Neurotica

2019 ◽  
pp. 112-140
Author(s):  
Susan G. Davis
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Small Group ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Order Book ◽  
Allen Ginsberg ◽  
Mail Order ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
History Of

In search of an outlet for his book Love & Death, Legman joined Irving “Jay” Landesman in publishing the little magazine Neurotica: A Journal of Lay Psychoanalysis (1948-51).This chapter sets out the history of Neurotica and unfolds its transformation under Legman’s editorship from a poetry journal to a forceful, enigmatic voice of postwar alienation. Legman and Landesman collected a small group of New York writers who would later be called “Beats” (including Allen Ginsberg, John Clellon Holmes, and Chandler Brossard) and began to publish their harsh criticisms of American conformity. Legman’s essays, including pieces of Love & Death, were the fiercest attacks on American culture, and he soon made Neurotica a pointed and provocative experiment in describing American consumerism. Legman engaged the young Marshall McLuhan in Neurotica’s explorations of the weirdness of American advertising. The magazine attracted the attention of postal inspectors, and Legman found himself under investigation for sending obscene materials through the mail. A finding against him effectively ended Neurotica and Legman’s mail-order book business.

The Museum of Primitive Art, 1940–1982

Entitled ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 41-69
Author(s):  
Jennifer C. Lena
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Small Group ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Metropolitan Museum ◽  
Ideal Case ◽  
Metropolitan Museum Of Art ◽  
Art Collection ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation

This chapter discusses the creation of the Museum of Primitive Art (MPA). The history of Michael C. Rockefeller's primitive art collection provides an ideal case study of the process of artistic legitimation. Through a detailed analysis of the complete organizational archive—including memos, publications, journals, and administrative paperwork—one can observe this process in detail. The small group of MPA administrators fought to promote artistic interpretations of the objects in the collection against the established view that they were anthropological curiosities. However, these objects were removed from their sites of production and early circulation and left in the care of American curators and tastemakers to make of them what they will; in Rockefeller's case, he leveraged them to produce capital he used in a struggle with other collectors and museum administrators. What he did not do is redistribute those resources toward living artists or register much hesitation about moving those objects to New York. Nor did he have to acknowledge the labor done by earlier advocates of these arts in black internationalist movements. Nevertheless, Rockefeller's triumph was the eventual inclusion of his collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), as the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing.

Hip-Hop, Gangs, and the Criminalization of African American Culture: A Critical Appraisal of Yes Yes Y’all

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serouj Aprahamian
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Critical Appraisal ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Street Gangs ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Influential Book

It is commonly assumed that hip-hop was born when street gangs in the Bronx, New York, channeled their energy from violence and crime to music and artistic expression. I critically interrogate this dominant narrative through an examination of the influential book Yes Yes Y’all: The Experience Music Project Oral History of Hip-Hop’s First Decade (hereafter “YYY”). Drawing from the original interview transcripts used for YYY, I compare the gang-origin narrative espoused in the book with the primary accounts of early hip-hop practitioners featured within it. Special attention is given to the divergences between the two sources, demonstrating how the claim that hip-hop came from gangs is unsubstantiated by relevant interviewee accounts. I discuss how the prevalence of this false narrative in studies of hip-hop history overall is part of a broader historic pattern of associating working class African American culture with criminality.

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