Pit Bulls and Dogfighting as Symbols of Masculinity in Hip Hop Culture

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 852-871
Author(s):  
Claudia Alonso-Recarte
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
The Other ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Gangsta Rap ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Multiple Meanings ◽  
Dog Breed ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Cultural Connections

This article explores the aesthetic and cultural connections between the hyper-masculinization inherent to hip hop culture (and particularly to gangsta rap), the pit bull dog breed, and dogfighting. Building on recent scholarship that has identified the racial and racist assumptions underlying the pit bull controversy, I provide further evidence and arguments on how the highly racialized and genderized hip hop discourses inoculate the pit bull body and suffuse it with multiple meanings reminiscent of America’s traumatic encounter with otherness. As a palimpsest that attests to both mainstream and countercultural explorations of racialized masculinities, the pit bull body is made to “perform” its role as both an agent and a victim within the nation’s compulsive need to control and monitor the “other.”

Rap, Islam and Jihadi Cool: The attractions of the Western jihadi subculture

2021 ◽  
pp. 174165902110255
Author(s):  
Sune Qvotrup Jensen ◽  
Jeppe Fuglsang Larsen ◽  
Sveinung Sandberg
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Hip Hop Music ◽  
Hybrid Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

Recent scholarship has explored the potential of subcultural theory for understanding the convergence of Western street and jihadi subcultures. The role of jihadi rap in this radical hybrid culture, however, is yet uncharted. We argue that subcultural analysis allows an understanding of the aesthetic fascination of jihadism, sometimes referred to as jihadi cool, and that jihadi rap should be seen as an integrated part of this cultural amalgam. To better understand the role of hip-hop in the hybrid street-jihadi culture, this paper offers a historical analysis of the relationship between hip-hop and Islam and detailed insight into the more contemporary, and marginal, phenomena of jihadi rap. We track the continuities and discontinuities from the presence of Black Islam in early hip hop to recent convergences between hip hop and jihadism. Our analysis draws on Lévi-Strauss concepts of bricolage and floating signifiers. Subcultures and hip-hop music are seen as bricolages that draw on a multitude of cultural references with their own particular history. In these cultural bricolages, Islam often acts as a floating signifier, with different and often ambiguous meanings. We argue and demonstrate that Islam has a long history of being part of hip-hop rebellion and attraction and that this, channelled through jihadi rap, can contribute to jihadi cool and the contemporary pull of Western jihadi subcultures.

Trying on Extremism

2019 ◽  
pp. 24-50
Author(s):  
Cynthia Miller-Idriss
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
The Other ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Empirical Base ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Social ◽  
Youth Subcultures ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Meaning System

This chapter situates the empirical base of this book within theories of culture, nationalism, iconography, and youth extremist subcultures. It begins by describing two prevailing notions of how culture “works”—one that presents culture as a coherent meaning system and the other that characterizes it as a “tool kit” of actions and strategies. The chapter also addresses theories of extremism and youth subcultures, arguing that previous research on nationalism and extremism has paid more attention to political dimensions than cultural ones. Finally, it links far right commercial symbols to recent scholarship on visual symbols, arguing that attention to the aesthetic dimensions of far right subculture is particularly overdue in light of the recent “iconic” turn in the social sciences. As the chapter points out, sociologists' ongoing attention to Marxist understanding of economic objects and their relationship to class-based exploitation has led many scholars to overlook the potential for economic objects to have constitutive power for individuals' lives, identities, sense of belonging, or—in this case—the extremist participation of consumers.

For Those in the “Ghetto Torture Chambers”

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Teutsch ◽  
Jason Lee Oakes
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Connective Tissue ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Gangsta Rap ◽  
Cultural Productions ◽  
And Gender

This chapter explores the connective tissue that joins the urban noir tradition to the representations of antiheros that populate Iceberg Slim’s texts and many hip hop narratives. Specifically, it analyzes Slim’s construction of realness in his writings and his 1976 album Reflections in order to understand how his work shapes a notion of “pulp authenticity” that would come to influence gangsta rap. Slim and his hip hop progeny arose from the noir tradition, a literary genre that confronted anxieties of race and gender identity amid an ever-changing urban landscape. Pulp authenticity incorporates the sensational on one hand and varying forms of genuineness on the other, appearing in African American noir cultural productions in the latter part of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. At its core, pulp authenticity funnels “genuineness” through a genre that privileges the sensational.

Jesus and Postsoul Satire on the Small Screen

2020 ◽  
pp. 103-122
Author(s):  
Eric Thurman
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
Racial Diversity ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Black Masculinity ◽  
Black Culture ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
First Century ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Gangsta Rap ◽  
Race And Religion

This essay explores how Aaron McGruder’s television show Black Jesus uses satire to critique constructions of race and religion in twenty-first-century America. It begins with an overview of representations of Jesus in popular media, highlighting both the dominant convention of depicting Jesus as white and the increasing racial diversity of representations in pop culture artifacts. The essay suggests that McGruder’s show is best understood as an example of postsoul satire, that is, forms of comedy produced by African American humorists that target stereotypes within black culture as well as the persistence of white racism. To support this claim, the essay discusses how the show’s humor satirizes white-dominated society, including representations of a white Jesus, as well as the ideals of black masculinity expressed in hip-hop culture and gangsta rap. The essay concludes by situating McGruder’s satire in the context of antiracist work by Black Lives Matter activists.

Jefferson’s Paradox, or a Very Brief History of Black Women’s Sexuality, Hip-Hop, and American Culture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
Women's Sexuality ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gangsta Rap ◽  
Women’S Sexuality ◽  
History Of

American representations of black women’s sexuality extend from the political culture of the eighteenth century to the public and popular culture of the twenty-first. Hip-hop culture may now be at the center of the phenomenon, and antiblack misogyny seems to emanate from gangsta rap music. However, Thomas Jefferson’s racial theses on blacks, and black women in particular, from his Notes on the State of Virginia helped form this perspective. Jefferson’s tradition of flattened-out, uncomplicated, and sexually and racially violent representations and understandings of black women and their sexuality continue in our contemporary moment, as does his biased aesthetic evaluations of them based on ideas of white superiority.

Introduction

2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Christopher Driscoll
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Academy ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Hip Hop Culture

At the 2010 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion held in Atlanta, GA, a group of young scholars organized a wildcard session titled “What’s This ‘Religious’ in Hip Hop Culture?” The central questions under investigation by the panel were 1) what about hip hop culture is religious? and 2) how are issues of theory and method within African American religious studies challenged and/or rethought because of the recent turn to hip hop as both subject of study and cultural hermeneutic. Though some panelists challenged this “religious” in hip hop, all agreed that hip hop is of theoretical and methodological import for African American religious studies and religious studies in general. This collection of essays brings together in print many findings from that session and points out the implications of hip hop's influence on religious scholars' theoretical and methodological concerns.

scholarly journals Research on Planning and Design of Urban Architectural Color in Changchun

2020 ◽  
Vol 165 ◽  
pp. 04029
Author(s):  
Zhang Cui
Keyword(s):  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Design Guidelines ◽  
The Other ◽  
New Era ◽  
Color Design ◽  
Planning And Design ◽  
Surrounding Environment ◽  
The Aesthetic

Architecture is the soul of city color. The planning focus of city color is city architecture, especially the planning control of the main wall color of street buildings. The design of architectural color should not only consider the surrounding environment of the building, the content of the building and the building materials, but also proceed from the aesthetic needs and conform to the principle of color engineering. On this basis, the plan proposes color design guidelines and relies on scientific and standardized “urban building color design guidelines” to achieve the purpose of maintaining the original appearance of history and creating a new era style. Besides the traditional buildings, the other “architectural color guidelines” should leave more room for manoeuvre and not restrict the creative thinking of architects.

Adorno’s Philistine: the Dialectic of Art and its Other

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Paul Ingram
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Critical Potential ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Critical Turn ◽  
The Ideal

Abstract Theodor Adorno’s philistine functions as the other of art, or as the ideal embodiment of everything that the bourgeois aesthetic subject is not. He insists on the truth-content of the derogation, while recognising its unjust social foundation, and seeking to reflect that tension in a self-critical turn. His model of advanced art is negatively delimited by the philistinism of art with a cause and the philistinism of art for enjoyment, which represent the poles of the aesthetic and the social. The philistine is also the counterpart to the connoisseur, with the interplay between them pointing to his preferred approach to aesthetics, in which an affinity for art and alienness to it are combined without compromise. However, Adorno fails to realise fully the critical potential of the philistine as the immanent negation of art and aesthetics.

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