Richard Shusterman Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol

Home , Fab Five Freddy, Shake Your Thang

Rap Remix: Pragmatism, Postmodernism, and Other Issues in the House Author(s): Richard Shusterman Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 150-158 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344010 Accessed: 08/12/2009 19:16

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Critical Inquiry.

http://www.jstor.org Critical Response I

Rap Remix: Pragmatism, Postmodernism, and Other Issues in the House

Richard Shusterman

Rap is an art whose cultural and aesthetic importance is at once demon- strated and concealed by the smoke of media hype and political controversy that surrounds it. The smoke suggests there must be some core of artistic fire that rocketed the genre to its amazing, enduring international popularity-despite its initial lack of material means, organization, and cultural legitimacy that to some extent continues to plague it. But rap's clouds of controversy-not only its alleged links to gangsterism, rape, and race riots but even its proud self-identification as ghetto music in an age of contestatory identity politics-have distracted cultural critics from coming to grips with its artistic significance. Long before the L.A. riots, rap and its sympathetic theorists were plagued by these problems. When the 1989 Central Park rape case sud- denly made rap a major media target, my aesthetic interest in the genre was roundly condemned by colleagues from both right and left: not only for endorsing black hooliganism by supporting such music, but also for disenfranchising ghetto youth by expropriating their music for my own bourgeois entertainment and theoretical pursuits. As a white, Oxford- trained, philosophy professor (and not simply a Jew but an Israeli), I was so often told that I had no business dealing with rap, that before I dared submit my research to any journal, I sought the moral advice

150 CriticalInquiry Autumn 1995 151 and symbolic permission of a leading African-American critic, Houston Baker.' Nor does being black resolve all problems of legitimation in speaking academically about rap and its aesthetic meaning. In certain rap circles (for example, those of grassroots fanzines), black academics in Ivy League schools are as suspect as whites, and perhaps sometimes more. For while their links and allegiance to the black ghetto may be just as questionable, the danger of their usurping the role of rap- or ghetto cultural spokesmen is far more real.2 Age is yet another factor that can hinder and discredit the academic rap commentator, for the music and its "scene" are ferociously young. Quite apart from the identity politics of who can speak about rap, there is the fear that treating rap as art is somehow to trivialize it and distract from its real sociopolitical importance. Such reasons conspire to rob the genre of the close critical attention it deserves as art. This is especially unfortunate because rap, I have argued, warrants particular attention by suggesting fruitful ways to rethink the very nature of art that challenge precisely this artistic/sociopolitical opposition and that illustrate other lessons of pragmatism and postmodernism. We should therefore be grateful for Tim Brennan's fine study of rap and his cogent plea for its aesthetic appreciation ("Off the Gangsta Tip: A Rap Appreciation, or Forgetting About Los Angeles," CriticalInquiry 20 [Summer 1994]: 663-93). In developing his case, Brennan employs my

1. This material was first published in much-abbreviated journal form (the academic analogue of the radio mix); see Richard Shusterman, "The Fine Art of Rap," New Literary History 22 (Summer 1991): 613-32; hereafter abbreviated "FAR."The full version (already announced in "FAR")appears as chapter 8 in my PragmatistAesthetics: Living Beauty,Rethink- ing Art (Oxford, 1992); hereafter abbreviated PA. See also the book's French and German translations, which contain minor changes: L'Artd l'tat vif: La Pensie pragmatisteet lesthitique populaire, trans. Christine Noille (Paris, 1992) and KunstLeben: Die Asthetikdes Pragmatismus, trans. Barbara Reiter (Frankfurt, 1994). My only other academic text on rap was "L'Art comme infraction: Goodman, le rap, et le pragmatisme," Les Cahiersdu museenational d'art modere 41 (Autumn 1992): 143-54. A much-revised English version of it will be incorpo- rated into my PracticingPhilosophy: Pragmatism and the PhilosophicalLife (forthcoming). 2. My sense of this is from association with the North Philly-based rap journal JOR Quarterlyfor which I regularly wrote rap criticism.

Richard Shusterman is professor of philosophy at Temple Univer- sity and directeur de programmes at the College International de Philo- sophie. Editor of AnalyticAesthetics (1989), he is author of T S. Eliot and the Philosophyof Criticism(1988), PragmatistAesthetics: Living Beauty,Rethinking Art (1992), and Sous l'interpretation(1994). His forthcoming book is entitled PracticingPhilosophy: Pragmatism and the PhilosophicalLife. 152 CriticalResponse RichardShusterman analysis of rap's aesthetic, approvingly but sometimes also critically. My purpose in responding is not to imitate the duelling of dissin' rap MCs, but to correct some misconceptions so as to promote our shared aim "of creating a confident dialogue" of "informed listeners" that will enhance rap's understanding among intellectuals (pp. 675-76, 685). This, of course, does not mean that intellectuals will ever understand this art as the b-boys and b-girls who live it, and we should never presume that an academic understanding trumps and delegitimates more popular (which is not to say less intelligent) modes of appreciation. Nor do I wish to suggest that intellectual analysis is the only right way for intellectuals to understand rap. Another, in some respects better, way of getting it (and "getting down with it") is by dancing. Yes, even for intellectuals. One way should not exclude the other, and Nietzsche, in advocating a dancing philosopher, was not recommending a philosopher who didn't think. Critics have, of course, argued that my subject-position (as white philosopher) and aesthetic approach preclude a priori any real understanding of rap. Though this issue should be faced, I cannot treat it adequately in the confines of this paper. Brennan, anyway, does not raise it as an objec- tion to my work (since it could be likewise directed at him), and my prime task here is response to his criticisms.

First is the charge that my rap aesthetic rests entirely on the "famil- iar" "theoretical apparatus ... of postmodernism," that "[Shusterman] has no other conceptual peg to hang his comments on than postmodernism, and so he ends up falling out of the flow and ... violat[ing] rap's all- important feel" (p. 676). Though Brennan excuses this as in "some ways ... an unavoidable stance" (p. 676), I'm afraid I cannot find myself adopting it. In my book, PragmatistAesthetics, I go to some lengths to connect rap not simply with postmodernism but with that most earthy and down-home American of philosophical approaches-pragmatism. After a pragmatist account of aesthetic experience that highlights the dynamic, embodied flow that Brennan agrees is central to rap, I show how rap's aesthetic "suggests the Deweyan message that art is more essentially process than finished product." Rap philosophy is further linked to "Ameri- can pragmatism" (especially Dewey) "not merely in metaphysics [of material, malleable, historical flux] but in a noncompartmentalized aesthetics which highlights social function, process, and embodied experience" (PA, pp. 206, 212; "FAR,"p. 618, 627; see PA, pp. 46-59).3

3. That Brennan overlooks my pragmatism-rap connection (which even reviewers in the popular press were quick to highlight) suggests that he paid inadequate attention to PragmatistAesthetics, concentrating on "FAR" where pragmatism, though repeatedly in- voked, lacks "the title role." More disturbingly, his blindness to pragmatism suggests that CriticalInquiry Autumn 1995 153

Lacking the space to rehearse these points in detail, I refer readers to PragmatistAesthetics. Opposing the dominant Kantian aesthetic of pure disinterestedness and distance, pragmatism recognizes that practical and cognitive interest enhances rather than violates aesthetic experience, which is far from purposeless.4 This provides an especially helpful theoretical framework for an art like rap, which sees itself not only as music and poetry but also as philosophy, science, history, news-reporting, and politics. Particularly in the zestful experience of its politically militant genres, rap exemplifies this explosive union of aesthetics and praxis. For this reason, rap's aesthetic appreciation cannot be fully abstracted from its political, social, and moral import. Though this makes the artistic criticism of rap more complex and difficult, it can also make it richer and more powerful. Moreover, it confronts directly the "danger" that Bren- nan wrongly says I ignore-"aestheticization" (p. 677). In discussing this danger, PragmatistAesthetics insists that artistic criticism should be conceived widely "to include also philosophical, moral, and social criticism." For, as rappers themselves assert (both on and off vinyl), the aesthetic "is profoundly conditioned and governed by sociopolitical" factors (PA, pp. 167, 225). Given pragmatism's link between aesthetics and praxis, I'd also reject Brennan's subtitled strategy of "For- getting about Los Angeles" to appreciate rap's art. Political dimensions should not be forgotten but integrated into the artistic criticism, just as they are integrated into rap's artworks.

In opposing modernity's division of cultural spheres that sequesters aesthetics from the praxis of life, pragmatism meets postmodernism. In using this second concept to elucidate rap's aesthetic (as others also do),5 I recognize its vague, contested nature and try to explain its meaning for

American critics too readily ignore the theoretical uses of their own philosophical tradition, recognizing only varieties of "continental" theory, even for understanding American (including African-American) culture. Europe seems free of this disdainful disregard, as is evident from the title ("Rap und Pragmatismus") of a recent article by Jorg Lau and Harold Fricke on my KunstLeben in the Berlin daily Taz, die Tageszeitung20 Jan. 1995. 4. In making such points I am not asserting that rappers know the texts of pragmatism, nor that pragmatism is the only source for questioning the compartmentalization of the aesthetic. Premodern and non-Western cultures that were not dominated by modernity's (Weberian) project of differentiation of cultural spheres would likewise connect art with praxis and cognition. Perhaps it is rap's roots in African culture, more than its birth in the country of pragmatism, that determined the praxis of its aesthetic. But this should not preclude pragmatism's use as a tool for rap's appreciation. 5. See, for example, Houston A. Baker, Jr., Black Studies,Rap, and the Academy(Chicago, 1993), pp. 89-100. 154 CriticalResponse RichardShusterman rap in terms of the following features: transfigurative appropriation of older materials, eclectic mixing, an embracing of new media technology and mass culture, an emphasis on the local and temporal rather than the universal and eternal, and a challenging of modernity's notions of aesthetic autonomy and artistic purity. "Whether or not we wish to call these features postmodern," I argued, "rap ... saliently exemplifies them" and so can be clarified through them, "even if we reject the whole category of postmodernism" (PA, p. 202; "FAR,"p. 614). Brennan accepts almost all these features and contrasts rap to "punk's neomodernist strategy" (p. 679). So why refuse postmodernism as a conceptual tool for clarifying (though not, of course, exhaustively defining) rap? Apparently, because postmodernism is a university importation im- posed on rap, a scholarly mask to represent "alien black youth in the fuddy-duddy surroundings of the academy" (p. 676). This is just wrong. Postmodernism has long been a concept with currency outside academe. Broadcasted by the popular mass media, it readily reached the streets. Already in the late eighties MTV was making the postmodern connection-glossing videos with the flashing label "Postmodern" superimposed on the screen. Though most frequently done with rock groups like Talk- ing Heads, the label also embossed certain rap videos. Nor should this be surprising since the host of YO! MTV Raps, Fab Five Freddy (a graffiti artist and hip-hop impresario), was part of the SoHo art scene where postmodernism was basic English. Brennan may have another reason for refusing postmodernism. Keen to defend rap's originality and earnest social engagement, he perhaps feels that the postmodern conveys only the cynical negativities of jaded scavenging and world-weary nihilism. But postmodernism has a positive side in the creative energy and new forms (of art and politics) unleashed through emancipation from modernity's constraints. Our new passion for identity politics may be seen, for example, as the overcoming of modernity's enlightenment ideal of universal human nature. Similarly, postmodernism's highlighting of appropriation does not entail the end of originality, only the welcome loss of a certain absolutist conception of it. For appropriated things can be transformed in very original ways, and even the most original work relies on an intertextual tissue or back- ground of prior works. Rap makes precisely this point by simultaneously celebrating its bor- rowing and originality, particularly in its proud art of sampling through which new soundtracks are made by selecting and combining bits of pre- recorded music. Locked into a false dualism of originality versus appropriation, Brennan misreads me as denying rap's originality when I instead commend its original reworking of originality to include creative, transfigurative appropriations (see PA, pp. 202-6; "FAR,"p. 619). This theme informs my long analysis of Stetsasonic's "Talkin' All That Jazz," a song that ferociously defends the innovative artistry of the sampling method: CriticalInquiry Autumn 1995 155

"You criticize our method/Of how we make records./ You said it wasn't art,/ So now we're gonna rip you apart" (quoted in PA, p. 216). Applying the same strategy of creative appropriation to verbal cliches, the song shrewdly recontextualizes the banalities that "talk is cheap" and "beauty is skin deep" to give them new meaning-that the dismissal of rap's aesthetic is essentially a class and racial bias that will cost society dearly. Rap self-consciously underlines its appropriative originality by its frequent identification with jazz, an earlier African-American art of appropriation that succeeded in winning aesthetic legitimacy. "Talkin' All That Jazz" is only one of many songs that make this connection: its very title marks rap as talking rather than sung jazz; its soundtrack samples jazz pianist Lonnie Liston Smith, while its lyrics proudly declare both rap's debt and divergence from jazz: 'Jazz, well you can call it that/But this jazz retains a new format" (quoted in PA, p. 216).6 In the economy of the single phrase "retainsa new format" (rather than inventing an entirely new one), Stetsasonic ingeniously captures rap's reconception of originality and conveys the complex paradox of tradition and innovation that T. S. Eliot labored to express: the idea that art can and must be novel to be traditional and traditional to be novel.

Songs like this (whose semantic subtleties are hardly self-evident) make me question Brennan's curt dismissal of rap's verbal content as un- worthy of interpretive attention: "With minor exceptions found in the elusive jargon of youth or ethnicity, the critic is superfluous at the herme- neutic level of statement.... [When critics] interpret the thing itself at the level of verbal meaning, they are making something redundantly ob- vious" (pp. 672-73). Semantic transparency (if true of any art) may be true for some rap, but not for the work of hip-hop's more accomplished poets. Indeed, semantic complexity should be expected in rap because African-American verbal expression is noted for its pervasive ambiguities, inversions, and indirections that are thought to derive from its development under white oppression.7 Aesthetic analysis of the music and its contextual scene is more urgently needed than close readings of lyrics, especially since the

6. Rap's appropriative art differs from jazz in sampling concrete recordings or token- sounds rather than appropriating more abstract musical forms (that is, type-entities) like melodies. There is also a difference in attitude, with rap displaying greater rudeness, political engagement, and proud defiance that often courts criminality. See PA, pp. 203, 220. 7. See my discussion in PA, pp. 221-23, which is derived from a wealth of fine studies by sociologists, anthropologists, linguists, and literary critics, too many to list here. Let me at least mention Roger Abrahams, Deep Down in theJungle: Negro Narrative Folklorefrom the Streetsof Philadelphia (Chicago, 1970); Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The SignifyingMonkey: A Theory of Afro-AmericanLiterary Criticism (New York, 1988); and Grace Simms Holt, "Stylin' Outta the Black Pulpit," Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, "Signifying, Loud-Talking, and Marking," 156 CriticalResponse RichardShusterman

former is also far more difficult to achieve in the printed medium where we academics mainly work. But rap's verbal meaning, pace Brennan, often needs and rewards interpretive attention as well. One last misunderstanding concerns rap's eclecticism. To note how rap samples from a wide variety of music and nonmusical sounds, mixing them without respecting "period, genre, and style distinctions," is not to assert that rap has no respect for any period, genre, or style of music ("FAR,"p. 623; quoted p. 681). The point is simply that rap rejects the artistic inviolability of such classifications, the purist aesthetic according to which elements from different periods, styles, or genres should never be combined. I certainly never imply that rap does not respect the African-American sources it samples nor that its reworkings of such sources are chaotic and indiscriminate. In fact, I argue the opposite. Discussing rap's genre of alternative black history (including musical history) in songs like BDP's "Why Is That?" "You Must Learn," and "Hip Hop Rules," I also show how Ice-T's "Radio Suck- ers" wittily pays rap homage to Public Enemy by sampling and repeatedly punch-phrasing the title line "radio suckers never play me" as Public En- emy originally delivered it in their "Rebel without a Pause" ("FAR,"pp. 622-25; PA, pp. 210-13). My reading of Stetsasonic's "Talkin'All ThatJazz" (PA, pp. 215-35) similarly stresses the song's celebration of the rich, proud intertextuality of African-American musical sources. But, as that very song suasively argues, however much the past tradition and its heroes are respected, no old work is so holy that it cannot be dissected and reappro- priated to advance the new. For new creation is the only way to sustain (rather than embalm) a tradition. EvenJames Brown, "the Godfather" and esteemed (though litigious) source of many of rap's best beats, proves no exception: "Tell the truth James Brown was old,/Till Eric and Rak came out with 'I Got Soul.'/Rap brings back old R & B,/ And if we would not,/ People could have forgot" (quoted in PA, p. 217). If there is a tension in my characterizing rap as both eclectic and proudly concerned with the black musical tradition, a similar (perhaps even stronger) one emerges in Brennan's description of rap as both "re- generative chaos" and "an aural museum" (pp. 680, 681). Part of the reason for conflicting descriptions is that rap itself reflects the contradictions of the sociocultural and artistic fields in which it is generated (for example, the need to fight for peace, the need to succeed commercially yet not "sell out" by being commercial).8 Conflicting accounts also result

Claude Brown, "The Language of Soul," and Thomas Kochman, "Toward an Ethnography of Black American Speech Behavior," in Rappin'and Stylin'Out: Communicationin UrbanBlack America(Urbana, Ill., 1972), pp. 189-204, 315-35, 134-39, and 241-64. 8. For a more detailed account of these and other contradictions as well as some pragmatist strategies for dealing with them, see PA, pp. 208-11 and Shusterman, "LArt comme infraction," pp. 151-53. CriticalInquiry Autumn 1995 157 from rap's being blessed with a variety of genres or styles, some incredibly earnest and moralistic (for example, BDP's "The Real Holy Place"), others simply playful (for example, Run DMC's "You Be Illin"'), others at once playful and moralistic (for example, Kool Moe Dee's "Go See the Doctor," Salt 'n' Pepa's "Shake Your Thang"). Since rap is too often identi- fied with gangsta rap and the pimpin' style, Brennan's article is valuable for articulating hip-hop's different genres and themes. Such work is cru- cial for a nuanced aesthetic appreciation of rap.

But is not the whole idea of such appreciation a huge, pernicious category mistake? This is perhaps the most disturbing challenge that Brennan and I must face: the argument that sophisticated aesthetic attention destroys rap's character by expropriating it from its popular audience and popular modes of reception. Does not the refined complexity of Brennan's appreciation (reinforced by his sharp critique of other rap commentary) suggest that simpler, less intellectual responses are somehow inferior, even if they are more typical of rap consumption? And is this not an exploitative theft of the cultural goods of an oppressed people by a dominant elite, a theft that moreover destroys the very quality of rap by imposing on it a foreign, academic mode of appreciation? Such a process, where intellectualized modes of appropriation are used to transform popular art into elite art, is quite common in cultural history.9 In a related critique, Pierre Bourdieu's circle has challenged my aesthetics of popular art for committing the fallacy of "participationism," that is, falsely confusing intellectual modes of response with "native" experience and thus presenting the scholar's as the only informed response.10 Brennan seems even more vulnerable to this charge by insisting on "rap's all-important feel" and by relying too much on feeling as a critical touchstone. He will surely be asked why his feeling of rap's "feel" is the right one. How, indeed, can it be measured against the feelings of other, more typical rap consumers who do not write for CriticalInquiry and do not share his aesthetic grid of rap reception? The best way to meet this strong line of argument is to recognize the real dangers of intellectualist imperialism and insist that less intellectual-

9. Lawrence Levine shows this through the elitist transfiguration of Shakespeare and opera in nineteenth-century America in his Highbrow/Lowbrow:The Emergenceof Cultural Hierarchyin America (Cambridge, Mass., 1988). 10. Bourdieu made this point in considering the French version of PA for its eventual publication in his series with Minuit; and it reappeared in the work of his associate Louis Pinto, who reviewed the book in Politix, no. 20 (1992): 169-74. I provide more detailed responses to their criticisms and to others that arose in the context of the book's French reception in "Legitimer la legitimation de l'art populaire," Politix, no. 24 (1993): 153-67. 158 CriticalResponse RichardShusterman ized modes of responding to popular art be respected as fully legitimate and useful. Since art affords various appreciative modes, the intellectualist appreciation of popular art does not logically entail the disenfran- chisement of its more common modes of reception. This happens only when sophisticated aesthetic criticism is allowed to claim exclusive cultural legitimacy. All that Brennan and I desire is that it have a place along with other modes of response. To protect the value of popular reception by barring all intellectualist modes seems an excessive measure. More- over, it relies on a questionable dichotomy between "popular" and "intellectual" that ignores the many intellectuals in and out of the academy who enthusiastically consume, discuss, and study popular art. Brennan's survey of the growing body of rap criticism makes this clear. Sociological or PC purists may reject this whole body of criticism as false to rap's true meaning, which should be studied only through ethno- graphical research of rap's reception by its original target audience. Prag- matists reply that this argument's implicit appeal to one fixed "true" meaning and audience unproductively ghettoizes and petrifies rap's import. But doesn't this ethnically purist approach at least respectfully ac- cord with rap's proud identification as ghetto music? Here we face another of rap's deep tensions. In celebrating its ghetto roots and allegiance, rap is usually far from idealizing ghetto life. Though seeking to preserve the status of ghetto sound, it does not want its sound and message confined there, leaving the complacency of the rest of society untroubled and untransformed. Instead, rap aims to extend "its pen- etration to the heart of the nation" (Ice-T) so as to "teach the bourgeois" (Public Enemy) as well as the ghetto." Thus, even if lacking the authority of insider experience and ethnic purity, good aesthetic criticism (like Brennan's) in good "bourgeois" journals like CriticalInquiry can promote rap's project of outreach. Through its relevance, readability, and engag- ing flavor, such criticism might also help the academy's project of cultural outreach, which may need more help than rap's.

11. These phrases come from Ice-T's "Heartbeat" (Power;Sire 9 25765-1, 1988) and Public Enemy's "Don't Believe the Hype" (It Takesa Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Def Jam 44303, 1988). Rap's influence, of course, goes well beyond our nation's borders, achiev- ing an international, multiethnic following that befits its diasporic roots. Already by the mid-1980s, the legendary rap DJ Afrika Bambaataa had established a racially mixed branch of his Zulu Nation in Paris. Nor should we forget that rap's major American figures do not always have pure underclass ghetto origins. The social field of hip-hop artists and audiences needs careful study, and my advocacy for aesthetic criticism does not gainsay the value of more sociological approaches to rap's production and reception. Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culturein ContemporaryAmerica (Hanover, N.H., 1994), shows how a fine study of the institutional workings of the rap music industry can inform rap's artistic appreciation.