Poetic Knowledge and the Organic Intellectuals in Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry

Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont CGU Theses & Dissertations CGU Student Scholarship Fall 2019 A Matter of Life and Def: Poetic Knowledge and the Organic Intellectuals in Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Anthony Blacksher Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd Part of the African American Studies Commons, Africana Studies Commons, American Literature Commons, American Popular Culture Commons, Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Ethnic Studies Commons, Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons, Poetry Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Social History Commons, Sociology of Culture Commons, Television Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Blacksher, Anthony. (2019). A Matter of Life and Def: Poetic Knowledge and the Organic Intellectuals in Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 148. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/148. doi: 10.5642/cguetd/148 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the CGU Student Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in CGU Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A Matter of Life and Def: Poetic Knowledge and the Organic Intellectuals in Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry By Anthony Blacksher Claremont Graduate University 2019 i Copyright Anthony Blacksher, 2019 All rights reserved ii Approval of the Dissertation Committee This dissertation has been duly read, reviewed, and critiqued by the Committee listed below, which hereby approves the manuscript of Anthony Blacksher as fulfilling the scope and quality requirements for meriting the degree of doctorate of philosophy in Cultural Studies with a certificate in Africana Studies. David Luis-Brown, Chair Claremont Graduate University Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and English Matthew Delmont Dartmouth College Professor of History Eve Oishi Claremont Graduate University Associate Professor of Cultural Studies Joshua Goode Claremont Graduate University Associate Professor of Cultural Studies iii Abstract A Matter of Life and Def: Poetic Knowledge and the Organic Intellectuals in Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry By Anthony S. Blacksher Claremont Graduate University: 2019 In December of 2001, Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry (Def Poetry Jam) turned HBO viewers into audience members of a televised poetry reading, featuring spoken word and performance poetry. Over six seasons, actors, rappers, comedians, and the host, Mos Def, joined poets in a unique representation of counter-public open mic poetry readings and poetry slams. This dissertation unpacks the poetry, performances, and the production of Def Poetry Jam to explore how a performative art embodied and confronted racial discourses, including stereotypes and also, addressed the racism, patriotism, and imperialist discourses that circulated after 9/11. Def Poetry Jam contributes to the intellectual capacity of spoken word and performance poetry, and poets as intellectuals, where poets produce and disseminate knowledge, ideas, and data, in the form of narratives, that contribute to critical consciousness. The effectiveness of the series lay in the consistent blurring of entertainment, knowledge, anti-capitalism, and capitalism. This research demonstrates how Def Poetry Jam provided organic intellectuals, through poetry, a space to name the pain of history, demonstrate pleasure amid structural inequality, and to imagine themselves in liberatory ways. The following questions guided this exploration of Def Poetry Jam: from which poetic traditions did Def Poetry Jam originate and thus represent to television audiences; how did the on-screen representation of performers and poetry contribute to the production of cultural iv consciousnesses; and finally, how did Def Poetry Jam offer an archive of knowledge about the United States, particularly those experiences of African-Americans and people of color, in the early twenty-first century? Following a content analysis of the three hundred ninety-four performances on the series, supplemented by interviews with talent coordinators Shihan Van Clief and Walter Mudu, as well as poets Mayda del Valle, Abyss, Willie Perdomo, Javon Johnson, and Bob Holman who appeared on the show, this research found Def Poetry Jam, as a commercial project, negotiated cultural resistance within the controlling images of Black bodies and people of color on television. Their poetry extended the Black radical poetic tradition, that, in-large part began with the Harlem Renaissance, and continued through jazz poetry, the Black Arts Movement, hip-hop, and poetry slams. Building on the ideas of Antonio Gramsci, poets on Def Poetry Jam served as organic intellectuals, engaging in the cultural and political struggle for hegemony and the dominant ways of understanding social processes. Whereas poets are typically considered traditional intellectuals who participate in the struggle for hegemony through narration and observation, Def Poets were presented as participants who use spoken word and performance poetry to build critical consciousness among Black communities and communities of color. In performing this intellectual work on television, poets represented themselves and were represented by the television series as easily recognizable members of racial and ethnic groups by invoking the controlling images and stereotypes that their poetry confronted. This research, therefore, builds on Mark Anthony Neal’s work on illegibility, where subjugated bodies challenge the very representation they seem to embody. Neal’s introduction of the ThugNiggaIntellectual, especially captures the representation of Def Poetry Jam, as poets subverted the stereotypes and v controlling images to link the imperialism and systemic racism of the United States to the interpersonal relationships, community building, and daily life in the 21st century. As a television series, Def Poetry Jam’s collection of performances serves as an archive of knowledge confronting the ideology of American patriotism and neoliberalism in a post 9/11 United States. In presenting Def Poetry Jam as an archive of knowledge, this research introduces sociopoetix as a method of critical analysis for spoken word and performance poetry. Grounded in Aimé Césaire’s valuing of poetic knowledge and Michel Foucault’s method of problematization, sociopoetix further depicts the poets of Def Poetry Jam as organic intellectuals in the struggle for hegemony. However, like much of Russell Simmons’ “Def” projects, this research finds Def Poetry Jam to be a television show that negotiated political and cultural radicalism with a commercial viability grounded in the multiculturalism of hip-hop. The series’ negotiation of critical consciousness and reproduction of neoliberal ideals, especially where cultural and political radicalism became the commodity, illustrates what Regina Bradley describes as messy intellectualism. As Def Poetry Jam allowed performances, particularly by Black poets, to speak candidly about systemic oppression and to make meaning of their own experiences, identities, and humanity on television, this research explores the series’ role in the context of Black television. Building on Manthia Diawara’s of outline of new Black realism in film, this research offers Def Poetry Jam as a televised successor of that genre, pioneering a narrative technique defined as matter-based narration. While much of this research foregrounds the relationship between performances of poetry and the social contexts to which these poems responded, the mise-en- scene and representation of Black bodies, particularly Black women’s bodies, made Def Poetry Jam a significant, if understated, television series in history of Black television. vi Dedication Dedicated to the poets of Def Poetry Jam and to my father, Anthony Blacksher, the most organic intellectual. vii Acknowledgements Properly acknowledging all the folks who contributed to this research is in and of itself a dissertation-length manuscript. Therefore, please consider this a list of partial acknowledgments, with others reserved for more appropriate expressions of gratitude. Foremost, I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my dissertation committee. The radiant positivity of David Luis-Brown and the affirmation of Matthew Delmont in the critical study of Black popular culture is the very foundation of this project. Eve Oishi gave me a new way of seeing poetry on- screen, and Joshua Goode helped me employ my historical lens. I am deeply indebted to Sharon Elise, for serving on my qualifying examination committee and for pioneering the method of sociopoetics which I and so many others now practice. I gratefully acknowledge the Faculty Research Committee of Claremont Graduate University for awarding me the CGU Dissertation Fellowship, which allowed me to study in New York. Similarly, I am thankful to researchers and staff at New York University’s Fales Library and Special Collections, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Theatre on Film and Tape Archive, and the Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture JBH Research and Reference Division. The completion of this research would not be possible without the folks who gave their time to speak with me about their experiences on Def Poetry Jam. I cannot begin to express

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