Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Have you ever tried reading Elizabethan poetry over De La Soul? It's impossible.
Mama is departed; Saturday morning to Wednesday morning she was here, and despite my being in that listless place between boredom and total panic (which begins tomorrow), we had a nice time. Of course the guests are all coming at the most inopportune times. Whatever. These first two essays don't worry me terribly, though they should. Probably gun out Romance and 16th century identity by Wednesday, giving me a week in March to write America and the US, and then a long 8 days in which to go out in a Postcolonial blaze of glory. I thought I was onto something with that Progress of Jewish Youth in America: Portnoy to Hammer. But I think the PoCo paper might just top all the others, mostly by virtue of being organized, in response to an actual question, and about Wu-Tang.
The task is to assess the technique of "writing back." This is the phrase coined by my Homi Bhabha to explain what Postcolonial writers actually do--or at least some writers. They take the culture and language foisted on them and sling it back. The Irish used to say, The English crammed their language down our throats and we spat it back at them a hundred times more beautiful than before. I would argue that, but still. But not everyone writes back. I have some awesome examples of it from Afro-Caribbean writers, this one in particular--probably the finest new poem I've read since the one about Billy Collins' students beating the poem with the hose. But the thing is, the thing Postcolonialism drills into you more deeply than anything else is the fact that everybody be oppressing everybody. Everybody. It's inevitable and incurable. So my question is, What's so bad about oppression? Or maybe not that. Basically, what are the wages of oppression? Does it not have its benefits, such as, oh, cultural identity? So I'm taking my Homi's writing back, an aggressive response to oppression, and contrasting it against two other markedly different responses: first, Portnoy's envy of der goyim, and Jewish assimilation as a whole (if you can't beat 'em, join 'em), and second, Black America's new self-segregation, and eventual cultural dominance, as seen in the African-based movement of Négritude and big scary black men, in particular those of the Wu-Tang Clan, who are definitely nuthin' ta fuck wit'. How White came to mean Uncool. Hip-Hop in general, ever since I tripped over that most excellent tome in the library (which I can't take out, of course), That's The Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, which includes such chapters as, No Time For Fake Niggas: Hip-Hop Culture and the Authenticity Debate. I read the opening interview with Kool DJ Herc, Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash and was hooked. The geneses of all three responses are historically dissimilar, so the responses are, too. Hell yeah, dawg.
The task is to assess the technique of "writing back." This is the phrase coined by my Homi Bhabha to explain what Postcolonial writers actually do--or at least some writers. They take the culture and language foisted on them and sling it back. The Irish used to say, The English crammed their language down our throats and we spat it back at them a hundred times more beautiful than before. I would argue that, but still. But not everyone writes back. I have some awesome examples of it from Afro-Caribbean writers, this one in particular--probably the finest new poem I've read since the one about Billy Collins' students beating the poem with the hose. But the thing is, the thing Postcolonialism drills into you more deeply than anything else is the fact that everybody be oppressing everybody. Everybody. It's inevitable and incurable. So my question is, What's so bad about oppression? Or maybe not that. Basically, what are the wages of oppression? Does it not have its benefits, such as, oh, cultural identity? So I'm taking my Homi's writing back, an aggressive response to oppression, and contrasting it against two other markedly different responses: first, Portnoy's envy of der goyim, and Jewish assimilation as a whole (if you can't beat 'em, join 'em), and second, Black America's new self-segregation, and eventual cultural dominance, as seen in the African-based movement of Négritude and big scary black men, in particular those of the Wu-Tang Clan, who are definitely nuthin' ta fuck wit'. How White came to mean Uncool. Hip-Hop in general, ever since I tripped over that most excellent tome in the library (which I can't take out, of course), That's The Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, which includes such chapters as, No Time For Fake Niggas: Hip-Hop Culture and the Authenticity Debate. I read the opening interview with Kool DJ Herc, Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash and was hooked. The geneses of all three responses are historically dissimilar, so the responses are, too. Hell yeah, dawg.
Monday, February 28, 2005
Oof
Sorry for the disappearance. Buried under work lately. Had three insane nights at work, and no sleep. Wednesday, got home at 5am, up at 8am for class; Thursday, home at 4:30am, up at 11am; Friday, home at 5am, up at 8am to meet mother. Just finished the Chicago app yesterday, sent it off with the click of a button. Godspeed. Now I have to start essays, read The Alchemist, write a presentation, read the Faerie Queen book 6, read Robert Frost, entertain mothers, eat dinner, all before the second round of guests show up. So no blogging right now. Even breathing is too time consuming.
 |  |
 | |
 | |
 | |
| Graphic Design Job |
