| Sumario: | Some scholars specializing in racial issues attempt to explain ethnic “identity” and its awakening as the intrinsic logic that runs through Stuart Hall’s academic life. My paper disagrees with this explanation and finds three problems in it: first, it has not fully understood the applicable object of Hall’s politics of “identity,” thus it leads to the inappropriate employment of the theory; second, it does not fully recognize the involvement of Hall’s academic research, and exaggerates the effect of Hall's early experience on the development of his academic thoughts; third finally, there is a tendency to use essentialist reductionism in the attempt to find an essential Hall or the essence of Hall. I argue that one needs to comprehend three key words in order to understand the “guarantee-free” Hall, that is, “resistance,” “openness” and “articulation.” Therefore, if one wants to grasp Hall’s “identity,” one must go back to the social history and its evolving process where Hall existed.
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