Intermediality, Rewriting Histories, and Identities in French Rap

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Intermediality, Rewriting Histories, and Identities in French Rap CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 13 (2011) Issue 3 Article 18 Intermediality, Rewriting Histories, and Identities in French Rap Isabelle Marc Martínez Complutense University Madrid Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <[email protected]> Recommended Citation Marc Martínez, Isabelle. "Intermediality, Rewriting Histories, and Identities in French Rap." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 13.3 (2011): <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1804> This text has been double-blind peer reviewed by 2+1 experts in the field. The above text, published by Purdue University Press ©Purdue University, has been downloaded 1525 times as of 11/ 07/19. This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. This is an Open Access journal. This means that it uses a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. Readers may freely read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles. This journal is covered under the CC BY-NC-ND license. UNIVERSITY PRESS <http://www.thepress.purdue.edu > CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 < http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb > Purdue University Press ©Purdue University CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture , the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." In addition to the publication of articles, the journal publishes review articles of scholarly books and publishes research material in its Library Series. Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Langua- ge Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monog- raph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: < [email protected] > Volume 13 Issue 3 (September 2011) Article 18 Isabelle Marc Martínez, "Intermediality, Rewriting Histories, and Identities in French Rap" <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol13/iss3/18> Contents of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 13.3 (2011) Thematic issue New Perspectives on Material Culture and Intermedial Practice Ed. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, Asunción López-Varela, Haun Saussy, and Jan Mieszkowski <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol13/iss3/ > Abstract: In her article "Intermediality, Rewriting Histories and Identities in French Rap" Isabelle Marc Martínez analyzes aspects of French hip hop culture. As an example of resistant cultural manifes- tations, hip hop scenes all over the world develop strategies to subvert mainstream values and to re- place them by new de-localized, contesting identities via intermedial and intertextual processes. In France during the 1990 rap was intended to reassess French national history and national self- perception. Foundational hip hop bands such as Assassin, Ministère AMER, IAM, and NTM aimed at discrediting official narratives concerning the French culture's colonial and social past. hip hop artists, who viewed themselves as poets in a romantic vein, invested themselves with a responsibility that was political, ethical and aesthetic. From this position of poetic superiority, they attempted to alter official narratives by questioning and reviewing the educational system of France. The outcome of the- se resistant strategies was the forging of new multicultural and multiethnic identities of French culture, which have been in fact partly appropriated by mainstream culture and politics. Isabelle Marc Martínez, "Intermediality, Rewriting Histories, and Identities in French Rap" page 2 of 9 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 13.3 (2011): <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol13/iss3/18> Thematic issue New Perspectives on Material Culture and Intermedial Practice . Ed. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, Asunción López-Varela, Haun Saussy, and Jan Mieszkowski Isabelle MARC MARTÍNEZ Intermediality, Rewriting Histories, and Identities in French Rap Cultures often recur to historical discourses and narratives in order to legitimize their existence. This is particularly true in hip hop culture, which constitutes a new space of representation for communities in search of a new identity which will be partly founded in the articulation of historical narratives different from official and hegemonic ones. Like in other forms of resistant and subversive music, rap music gives individuals who feel socially and culturally dispossessed an aesthetic experience which helps them building their identity in relation to their immediate world, their physical appearance, their com- mon denial of superstructures, and also in relation to their memories, their traditions, or their real or symbolic origins. In this context, reclaiming the past and questioning dominant historiography, while rejecting mainstream views and values, become discursive strategies aimed to (re-)build their de- localized identities, situating them in new socio-cultural vernacular spaces. In hip hop — a genre that is a prime example of intermedial cultural production — the construction and expression of identity against mainstream society represents social relevance in several cultural spaces including France. I begin with the question of how is music able to contribute shaping identities? As an aesthetic manifestation, music plays a prominent role in the semiotic community that forms a culture. "Serious" music but also folk and popular music constitute core elements in shaping cultural heritage and cul- tural identity. In its relation to society, music is an aesthetic experience which is created, produced and received in a specific social group to which it is complexly related. As Brian Longhurst points out, understanding music requires taking into account its production system, its own form and objectives and the readings of its audience (249). Music, especially contemporary popular music because of its ubiquity and accessibility, is a cultural product and practice with symbolic and ideological content. Moreover, on the individual level, music is a core element in the process of forging symbolic identity, both individual and social. Music plays an important role in the way people situate themselves in soci- ety, that is, in the way they create their identity, defined as the process by which a subject symboli- cally positions himself or herself in a specific community (see, e.g., Frith, Popular Music: Music and Identity ). In fact, "music, like identity, is both performance and story, describes the social in the indi- vidual and the individual in the social, the mind in the body and the body in the mind; identity, like music, is a matter of both ethics and aesthetics" (Frith, "Music and Identity" 294). Therefore, musical experience (as performance and as listening) helps the subject locating himself/herself in relation to a socio-economic group and to an aesthetic, ideological, and symbolic community. Music does not ex- press a social group's beliefs or values; on the contrary, as Simon Frith affirms, "social groups only get to know themselves as groups (as a particular organization of individual and social interests, of same- ness and difference) through cultural activity, through aesthetic judgement" (Frith, "Music and Iden- tity" 296). In everyday life, as Tia DeNora points out, "music has power. It is implicated in every di- mensions of social agency … Music may influence how people compose their bodies, how they conduct themselves, how they experience the passage of time, how they feel — in terms of energy and emo- tion — about themselves, about others, and about situations" (DeNora 17). In this complex process of building identity, music contributes to the narrativization of place, that is, to the representation that links the subject to his or her location, to
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