Stuart Hall

Abstract

New paradigms in the study of culture is the text of the Lectio Magistralis Stuart M. Hall delivered on June 6, 2008 on the occasion of  the honorary degree conferred upon him by the University of Naples «L’Orientale». The text concentrates on the early stages of the construction of the theoretical model at the basis of Cultural Studies. It discusses the epistemological break brought about by its interdisciplinary method of analysis and illustrates the complex articulation of its concept of culture.

Stuart M. Hall (Kingston, February, 3, 1932 – London, February, 10, 2014), a great British thinker of Jamaican origin, was the initiator of the interdisciplinary and intercultural area of Cultural Studies which since 1964 (when the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was founded at the University of Birmingham) reached planetary diffusion, and created very deep innovation in the field of the humanities. He directed the Birmingham Centre until 1979. Afterwords he became Professor of Sociology at the Open University. Among his most influencial works The popular arts (1964, with P. Whannel) and many collective volumes he inspired and edited (Resistence through rituals (1975), Policing the crisis (1978), Formations of modernity (1992), Questions of cultural identity (1996), Representation. Cultural representations and signifying practices (1997). His long-life interest for the visual arts was crowned by the foundation (in 2007) of Rivington Place, a space for the discussion and exhibition of diasporic arts in contemporary London.