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Subverting Value Chains Through Liberatory Cultural Production

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Subverting Value Chains Through Liberatory Cultural Production Cultural De-commodification: Subverting Value Chains Through Liberatory Cultural Production Luam Kidane Department of Art History and Communication Studies McGill University, Montreal April, 2016 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts © Luam Kidane, 2016 1 2 Abstract Freedom is a perpetual process, which can neither be defined nor predetermined. Any attempt at freedom is therefore an improvisation, an experimentation. Cultural production can act as a site for this improvisation to take root: a viaduct from which experimentations in colour, sound, form, movement and letters allows for dialogue and explorations of liberation practices. Liberatory cultural production is a process through which interventions, provocations, modifications, and proposals are made for the purposes of expressing, understanding, shaping, and interrogating political, cultural and social frameworks. This includes music, writing, movement, language, visual art, performance, as well as other forms of expression meant to inform and create how we relate to culture. These sites of cultural production which improvise freedom challenge the commodification of cultural production because they force a conceptualization of value outside of money, utility, exchange and labour. This thesis interrogates the relationship between value, liberation and cultural production through Marxist theory, Black Radical Thought, and a case study of Senegalese hip-hop from 1980-2012 in order to assert that cultural production which is a site for the improvisation of freedom has a liberatory value which subverts the law of value at the heart of the capitalist economy. 3 Résumé La liberté est un processus perpetuel qui ne peut ni être définie ou prédéterminée. Ainsi toutes tentatives de liberté sont des improvisations, des expérimentations. La production culturelle peut agir comme un site pour que cette improvisation puisse prendre racine: un viaduc à partir de laquelle des expérimentations en couleur, son, de forme, de mouvement et en lettres permet un dialogue et l’exploration des pratiques de liberté. La production culturelle libératoire est un processus par lequel des interventions, des provocations, des modifications, et des propositions sont faites aux fins d'exprimer, la compréhension, l'élaboration et l'interrogation des cadres politiques, culturels et sociaux. Cela inclut la musique, l'écriture, le mouvement, la langue, l'art visuel, la performance, ainsi que d'autres formes d'expression destinés à informer et créer notre rapport à la culture. Ces sites de production culturelle qui improvisent la liberté défient la marchandisation de la production culturelle et de sa relation avec la valeur monétaire parce qu'ils forcent une conceptualisation de valeur en dehors de l’argent, l’utilité, l’échange et le travail. Cette thèse interroge la relation entre la valeur, la libération et la production culturelle à travers la théorie marxiste, la pensée radicale noire, et une étude de cas du hip-hop Sénégalais de 1980- 2012 afin de faire valoir que la production culturelle qui se donne comme site pour l'improvisation de la liberté a une valeur libératoire qui subvertit la loi de la valeur au cœur de l'économie capitaliste. 4 Acknowledgements I would like to begin by acknowledging the work and sacrifices of my ancestors and my community who constructed the foundations for the imaginings of freedom which I continue to build upon. I would like to express my gratitude to my two supervisors Dr. Charmaine A. Nelson and Dr. Jenny Burman for their insights and support throughout the duration of my studies as a graduate student in the Art History and Communications department and in the writing of this thesis. This thesis is dedicated to Zion, my mother and my first example of what living a life dedicated to the freedom of African peoples looks like, to Fanus, Tsegereda, Lucia, Rezan, Michael, Solomon, Efrem, Haile, and Warren, the village who helped to raise me, to Hakima and Jamila, my family and constant creative inspirations, and to each friend who walks with me as a I continue to journey and learn. Free the people. Free the land. May the borders erase. 5 6 Table of Contents Table of Contents .............................................................................................................................7 Preface. .............................................................................................................................................9 Introduction. ...................................................................................................................................11 Chapter One: Becoming Jazz .........................................................................................................25 Chapter Two: Liberatory Value .....................................................................................................37 What is Value? ...................................................................................................................47 The Great Debate ...............................................................................................................51 Liberatory Value ................................................................................................................56 Chapter Three: Senegal, Cultural Production, and Freedom .........................................................61 The State and Cultural Production .....................................................................................61 How is Culture Valued in Senegal .....................................................................................69 Negritude and Pan-Africanism ..........................................................................................71 The Liberatory Value of Hip Hop in Senegal ....................................................................75 Conclusion: On the Horizons of Victory .......................................................................................85 Reference .......................................................................................................................................90 7 8 Preface “I still do not recognize a necessary conflict between the sonnet and the bow and arrow,” wrote June Jordan in 1986, “I do not accept that immersion into our collective quest for things beautiful will [hinder] our own ability to honor the right of all human beings to survive.” (Kuhn, 1995) Luam I was named by my grandmother born in a time of chaos she wanted to set an intention that I would be surrounded by serenity Letentensae, or Aday as I call her, was a woman who never ceased to marvel at the world around her. She took the contradictions of life and saw the beauty in paradoxical results. Aday was not the stuff of movies, not the word protesters chant out in unison. My grandmother will not be found in the Black sections of bookstores. she did not speak English or have streets named after her, to be commemorated in death. Aday was the stuff of jazz songs, improvised to perfect pitch. In an article about a love supreme it was written that John Coltrane would repeat basic themes in all keys because “he [was] 9 consciously exhausting every path…” in a “…musical recitation of prayer by horn.” (Springer, 2013) Letetensae was a love supreme and an artist at work, creating dangerously so her children could walk softly. She, an alchemist by birth, saw sites of survival as more than sites of fracture.1 I have been surrounded by people who have infused creativity and joy into their liberation practices. This thesis focuses on the liberatory value of cultural production because it is through song, photographs, paintings, poems, drum beats, ceremony and dancing that I have seen freedom dreams take flight, because it is through cultural production that I have experienced insurgent imagination take root, planting the seeds of autonomy, self-determination, and freedom for African peoples. 1 This is an excerpt from a keynote I delivered for SpeakSudan in March 2014. It was reprinted in the Feminist Wire in April 2014. 10 Introduction As a daughter of an Eritrean freedom fighter I grew up learning about the struggle for independence in Eritrea and the strategies which the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) deployed in order to mobilize and inspire the 30 year struggle for independence from Ethiopia (1970-1991). It was as part of these early learnings that I was first introduced to the idea that freedom is not an endpoint but rather a continual process that we are always building towards. Since freedom has no end point as such, we have not reached freedom, and as a result, visions of freedom are, by necessity, improvisations or experimentations in what ‘could be’. (Muñoz, 2009; Roberts, 2015) I discuss the proposition of freedom as an improvisation or experimentation in more detail in Chapter Two. My desire to study cultural production as a site for transformation is informed by some of the tactics of the EPLF that I grew up hearing about. In particular, the EPLF used cultural production, specifically theatre, radio, and visual art, to build collective visions of freedom and conduct popular and political education. (Firebrace and Holland, 1985) My mother would relay to me how the EPLF, for instance, would take traditional fables and stage theatrical plays in which the main storyline would be amended to include revolutionary characters fighting for their self-determination. These stories of the
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