Research On Stuart Hall's Politics Of Difference

One consistent idea behind Hall's politics of difference is focusing on the ideology and its representations,emphasizing that identity is fundamental to make diversity meaningful.Therefore,the politics of diversity is to discuss cultural identity issues based on the analysis of racial “diversity” and national “diversity” prevalent in the process of globalization and modernization,a reflection on identity under the new level of diversity mode.Hall analyzed that different diversity shaped different cultural identities.In the analysis of “the west and the rest”,Hall pointed out that there was inequality resulted from cultural diversity in the relations between the western world and other worlds,namely,the western world held the right to say,used its own culture as a standard to measure the cultures of “the other worlds” and to define the cultural identities of “the others”.In the analysis of modernity and tradition,Hall pointed out that modernity meant continuous moving forward and ever-changing,while tradition meant remaining unchanged.National culture,as the key to define identity,emerged and came into being with the modern countries.On one hand,it was the product of the continuous development of modernity,but on the other hand it must cast back the tradition,and therefore the dislocation of national cultural identity occurred.In the analysis of diversity between globality and locality,Hall argued that globalization brought about the homogenization of culture and at the same time strengthened local characteristics,leading to the production of various possibilities and new locations recognised of the controversy and dislocation of the national culture center and the “closed” identity,thus less fixed,more diversified and various identities.Since these cultural differences lead to uncertainly about the identity of the subject,resulting in power inequality,how to solve these problems? Hall further pointed out how to achieve cultural identity in multicultural countries with the growing development of globalization and modernity and the inevitable appearance of multicultural countries.Hall believed that the issue of subject was the key to identity,and discussed the issue of cultural identity by tracing three main subjectivity theories of western philosophy: the enlightenment subject,the sociological subject and the postmodern subject.Hall pointed out that a subject only existed in the interrelationship of the subjects and in the mutual recognition and respect between the subjects,and that cultural identity also took shape and came into being in the interrelationship of the subjects.Therefore,Hall emphasized the diversity construction of cultural identity,stating that cultural identity was constructed by “others”.Groups of diversity could be constructed through different “others”,and inside the groups one would see different identity performances due to the existence of diversity.