The arts render racial fears speakable and keep political identity dialogues open

Evidence

Kobena Mercer insists that Stuart’s later work on questions of race, ethnicity, and identity was not just “critically enlivened by his engagement with black British artists, filmmakers and photographers …” but that this “late period” commitment to the visual arts also “followed directly from his constructionist trajectory” in which, through his engagements with poststructuralism, he moved beyond the more sociologically oriented earlier work on these topics. He also refers to the aforementioned interview with Schwarz, in which Stuart insists on the specific importance of the arts as “the one sphere of culture where … fears and fantasies can be brought into discourse and rendered speakable.” As Mercer notes, the aesthetic can often play a crucial role in opening up differences that authoritative cultural discourses strive to close down. It thus renders “imaginable” alternative rearticulations that—crucially—function to ensure that political dialogues concerning identities are kept open. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 906

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s scaffold on representation and construction of the ‘Other’ — the aesthetic as a site that reopens what authoritative discourse closes, directly transferable to how Islamophobic representations get contested. — connects to: Public art revitalizes community by giving voice to silenced groups — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1822
• DEFINE: Defines the aesthetic sphere’s unique function: rendering unconscious fears fantasizable and speakable.