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Week 8 questions (Glenn)

As always, it was a real pleasure to read Stuart Hall's elegant, measured prose this week. 

Reading New Ethnicities, I was struck by Hall's willingness to own his mistakes—"I got the mode of address wrong too!"  (448, 449)—which underlines his desire to engage in political discourse (in this case, the 'politics of criticism') in a personable manner that often escapes more rigid, dogmatic theorists. 

My first question relates to this observation and asks: 

Have you read any other theorists who provide the same intimate self-reflectiveness that Hall offers his readers?  

a. Does humility matter in academia? If so, why? 

My second question is inspired by the final pages of Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and asks: 

How can Gramsci's writing on the contradictory nature of subordinated ideologies help us understand how, and why, racism still endures in organizations that "in the abstract, ought to be dedicated to anti-racist position" (439) such as trade unions? 

For a recent example of trade union discrimination in nearby Illinois, see here: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/9/7/21426285/nation-fights-systemic-racism-report-finds-pattern-exclusion-illinois-trade-unions 

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