Hip Hop and critical theory

[H. Curtiss Leung]

David writes:

>...The singers [in Hip-Hop and Protest Music] are always
>telling the listeners, "hey, you're alright, you're one of us". To quote
>from The Clash satirical All Lost in the Supermarket:
>     I'm all tuned in, I see all the programs
>     I save coupons for packets of tea
>     I've got my giant hit discoteque album
>     I empty a bottle - feel a bit free
>But the listener didn't buy the giant hit discoteque album. No. He bought
>the latest Clash album. He's alright. He's one of us.

        That's the nail on the head.  These days, subjective awareness of 
exploitation and alienation simply isn't sufficient defence against its
reproduction in the subject.  Everybody (well, on this list at least) knows
Adorno's quip that it is barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz.  But
what about his following comment: "And this corrodes even the knowledge
of why it is barbaric to write poetry today?"  Isn't this the problem
we face today -- that global capital has invaded and corroded even our
awareness of it's pervasiveness?

       Whenever theory offers itself up to the marketplace, it gives in
to that objective corrosion.  And, to be honest, the sight of it makes
me sick: so much writing on popular culture takes a fetishistic,
ahistorical attitude towards its object that I can't help wondering
if it isn't the product of entertainment companies PR departments.
Is hip-hop emancipatory?  Well, has it allievated racist exploitation?
Nope.  Was punk revolutionary?  Well, did it stop Maggie Thatcher?
Again, no.  

        Before anyone starts calling me a cultural conservative (hell,
maybe it's already too late...), I want to acknowledge some truth-content
in hip-hop and protest music: these musicial movements did preserve and spread 
a (limited) moment of critical negativity.  But to have as a goal the 
discovery of critical potential in the music itself isn't praxis, but 
plain old commodity fetishism -- relations between people perceived as
relations between things.  To go beyond the music to the relationships
that constitute it, now that would be praxis.  Guy Debord of the SI
put it nicely when he wrote:  "The appearance of new necessities outmodes
previous 'inspired' works.  They become obstacles, dangerous habits.  The
point is not whether we like them or not.  We have to go beyond them."

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Curtiss Leung                        Voice (212)267-7722 x 3033
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