The Fateful Triangle2017

Identities are not something we are born with, Hall argues, but are formed and transformed in the discourses of nation, ethnicity, and race. Casting his glance over the modern age, he shows how the imperial view of civilized-versus-barbarian gave way to a politics of identification that grew ever more unpredictable under late 20th century conditions of globalization. Race was long ago discredited by science yet it persists because it operates as a signifier, making meanings out of the binary representation of difference. From Renaissance to Enlightenment, stability prevailed in a West-centric order that fixed "their difference" against "our modernity," but the multi-accentual slide of signifiers also gave rise to new identities among subordinated subjects as well. Ethnicities that exclude...