Hall & du Gay - Questions of Cultural Identity
Hall, S., & P. du Gay (Eds.) (1996). Questions of Cultural Identity. London: Sage. ISBN: 978-0-8039-7883-6
This celebrated collection, now in its 12th reprint (published in 2015), examines why questions of cultural identity have acquired increasing visibility since the early 1990s. It brings together contributions from different fields of research in the social sciences, cultural studies, and the humanities and includes essays by Stuart Hall, Zygmunt Bauman, Marilyn Strathern, Homi K. Bhabha, Kevin Robins, Lawrence Grossberg, Simon Frith, Nikolas Rose, Paul Du Gay, and James Donald. The aim of these essays was to ask crucial questions and position the field so that the discussion could move forward. Although the editors emphasised that the volume did not lay claim to any kind of completeness or definitiveness, the collection has proved to offer a wide-ranging exploration of the issues connected to the notion of identity that has retained its relevance to this day. Studying the content of this book will still provide an initial understanding of the reasons why the question of identity is so compelling and problematic in the contemporary context.
The collection also features the celebrated essay ‘Who needs identity?’ by Stuart Hall, which outlines the reasons why he thought the questions of identity were so compelling and yet so problematic at the time of writing. However, this early attempt to grapple with the subject matter has become one of the central reference points in contemporary discussions of identity.
Hall & du Gay “Questions of Cultural Identity”