“Diasporic reasoning, affect, memory and cultural politics: An interview with Avtar Brah” in Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 36 (2), 243–263.

This interview explores the intellectual contours of Stuart Hall’s work through the insights of Professor Avtar Brah, Emerita, Birkbeck College, whose feminist post-colonial voice has shaped generations of scholarship on diaspora thinking, achieving public intellectual status. Her Cartographies of Diaspora (1996) received international acclaim, challenging nationalist feminisms to engage diasporic cultural politics. The longest standing member of the Feminist Review editorial collective, Brah’s intertwining of feminist theorisation with transformative pedagogies is well known. It is rare that feminists of colour or diasporic feminists are celebrated as ‘public intellectuals’, even when they are exceptionally accomplished in multiple spheres of intellectual life. Thus, we have chosen to interview Professor Avtar Brah, whose transnationally recognised work both owes a debt to and extends Hall’s work in some surprising directions. Our interview explores some questions together as a ‘we’ and others individually to respect and highlight our own respective theoretical, socio-political and transnational experiences. This approach to interviewing acknowledges our different voices, as well as our affinities through this collaboration.

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