FoolsCap

The subject line is something from the Simpsons. . .Bart and Lisa are waching some shoe that features Bill Cosby, and Cosby does the above bit about kids and hip-hop.

And hip-hop is the subject of my inquiry today.  As I’ve admitted before, I just don’t get hip-hop.  This in itself isn’t all that special, but since hip-hop seems to pervade current comp theory, I’d like to maybe do some meta on myself and see why I dislike hip-hop.  The motive behind such a project is this: I want to be able to approach the theory that’s been inspired by hip-hop with an open mind, but I sort of think that my dislike/apathy/ignorance of hip-hop will interfere–it’ll make it hard to say "yes" to the text, in Jeff’s terms.  So. . .why do I dislike hip-hop?

1. I’m a racist.  Well, that’s an oversimplification.  And maybe this is just some backwash from 7010, too.  However, I acknowledge that I do think of hip-hop as being sort of an exclusively black phenomenon, which I know rationally is not the case.  It’s not that I think is hip-hop is bad because of its (perceived) association with black culture so much as I feel that hip-hop doesn’t really address my own social/personal concerns.  I’m not, you know, slinging rock or whatever.
2. Here’s something.  I notice I automatically associate hip-hop with gangsta/ster rap.  Is that association valid?  On one hand, all the rappers I can name–well, a healthy majority thereof–are gangsta/ster rappers.  On the other hand, I admit my ignorance–are rap (whether of the gangsta/ster variety or otherwise) and hip-hop synonomous?  I dunno. . .my impression from reading about Afrika Bambaatta/DJ Herc et al is that they weren’t necessarily rappers as much as dj’s.  Why/when did rap/hip-hop diverge?
3. Part of my social discourse is built around disparaging hip-hop.  When you hang out an indie-rock record joint where all the staff (most of whom are your friends) hate hip-hop, you don’t suddenly announce a fondness for Jay-Z (to pick someone at random) without risking a certain tirade of mockery.
4. It has little or no impact on me.  Which is to say that, when I have listened to hip-hop/rap (assuming they’re the same which I admit I can’t claim authoritatively) it does nothing for me.  I’ve heard Kanye West’s The College Dropout, Dre’s The Chronic, Outkast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (I liked Andre 3000’s poppier half, but not Big Boi’s more conventional half), Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique, some Missy Elliott album (don’t remember which one; it’s the one that has "Pass that Dutch" on it), 50 Cent’s first album (title forgotten). . .and maybe others that’ve slipped from memory.  And you know what, except for isolated moments, none of it *does it* for me.  [I really want to use Wysocki’s Kantian models here but I don’t know how.]
5. Except for Eminem.  This is where my white liberal guilt kicks in, since the only hip-hop I like is by the white guy.  I don’t know why I like Em’s stuff over, say Snoop’s, but I do.  Is it the production?  Maybe.  Internal rhyme?  Sure, why not.  But I feel like a poser (or even a poseur) by admitting a fondess for Eminem; as if liking, you know, actual black artists in the same genre would give me cachet to approve Eminem.
6. On the other hand, I also really dig Gnarls Barkley’s CD.  It’s a good thing.  And (shame on you, indie rock guy) I’ve been known to get into the Black Eyed Peas just a little, even though they’re probably the most mocked hip-hop outfit this side of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch.  (Does anyone else feel like the Peas have a lot in common with the B-52s?)  I sort have of the feeling (or maybe it’s an assumption) that these acts aren’t "real" hip-hop.
7. So, what is "real" hip-hop?  I’m the least qualified person in the world to answer this, but I’m gonna try to parse what I think "real" hip-hop is.  To me, it’s not so much a generic or aesthetic convention (although it is that too) but rather a political/social one.  A lot of what I’ve read about hip-hop (which isn’t much) center it in terms of rebellion & revolution, but not just in the work of the obviously political groups like Public Enemy–it’s written abuot as though at some point hip-hop held the promise of genuine sociopolitical change within its beating heart.
8. What about hip-hop is so compelling to comp theorists?  Is it just the use of samples and reappropriation and remixing?  By "just" I don’t mean to belittle these important developments in comp theory, but rather to ask: Do the theorists who’ve written about hip-hop really like it or is it only that they see in itan interesting topoi for thinking about writing?  Other artists have sampled and remixed, and to much more controversial effect at times–I’m sort of thinking of Eno/Byrne’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, or the entire ouevres of Negativland or Emergency Broadcast Network.  Or we can go back further to Lennon/McCartney/Harrison/Starr’s "Revolution #9."  My question is what about hip-hop’s use of samples is more compelling than the way other artists have used it?

My head has begun to hurt so it must be time to stop writing.

Here I am, right, reading inncocently along in Johnson-Eilola’s essay, annotating furiously, when I come upon this:

p. 202: Articulation theory provides a way for thinking about how meaning is constructed contingently, from pieces of other meanings and social forces that tend to prioritize one meaning over another.  Because articulation conceices meaning as a contingent play of existing forces rather than a traditional "creation" and "reception," the persepctive can be useful in helping us understand writing as a process of arrangement and connection rather than simply one of isolated creative utterance.

AWESOME!!  Something that gives a clear picture of my idea about teaching reading and writing "hypertextually" rather than "intertextually", where connectivity is enabled from the moment of composition rather than just as a byproduct of the reader/viewer/consumer.  This articulation jazz also fits in with my questions about the construction of the subject, whether we exist outside of discourse (a sort of Benhabibian essentialism) or only through the discourses we appropriate/are appropriated by (Butlerian. . .um. . .non-essentialism?). . .So cool, right? 

Wait a minute. . .formed from other meanings. . .prioritized. . .no, that can’t be right. . .that sounds like. . . .

Derrida.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo  :::gasp for breath::  ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ::more breath:: ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

::labored breathing::

So. . .intertextuality/hypertextuality (at least as I’ve interpellated/appropriated them) are fundamentally Derridean, aren’t they?  Texts exist in relationship to other texts. . .meaning comes not from authorial intent (although I have some conflicting ideas about that) but from the interplay of other texts in the reading subject’s discursive fields. . .meaning is contingent on conext and readers. . .this can’t be.  My sketchy little ideas about pedagogy can’t be Derridean. . .I hate Derrida. . .everyone knows that!

Oh, man.

Johnson-Eilola on blogs:

p. 215: [. . . T]hey are so easy to produce and modify as to seem nearly disposable (but never really disappearing, with old text being archived to create a searchspace of shadow information).

I’ve developed a minor level obsession with the notion of shadow information.  I don’t fully know what to do with this idea. . .It sort of points me to a question that might be something like this: How does what we don’t know inform what we do know?  I’m thinking here sort of in terms of Derrida (at least as Berlin reads Derrida) in which words have meaning in relation to absences/opposites.  I don’t know what the answer to the above question would be. . .it sort of leads to one of those Rumsfeldian moments: there are things we know we don’t know, there are things we don’t know we don’t know, there are things we don’t know we know. . .I think there’s more to the question than just saying that not having all the "necessary" info leads to misreading, because a) who determines what info is necessary, and b) I think the idea of misreading implies a certain authorial intentionality that seems at odds with the larger scope of deconstruction/intertext/hypertext.

p. 222: Is error 404–or a search engine–merely a derivative work?  Only in the sense that it is composed of pieces of other texts.  But that is true of any text–work on intertextuality has taught us that all texts are composed of numerous other texts.  Are these sorts of texts merely functional?  Only in the sense that the text must be operated or started and run by someone.  But that is also true of any text–work on reader response, cultural studies, usability studies, and a whole host of theoretical and practical fields has taught us that meaning does inhere in a static text.

I’m reminded here of Borges’ story about "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote:

He did not want to compose another Quixote–which is easy–but the Quixote itself.  Needless to say, he never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it.  His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincide–word for word and line for line–with those of Miguel de Cervantes.

and further

Menard (perhaps without wanting to) has enriched, by means of a new technique, the halting and rudimentary art of reading: this new technique is that of the deliberate anachronism and the erroneous attribution.  This technique, whose applications are infinite, prompts us to go through the Odyssey as if it were posterior to the Aeneid and the book Le jardin du Centaure of Madame Henri Bachelier as if it were by Madame Henri Bachelier.  This technique fills the most placid works with adventure.  To attribute the Imatatio Christi to Louis Ferdinand Celine or to James Joyce, is this not a sufficient renovation of its tenuous spiritual indications?

In true Johnson-Eilolian fashion, I’m just going to leave these three excerpts alone without commentary and ask what relationship others see between them.  (Also, I don’t have any ready commentary–I think these three excerpts are connected but I’m not really sure I know yet what they’re asking each other.)

This is a response to Wysocki’s sticky embrace.  Um. . ."Sticky Embrace." 

p. 159: Form is itself always a set of structuring principles, with different forms growing out of and reproducing different but specific values.

Nothing specific to say about Wysocki’s argument here, just a sidebar.  Many of you know I love House of Leaves.  Many of you also know I love Moby-Dick.  What interests me about these texts is the way they play with the conventions of the novel, in ways similarly reflected in Hopscotch, Vas: An Opera in Flatland, Pale Fire, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Deception, If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller. . .several others.  I think form is very important but doesn’t always get addressed in criticism; too often, as Wysocki/Sirc/Johnson-Eilola observe, form gets taken for granted.  One of the projects that interests me, then, is studying more exactly how form and content relate.  I understand this isn’t really a revolution since many scholars are now addressing this question, but I find it of interest to note that the idea of playing with these conventions of textual form, though gaining new attention in light of new media theories, aren’t really that new in and of themselves.  The new part, perhaps, is in asking how we relate to the form in our understanding of the text. . .

An assignment idea or two, one inspired by Sirc (indirectly), one thought of pre-Sirc, inspired by Rice, but reinformed by Sirc.  Both ideas nebulous, wanting refinement, but germination still of note I think.  By the by, I really want to read this whole Arcades Project thing.  Not that I have time to do any outside reading, other than a few snippets of Blender here and there.  When will I ever read Only Revolutions, the newest from Danielewski?  My copy sits, forelorn and lonely, on the shelf.  Alas.

Assignments follow.

Assignment the first: This assignment deals sort of with writing a definition essay, but of a different sort.  (Or at least, the sort I was used to writing in high school.)  Students are asked to choose some word/idea and explore its definitions however they choose–but (like our wiki assignment) cannot use a dictionary.  Further, they have to use at least three sources, and each has to be in a different medium, and one of which has to be an image without words.  The students are asked to analyze how each text "defines" the word/idea and how these definitions might inform each other or conflict with one another.  Not a real firecracker of an idea, I know. . .the idea is there but I’m not sure how to take it to the next step. . .any ideas, gang?  One way I’ve thought of is blending this with the assignment Ellen and I concocted, and asking sudents to shape a "definition" solely through images. . . .Feedback wanted. . . .This would be the one that might turn into a research paper somehow. . .still working on it. . .

Assigment the second: This is the one inspired indirectly by Sirc.  (I keep wanting to type Sirk and write about 1950s melodramas, but now I’m off-topic.)  I’d ask the students to start with a random blog, or maybe a del.icio.us tag on someone’s account, and ask them to follow 15-20 links starting from there, as random and haphazard as they can be.  Students asked to take detailed notes between sites and explore how the idiosyncratic and capricious nature of the connections inform one another.  That is, how do you start, for example, at FoolsCap and end up, say, at Stormfront.org?  You’d have to be careful, I think, to be sure the assignment didn’t turn into just notes on each site, but rather be very specific about the expectations of asking the perceived connections and links (pun intended) between the sites, not just between immediately succeeding sites, but how might sight three inform/connect to site twelve?  Sort of a kind of turn on the mystory model maybe, except lacking the personal element?