the fact itself. Once understood, we can begin to
question that “reality” that we are being presented with in so many different
contexts.
The idea
that the media-maker “encodes” so presents a thought or idea in a particular
way that may be designed to convince us, gives the media maker a great deal of
power. For example, party politics is designed to convince us of the particular
party’s thought and ideology. We are persuaded! But don’t we all question this
from time to time? In the end, Hall has a point, we can “decode” or interpret
the information we are being given how we wish. But we must be aware of the
context from which it comes… that the conservative party might say one thing in
a way as to make themselves look good, the labour party could say the same
thing in a different way to make themselves look good!
So, the
relationship is quite a delicate one, whereby the opportunity to be manipulated
or coerced into a particular way of thinking is possible, but not evident.
It is very
difficult to put Hall’s theory in a few minutes, his wealth of work is immense.
I can only give you a few of the ideas that he has expressed throughout the
years. I hope that this has helped, and that seeing the film will put his life
and work into context. In showing this
work, New Art Exchange has offered the opportunity for artists and audiences
alike to view and review some of these topics that remain relevant to us in our
work and our lives. If you go not know his work, I invite you to engage,
because I believe that his life has been a process of opening doors that have
been closed to the vast majority. Hall has always argued against the
institutionalisation of cultural theories. In making the film, John Akomfrah,
once again, offers us the chance to put theory into practice, into galleries
and back into the public arena, to make this subject matter a part of our lives
and change the world henceforth.
- Sooree Pillay
