Bring the Noise

[Rustum Kozain]

David Wachtvogel: 
> Rustum,
>    I'm sending this to you personally, because I do not believe hip hop
> to be a worthy subject matter for the frankfurt-school list. That was the point
> of my original posting. I'll try to explain myself:

David, thanks for your note. But I must state at the outset that I 
take extreme umbrage at the condescension and patronising tone of 
your note. And not only does its tone condescend, its strategy does 
as well.
    Why do you have to send it personally? This is the net-equivalent 
of whispering in my ear. Are you afraid that others may hear and 
criticise your ideas? Or, faithful to your condescension, you have to 
bend over and, like a father, whisper reprimands to his child?
    And who decided hip-hop is not worthy subject matter? That 
dismissal leaves much to be desired. I can understand you being 
influenced by Adorno's thought, but don't treat him like a god. His 
dismissal of Jazz was an ignorant move - he didn't care to know more 
about non-European music.
    Your dismissal of hip-hop is in that Adornian mould. But surely 
you should be more critrical of Adorno's moves. Surely you should be 
aware of Marxism's and its writers' blindspots and histtorical 
limitations. It does not do to follow the gods blindly.
    But then, dismissing hip-hop is so typical of a certain breed of 
Euro-scholar, where the traces of education's monastic history still 
obtain. Your dismissal smacks of the despairing monk, resigned in his 
cell, fretting over how the secular has tainted the divine and how 
the dumb masses just don't - and never can - understand sublime 
thought and the purer aesthetic.
    Enzensberger - in the 70s a descendant of an actual Frankfurt 
School before its re-invention late 80s by the Anglo-American 
capitalist academic press and now the Net - criticised the (New) 
Left's 'manipulation theory' of the electronic media as exactly 
such an uncritical dismissal as well. And even if now we can see 
Enzensberger's idealism in wanting to turn everyone into a 
manipulator (foloowing Walter Benjamin), at least he engaged with his 
object. He did not wash his hands off it. And perhaps we would not 
be entirely wrong in speculating the Left's role, indirectly 
through non-intervention, in the utter banality that 
pervades the media. The Left can claim no innocence in this.
    A lot can also be said as to why critics dismiss things. But 
central to this must be ignorance and loss of control. It is so easy 
and tempting to dismiss something you do not know and understand as 
unworthy. In this way you can hide your ignorance, denigrate someone 
else's interests, claim the high ground and signal that the forefront 
of revolutionary thought is really your own pre-occupations. All in 
one simple move. And all this while staying true to Euro-male theory: 
universalize your own pre-occupations, desires, anxieties and 
voila!... radical thought that sets the agenda.

David, as you admit, you do not know much about hip-hop. Is this then 
why it is unworthy, because you do not know it? And if you speak 
about it, by what authority do you do so? How did you form your 
opinions about it? Since your dismissal is in form not much different 
from white right anxieties about hip-hop and its perverse influence 
on their American nation, I can only conclude that much of your 
opinion is derived from the mainstream media. Now that's an 
authority!

As for me, I have been _lurking_ on this list exactly because so far 
most of the discussion centred around things I am not knowledgable 
about, or things I was not interested in. Lurking, because I might 
learn something; lurking, instead of sounding off and making 
authoritative statements or dismissing things I do not know about.
    I joined this list because I too (as someone indicated) was 
looking for a sanctuary for people from broadly Marxist persuasion 
and because my introduction to my field ('low' culture) happened 
through the Frankfurt School, other Marxists writing at the time, and 
their later followers. Specifically, I was looking for a 
sanctuary from the new academic hegemony - postmodernism, 
postcolonialism, and so on. And as far as I am concerned, the 
Frankfurt School signalled a turn in academic scrutiny: instead of 
fixating on 'high' culture, people started looking at 'low' cultural 
production as an antidote (we'll forgive Adorno).
    But this doesn't mean everything 'low' cultural is necessarily 
'revolutionary', etc. etc. I am rehearsing old, very old arguments. 
My point here is that there is enough hip-hop outside of the 
mainstream, outside of your dismissal's admitted narrow repertoire, 
to maintain my political interest. But, of course, you would say that 
I am drugged.

David:> 
> Yes it _is_ fun. That's one of its weaknesses.

This begs criticism. I cannot believe you walk around with never 
laughing at anything. Do you never enjoy a beautiful or witty turn of 
phrase by your favourite writer? And surely you must realise the 
subversive nature of laughter - or is Bakhtin too much fun, or dirty 
because some postmodernists have co-opted his work?
    Surely, if I had simply laughed in your face at your ideas, you 
would be devastated with anger. I agree, 'fun' is not going to start 
a revolution, but this list is not called: 'Po-faced revoluionary 
activities'. For God's sake, we're talking about cultural production, 
not fomenting revolution.
    We are readers of books and talkers - most of us on this list - 
besides other things we do - teach, work in a vineyard, etc. Or are 
you suggesting that only those who really want to start a revolution 
can join. Now I simply begged for some sense of self-awareness, some 
sense of irony, the lack of which is a big problem in Marxist 
thought. So, when someone dismisses hip-hop because of its complicity 
with capitalism, I want to know whether that more-revolutionary-than-
them speaker is aware of his or her own complicities with capitalism. 
Where was your PC or Mac built? Where does the Internet come from? 
And the clothes you wear? And the electricity? In what way is your 
way of earning a living and living it complicit with that nasty thing 
that hip-hop is complicit with. I am not suggesting a defeatist 
attitude - I am saying: self awareness. 
    'Does [hip-hop] give its exploited listeners awareness of their 
situation,' you ask. How aware are you of yours? Are you? Well. 
delineate it before you claim the high-ground.
    In a similar move I may dismiss the thoughts, ideas, poems of all 
who drive cars because, by driving cars, they are complicit with the 
oil and auto industries in the destruction of whatever communal life 
we still have left and the destruction of our earth. I don't drive a 
car, so that will make me feel pretty good and special. I have now 
turned a shortcoming to good, moral advantage. But I may also just be 
consigned to some institution...

Someone once said to me that the people on these discussion lists 
never got any attention from their mommies. A dismissal out of 
ignorance. Yet, how do you feel that somewhere someone feels this 
about your thought, about your revolutionary high ground? How worthy 
do you feel?

David: 
> I agree that it won't bring down the house. But in what way is it a
> progressive move? Does it give its exploited listeners awareness of their
> situation?
> To tell you the truth, I do'nt have much of an acquaitance with hip hop
> and rap, progressive or exploitive. But as far as I can tell, it is
> (politically) exactly like punk music was. Sure The Clash mixed in
> radical ideas into there lyrics. But people listened to it as "fun".
> Radical thought is _not_ fun. The realization that you are totally
> controlled is extremely painful. People who enjoy listening to radical
> Punk, Folk or Hip Hop are not realizing anything. They are being
> narcotized because they are hearing about the revolution and therefore
> don't have to _do_ anything about it.
> 
 David, I can't speak for your 'exploited listeners', but I have 
found immense educational value in hip-hop, in the sense that Marx 
somewhere refers to the value of reading Dickens: giving one the 
sense of the experience of poverty more than can a sociologist's 
figures. Now I have learnt a lot about that sense of how black youth 
experience urban poverty USA style. And it is an aesthetic thing: the 
power of the anger in much of hip-hop can act as an indicator to 
explain, at least, the nihilism that characterise much of young black 
life in America's cities. I am not suggesting that nihilism is all, 
or that that is going to start the mother of all revolutions. But 
then again, we're not talking about fomenting a revolution.
    And, yes, you may be surprised to hear, fun can be educational. 
De La Soul's satire on macho posturing on hip-hop should teach you 
that not all hip-hop is macho-nationalist sexism ('Afro 
connections...'). The Digable Planets, in 'Femme Fatale', trace the 
intersections of class, race and gender in the hipocrisy in much of 
abortion legislation. The Right's firebombing of clinics are 
characterized as fascist and not something separate of US militarism.
The Goats satirise and defile much of mainstream America's 
iconography. Gill Scott Heron, in the early 80s, characterised 
life in the USA as a b-movie where the only reason Raegan was 
president was because John Wayne was dead. He traces the USA's 
transition from producer to consumer, showing the economic causes of 
the 80s dreams of a golden 50s, but at the same time showing these 
dreams up for its present day racism: harking back to a 50s when 
blacks still knew their place.
    I do not know who you surveyed to find that people listen to punk 
or hip-hop as fun (What's wrong with that in any case?). Who are we 
(and you) to demand that oppressed people should show awareness of 
such by wearing a sulk? How do you know I am drugged? Because I 
listen to hip-hop? Again you condescend to suggest that because I 
listen to hip-hop I do not know my true state. You have done nothing 
to show me how you know your true state - what, again, are your 
complicities? Did my awareness of present day South Africa - that 
it's becoming the 52nd state of the USA; that it is shot through with 
perhaps more racial fear and hatred than 5 years ago - did this come 
to me in a dream?
    But thanks for pointing it out to me that I ma drugged. What did 
you do for the revolution today?
    The way it sounds, you should be contemplating Adorno's 
Resignation somewhere on a mountain top, not using a by-product of 
military research (how regressive can you get, David?) to communicate 
or foment revolution.

David:

> Amen to all that. In my reaction to you're original posting I wrote
> (almost) as much. A month ago I posted a quotation from Adorno's
> Resignation. I take his ideas there one step further - to me all action
> in the current state is regressive, even publishing and reading books.
> 

David:
> 
> A confidence to do what? Walk through a redneck town? Is that what needs
> to be done? I suspect that only people who think they don't have any real
> problems can be happy to be drugged. Tell me, a decade or two ago, would
> you be happy to walk the same way in the Apartheid version of Souh
> Africa? Or would you have a stronger feeling of how impossible the
> situation is and not be sedated by music?
> The huji in my address stands for "Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel".
> I can't allow myself to be sedated while living in a country that
> tortures prisoners. I can't walk around dazed when 13 human beings were just
> killed today by another two who felt they had no choice but to commit
> suicide and murder. How can _you_ do so when you know that over 95% of
> the human population is being exploited, treated like machines? How can
> you do so if you truly understand the situation our world is in?
>                                     --  David Wachtfogel

In 1980, I was but one of 1000s of students boycotting classes in 
South Africa. Part of our 'alternative education' ocurred through 
reggae music. Because this aesthetic thing interested me, I started 
reading more about its history, more about the Caribbean, about black 
people in Britain, and, eventually, about colonialism. Not with a 
teacher or professor behind me. And for this reason I am not prepared 
to simply dismiss popular culture outright. The mere fact that it is 
an aesthetic thing, normally more interesting than 'facts' or 
'science', means that it has a pedagogical advantage to other forms 
of knowledge. To youth, a far more gripping introduction to racism 
and colonialism than Marx.
    And this is the problem. We must stop treating our knowledge as 
something religious. Marx is not god; neither is Adorno. The 
Frankfurt School was not catechism where one learnt the one true way. 
I can think of nothing more monkish, dour and pedagogically 
ineffectual than insisting that only those who only read the 
appropriate books, nothing else, and read them only in an 
appropriate serious way, can join the company of true revolutionaries 
and experience the sublime of really knowing the situation of 
our suffering.
    David, finally, I feel sorry for you, for you as the 
gatekeeper of true consciousness. But shouldn't your 
consciousness have told you that you were regressing by using 
the Internet, thereby coluuding with major companies like 
electricity providers and computer providers? Shouldn't you be 
spreading the word amongst Hamas, that they've got it wrong, 
that the true path of revolution is ... what? Tell me.
    How, David, do you actually breath, with all your knowledge 
and awareness. You must be going insane with despair, knowing 
that everything we do is regressive and adds to the world's 
misery. Kafka would have envied you your hyper awareness.
    But waht are _you_ doing to save us from these multiple 
opiates?

Comradely

Rustum Kozain

 

Rustum Kozain
Department of English
University of Cape Town
Rondebosch, South Africa
email: kozain@beattie.uct.ac.za

                'I met History once, but he ain't recognise me'
                                    -Derek Walcott