Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism

by Russell A. Potter

Viewing hip-hop as the postmodern successor to African American culture's Jazz modernism, this book examines hip-hop music's role in the history of the African-American experience.

Spectacular Vernaculars examines hip-hop's cultural rebellion in terms of its specific implications for postmodern theory and practice, using the politics of reception as its primary rhetorical ground. Hip-hop culture in general, and rap music in particular, present model sites for such an inquiry, since they enact both postmodern modes of production --the appropriation of tropes, technologies, and material culture--and a potential means of resistance to the commodification of cultural forms under late capitalism. By paying specific attention to the historical and cultural context of hip-hop as a black artform and locating its practice of resistance in terms of a postmodernist reading of consumer culture, this book offers a complex reading of hip-hop as a postmodern practice, with implications both for theories of postmodernism and cultural studies as a whole.

Genres: Music, Hip Hop, Research

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

I teach Victorian literature, the history of Arctic exploration, and early media at Rhode Island College. My first novel, Pyg: The Memoirs of a Learned Pig, has just been published by Penguin Books.

Reviews

[Marylou R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book for its content but it also serves as an excellent case study for young academics grappling with how to make a mere interest or clever insight relevant. An excellent read for introducing postmodernism/poststructuralism. It grounds theory and demonstrates how the theoretical orientation has materiality. It also helps students understand how to make the distinction between how their work can be read as rhetorically significant rather than rhetorically interesting.

[Eelke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having grown up (as a white male) in the ‘90s, when gangsta rap was booming, this book is an eye opener. Spectacular vernaculars encouraged me to be introspective, which was at times confronting. It left me to appreciate and admire rap and hip-hop culture even more than I already did.