"No Logos?" JPMS 23:2

[justindburton]

I don't mean to overlook the effective and enjoyable critique of Bradley and DuBois's Anthology of Rap that Marshall offers in this essay, but the paragraph that really stood out isn't so much about the anthology as it is about the defensive posture hip hop scholars can often find themselves in.

Legitimacy has been a hobgoblin haunting much of the academic literature on hip-hop. Such a stance may have made sense at a certain time, when hip-hop was roundly attacked in public media even as it made its commercial ascent, and it may yet make sense in certain contexts (English and music departments come to mind). But it is a revealing and distracting preoccupation, saying more about the academic contexts in which young scholars seek sanction to teach hip-hop in their classes than, say, the wider world, where hip-hop pervades popular culture.

 

There's some good synergy here with Alexandra Vazquez's "How Can I Refuse?" where one of Vazquez's refusals is to explain "Latin Music" anymore. With explanation often comes defense. Things that don't need explaining don't need defense; and if it's unfamiliar enough to require explanation, the audience will often likely require an apology, too. But a defensive posture is taxing, and it may well invite attack, so the defense of hip-hop or "Latin Music" not only saps our energy and distracts us from more worthwhile inquiries, but it may also feed the perception that the study of these things is illegitimate.

Marshall's mention of hip-hop classes is especially intriguing. I never feel a classroom deflate quite so much as when I get sidetracked explaining academic politics and lose sight of the music at hand. It's a mistake I made often when I first began teaching, and I've mostly curbed it, but as long as I ever feel the need to defend my subject matter, I'll always be susceptible to losing my way in the classroom. When in the defensive posture, I'm always looking for trouble, always ready to fight off an attack, even if the attack is perceived instead of real. Perhaps the best way to keep the classroom fresh is to adopt one of Vazquez's refusals and drop the defensive pose altogether.

[Barry Shank]

One of the reasons that I love popular music studies is that it forces
us to walk this line constantly--the line between the pressures and
contexts of academic knowledge production and the pressures and
contexts of the lives of our students. In our field, we are not
pandering to our students when we acknowledge these competing
pressures. Justin describes the deflation in the classroom that
occurs whenever he finds himself tacking too far towards academic
issues. But it is not just the air in the room that he's talking
about.

Popular music studies foregrounds questions of the popular and
questions of authority. By its very nature. At its best, this
situation should make us constantly uncomfortable. And, if we are
good, we should be able to make this condition of discomfort a shared
learning context for our students. That's a lot to ask for. But I
think it might be the most important part of our job.

I feel a deep commitment to a canon of popular music and to a canon of
popular music studies. At the same time, I recognize that these
canons are continually deconstructed and rebuilt, by and through the
actions of musicians, fans, non-academic critics as well as scholars
of popular music studies. (As Guy Ramsey points out, many of us in
the academy occupy more than one of these positions.) This interaction
of the professional knowledge brigade and the personal investments of
amateurs (in the best sense) is almost a utopian opportunity for us to
confront real questions of what counts as legitimate authority and
legitimate knowledge? What kinds of knowledge are worth time in a
college classroom? How deeply should we go in the mutual
acknowledgment of different forms of intellectual authority? To what
extent can (should) knowledge about popular music be differentiated
from taste? To what extent can (should) judgements about popular
music be treated as discussions of social value? These are serious
questions that should be at the heart of all humanities classes.
Popular music studies offers us an incredibly fertile ground for their
investigation.

On Jul 4, 9:56 am, justindburton <justindbur...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't mean to overlook the effective and enjoyable critique of Bradley and

> DuBois's *Anthology of Rap* that Marshall offers in this essay, but the

[Justin Burton]

Well put, Barry.

I think I've had some of my best discussions of authority and legitimacy in the classroom when using the Barker/Taylor book Faking It. The success that comes from that book is, I think, attributable to the authors' ability to make the reader complicit in the struggle for authority and legitimacy. When that happens, it becomes a conversation for all of us in the room, and I'm able to avoid that urge to leap to defense before making the terms of the authority struggle real. I would love to hear how others deal with this in the classroom, too.

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "IASPM-US" group.
> To post to this group, send email to iasp...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to iaspm-us+u...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/iaspm-us?hl=en.
>