Sea Change: Historicizing the Scholarly Study of Black British Writing

  • R. Victoria Arana
Chapter

Abstract

Writing in 1987 of his own identity as a black Briton, Stuart Hall announced, with some amazement, his discovery that he was no longer in the margin: he had become “centered at last.” The nascent reality to which as a cultural critic he was referring (the centeredness of black Britons) is what I am here calling the “sea change.” What Hall went on to say about that centeredness bears repeating:

I’ve been puzzled by the fact that young black people in London today are marginalized, fragmented, unenfranchized, disadvantaged, and dispersed. And yet, they look as if they own the territory. Somehow, they too, in spite of everything, are centered, in place: without much material support, it’s true, but nevertheless, they occupy a new kind of space at the center. And I’ve wondered again and again: what is it about that long discovery-rediscovery of identity among blacks in this migrant situation which allows them to lay a kind of claim to certain parts of the earth which aren’t theirs, with quite that certainty? I do feel a sense of—dare I say—envy surrounding them. Envy is a very funny thing for the British to feel at this moment in time—to want to be black! Yet I feel some of you surreptitiously moving toward that marginal identity.1

The second idea Hall expresses in this passage, that British non-blacks are moving “surreptitiously” and enviously toward a black identity, is an equally tantalizing one—and one that Professor Maria Lima appraises in her essay in this book. I, too, have seen some evidence of this motion.

Keywords

Black Woman British Literature British Isle British Study British Council 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© R. Victoria Arana and Lauri Ramey 2004

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  • R. Victoria Arana

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