What Is Stuart Hall's Notion Of Race As A Floating Signifier

Critically discuss Stuart Hall’s notion of race as a floating signifier, drawing on contemporary examples to help explain the concept.

Stuart Hall's idea of race as a floating signifier explains how race is a ‘classification of difference’ in human society. For Hall, the concept of race has been emphasized through meaning-making practices in society such as colonization, which cemented ideas of nationhood by excluding minority ethnic groups. Moreover, the fluidity of race as a signifier allowed for its manipulation to serve socio-political agendas, illustrating its contingent nature. Hall's concept highlights how race is not a predetermined reality but a socially constructed phenomenon subject to interpretation and contestation within diverse
Scientific realists consider race as a biological rather than a social construction, reducing the concept of race to a physical attribute. Franz Fonul argued that ‘he is a Black’ ‘and that because of his appearance ‘he is fixed by it.’ Racial differences are transcribed and fixed on individuals and are not interchangeable. The origins of scientific racism in the 20th century are articulated by Herbert Spencer who described the process of evolution as being a dominant struggle between races rather than individuals’. The origin of scientific racism results from believing that certain races were suitable to provide a stable generation, thus creating ideas surrounding area supremacy prevalent in Nazi Germany and the supremacy of the Aryan race. These ideas are fixed constructs rather than interchangeable. Biometric scientific methods only focusing on biological traits, found that under cranial physical measures, Black individuals were two grades lower than Anglo-Saxons in ability and intelligence. In this realist position, racial attributes are biological, rather than cultural and social