Selected Writings on Race and Difference

Reviews / Votes

"Stuart Hall was an unparalleled thinker whose work shaped an entire generation of scholarship analyzing race and social difference in capitalist modernity. Anyone working on the cultures of diaspora, migration, colonialism, globalization and empire is indebted to his elegant thinking, political energy, and astonishing erudition. This collection, assembling Hall's myriad essays and writings on race, from the era of the Suez crisis to neoliberalism, lifts up the deserved relevance of Hall's corpus for a new generation." - Lisa Lowe, author of (The Intimacies of Four Continents) "This volume of the writings of Stuart Hall captures his steady focus on questions of racial difference. Specifically, the text orients readers to the ways in which race animates his intricate conceptualizations of liberation. Hall's capaciousness of thought, pedagogical lessons, and the anticolonial spirit behind his ideas are gifts." - Katherine McKittrick, author of (Dear Science and Other Stories) "A must-have of any Black reader's library. . . . [H]ighly recommended if you are in search of answers on how to explore oppression and articulate the depths of the Black experience." - Jordannah Elizabeth (Amsterdam News) "I have also narrated the effort it took for me to access his work to illustrate the importance of the Selected Writings now being released by Duke University Press. It is an event of profound historical significance that a new generation will be able to begin its political and theoretical education with systematic access to Hall's writing. . . . Selected Writings on Race and Difference-edited by two of the most important scholars on these questions today, Paul Gilroy and Ruth Wilson Gilmore. . . . [It] is certain to provoke and perhaps even scandalize those who have equated any discourse on race with contemporary moral pieties, whether they are for or against them."

- Asad Haider (The Point) "The collection, deftly edited by scholars Paul Gilroy and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, gathers Hall's writings on race across four decades. It's an expansive volume that tracks the development of his thinking, showing how he wrestled with the meaning of race in a range of contexts-from political organizing to cultural criticism. It's a labor of love, a trove of possibility, and a guide to understanding the limits of representation in building anti-racist politics." - Lovia Gyarkye (Dissent) "All research libraries should acquire Stuart Hall's Selected Writings on Race and Difference. Editors Gilroy and Gilmore have done a great service in bringing together Hall's works on representation in the media, the intellectual life and verve of activism, and the racialized dynamics of cultural productions. . . . Hall's work remains timely, and Selected Writings provides much-needed tools for intervening in the present moment. This collection should be of great interest to those working in cultural studies, media studies, philosophy, political theory, rhetoric, and social theory as well anyone with a commitment to learning more about the effects of racialization and racism. Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty."
- M. W. Westmoreland (Choice) "In collaborating on this remarkable collection of writings by British Marxist, sociologist, and educator Stuart Hall, editors Paul Gilroy and Ruth Wilson Gilmore have made an incredible curatorial achievement in their own right. . . . Instead of a strict content-based grouping, the editors' choice to flexibly adhere to a temporal reading captures the breadth and depth of Hall's projects and interests during various periods of his professional activity. Sacrificing (some) thematic rigidity is well worth the opportunity it offers readers to chart the evolution of Hall's theorization of the formation of race, race relations, and racism in Britain and the globe."
- Lindsey Holmes (E3W Review of Books) "It is clear that the Selected Writings on Marxism and Selected Writings on Race and Difference are two collected editions that have wide appeal to those working across the humanities, arts, and social sciences. Taken together, they appeal to readers who are not familiar with Hall's intellectual work, showing the development of his work over several decades. For those familiar with Hall, they help us to deepen our knowledge of the intellectual currents Hall engaged with, and the debates and political interventions he sought to make." - Ali Meghji (Cultural Studies)