Pluriversal Design SIG Book Club 15: The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power

Welcome to the Pluriversal Design SIG's BookClub! In this Book Club, we focus on the works of authors from all over the 'pluriverse'. We intentionally focus on the works of authors from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. In our discussions, we discuss how these works impact us as designers.

For this book club, Dr. Renata Marques Leitao introduced the work of Jamaican-born British Marxist sociologist, cultural theorist, and political activist. Hall was one of the founding figures of the school of thought that is now known as British Cultural Studies or The Birmingham School of Cultural Studies. For this book club, we focused on the chapter "The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power".

About the book: From his arrival in Britain in the 1950s and involvement in the New Left, to founding the field of cultural studies and examining race and identity in the 1990s and early 2000s, Stuart Hall has been central to shaping many of the cultural and political debates of our time. Essential Essays—a landmark two-volume set—brings together Stuart Hall's most influential and foundational works. Spanning the whole of his career, these volumes reflect the breadth and depth of his intellectual and political projects while demonstrating their continued vitality and importance. Volume 2: Identity and Diaspora draws from Hall's later essays, in which he investigated questions of colonialism, empire, and race. It opens with “Gramsci's Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity,” which frames the volume and finds Hall rethinking received notions of racial essentialism. In addition to essays on multiculturalism and globalization, black popular culture, and Western modernity's racial underpinnings, Volume 2 contains three interviews with Hall, in which he reflects on his life to theorize his identity as a colonial and diasporic subject.

About the author: Jamaican-born British Marxist sociologist, cultural theorist, and political activist. Hall was one of the founding figures of the school of thought that is now known as British Cultural Studies or The Birmingham School of Cultural Studies.

About the presenter: Dr. Renata Marques Leitao is a Brazilian/Canadian social justice-focused design researcher. She is also a co-chair of the DRS Pluriversal Design SIG and co-chair of the series of virutal conferences PIVOT.

Date of event: November 5th, 2021

Further details of the DRS Pluriversal Design SIG can be found here: https://www.designresearchsociety.org...

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