The Editors of African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal (Routledge) announce a Call for Papers  on “Hybridizing and Decolonizing the Metropole: Stuart Hall, Caribbean Routes and Diasporic Identity.” Focusing on theme of hybridizing the metropole, Caribbean routes and diasporic identity, the Guest Editors seek contributions that illuminate the ways in which Stuart Hall made fundamental contributions to the study of politics, popular culture, media, race, diaspora, culture, postcolonialism and related fields since his arrival in the metropole.

Three months at Oxford persuaded me that it was not my home… I’m not English and I never will be. The life I have lived is one of partial displacement. I came to England as a means of escape, and it was a failure.

Stuart Hall, the Guardian, 2012

Argument

The Editors of African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal (Routledge) announce a Call for Papers  on “Hybridizing and Decolonizing the Metropole: Stuart Hall, Caribbean Routes and Diasporic Identity.”

At the end of the 19^th century and the beginning decades of the 20^th century, colonial and postcolonial migrants from Jamaica, Martinique, Guadeloupe and Antigua and elsewhere in the Caribbean sailed in the reverse directions of the ‘middle passage’ with all their apprehensions and arrived in the metropole particularly in London, Paris and elsewhere in the metropole to create ‘new possibilities for those whom they encountered and decolonizing the world about them (Schwartz, 2003). Those who made the journey to the metropole, as Schwartz noted, “…were not without history, not just immigrants. In their speech, in their dedication to a certain styling of self, in their music -  let along in their formal artifacts of literary culture – they brought their history with them” to metropole.  As Stuart Hall (1991:48-49) memorably remind us that, “people like me who came to England in the 1950s have been there for centuries; symbolically we have been there for centuries. I was coming home at the bottom of the English cup tea. I am the sweet tooth, the sugar plantation that rotted generations of English children’s teeth. There are thousands of others besides me that are you know, the cup of tea itself. Because they don’t grow it in Lancashire, you know … There is no English history without the other history”

The movements of colonial and postcolonial Caribbean migration forward and backwards across the Black Atlantic represented a specific history of crossing from a diverse geographical sites as well as the specific politics shaped by the realities of the colony and metropole, the decolonization process itself as well as the migrant-based demographic and cultural shifts which brought into sharp focus notions of home, belonging, diaspora, identity, nationality and historical memory.

Focusing on theme of hybridizing the metropole, Caribbean routes and diasporic identity, the Guest Editors seek contributions that illuminate the ways in which Stuart Hall made fundamental contributions to the study of politics, popular culture, media, race, diaspora, culture, postcolonialsim and related fields since his arrival in the metropole.  In particular, contributors are encouraged to explore the full dimension of Start Hall’s work as well as his political engagement as a public intellectual. We also seek contributions that examine the broad impact of Stuart Hall in the field of African and Black Diaspora Studies as well as African American Studies, Caribbean Studies and related fields.

Proposed papers should address one of the following thematic clusters.

• Stuart Hall: Encountering the Metropole
• Stuart Hall: The Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies
• Stuart Hall: Diaspora and Cultural Hybridity
• Stuart Hall: Public Sphere and Discursive Space
• Stuart Hall: The Politics of Representation and Ideology
• Stuart Hall: The Politics of Race and Identity
• Stuart Hall : Post-colonialism and its aftermath
• Stuart Hall: The Politics of Knowledge and Emancipatory Politics

Authors are encouraged to submit provocative original writing (conceptual, empirical or theoretical) that emphasize the work of Stuart Hall in different transnational settings and diasporic routes.

Submission guidelines

Abstracts should be 400‐500 words in length. Authors should send their material with the abstract attached as a Word document. Please be sure to include the following: full name, university affiliation, contact information (e‐mail and mailing address) and the title of your abstract to the Guest Editors:

• Dr. Fassil Demissie, DePaul University, fdemissi@depaul.edu
• Dr. Sarah Fila-Bakabadio, University of Cergy-Pontoise (Paris), bakabadio@hotmail.com

Deadlines: Submission of Abstracts December 1, 2015

Accepted proposals will be notified by January 30, 2016

Final paper must be submitted by July 30, 2016