Post-colonial Narratives. Edward Said and Stuart Hall’s Auto-biographic Writing

DOI: https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.n33.11

Damián Gálvez González
Orcid ID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6630-7046
Freie Universität Berlin, Deutschland
dgalvezfu@zedat.fu-berlin.de

Abstract:

This article analyzes Edward Said and Stuart Hall’s auto-biographic writing as the outcome of manifold and complex identities at issue. Tapping into Said’s personal chronicle (Out of Place: A Memoir), and Hall’s posthumous subjective account (Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands), this work examines the significance of the transcultural experience both scholars went through in building up their thinking and their political practice, which decidedly challenged the imprints of colonialism. This texts makes special emphasis on Said’s autobiographic narrative exercise, prior to his exile from the Arab world in the United States, and Hall’s double diasporic status, as a Jamaican in a British colonial setting. Both are seen as a methodological resource of the utmost value to properly study their most relevant works.

Keywords: Edward Said, autobiography, Stuart Hall, post-colonial studies.