{"id":1076,"date":"2013-11-11T21:01:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-11T21:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/11\/critical-approaches-to-hip-hop-and-religion-group-at-aar.html"},"modified":"2013-11-11T21:01:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-11T21:01:00","slug":"critical-approaches-to-hip-hop-and-religion-group-at-aar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/11\/critical-approaches-to-hip-hop-and-religion-group-at-aar.html","title":{"rendered":"Critical Approaches to Hip-Hop and Religion Group at AAR"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
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<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Panels from the Hip Hop and Religion group of the American Academy of Religion that meets in Baltimore, Maryland November 23-26.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
Theme:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>The Religion and Hip Hop Cipher: Ciphering the Critical Approaches<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n
\n
Christopher Driscoll, Rice University, Presiding<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
Saturday \u2013 1:00 PM-3:30 PM<\/span><\/div>\n
Convention Center-326<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
In hip hop, the cipher is a locale where artists of various backgrounds, commitments, and training come together in a linguistic battle of wit and passion, where \u201caporetic flow\u201d erupts into competing norms, and yet, community. To \u201ccipher\u201d is to decipher the discursive power arrangements of a community and to \u201cplay\u201d a linguistic game, embodying and speaking into existence a variety of impossible possibilities. Thinking of the panel as an academic cipher of various disciplinary examinations of the hip hop cipher (i.e. \u2018playing\u2019 with the two definitions of \u2018cipher\u2019), specific paper topics will include an engagement of Adorno and Fiasco, examination of the life and art of Walter Lobyn Hamilton, issues of gender and inclusion in ciphers, Deluze and the hierophic, and a process-focused analysis of hip hop\u2019s aesthetic religion emerging from within the cipher.<\/span>

<\/span>Papers:<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\n
Jon Gill, Claremont Graduate University<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The Freestyle MC Cypher as Propositional and Ritual Aesthetic Religious Shrine Organism (A.R.S)<\/span><\/i><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cmiracle\u201d of extemporaneously articulating one\u2019s hip-hop discipline flawlessly in the cypher (1) astonishes co-participants and the audience while (2) indirectly communicating through experience the underlying quasi-religious \u201ccollective consciousness\u201d spoken of by KRS 1, a common consciousness in which hip-hoppers experience unity through the objectives of the culture such as peace, knowledge, and having fun. Therefore, the cypher serves as a living and processural \u201cshrine\u201d that both practitioners and enthusiasts of the four elements of hip-hop \u201center\u201d and experience. I will base this analysis of the freestyle rap cypher as \u201cshrine\u201d on Brian Masumi\u2019s idea of \u201cactivist philosophy,\u201d or the idea that the event of a thing has no substance but fluidity, which interfaces with the mystery of the cypher\u2019s perpetual spontaneous creation. Also, Whitehead\u2019s definition of \u201cadventure\u201d as undetermined creative aim will be used to discuss the cypher\u2019s quasi-religious status.

<\/b><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Courtney Bryant, Vanderbilt University<\/b><\/span>
<\/span>\n

<\/span>The Cost of Admission: The Politics of Gender and Inclusion in the Hip Hop Cipher<\/i><\/span>\n

The Cipher \u2014 Competitive, aggressive, often times vulgar\u2013 has historically been deemed a space inappropriate for women. Still women leverage their sexual, spiritual and \u201cmasculine\u201d capital to gain access to the constructive potential this sacred circle repre
\nsents. This essay considers the politics of gender, space and religion in the cipher and explores how the criteria for women\u2019s participation compromises the art, the community and its participants.<\/p>\n

Kamasi Hill, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary<\/b><\/p>\n

Sampling Broken Pieces: Historical Memory and Hip-Hop Aesthetic in the Vinyl Art of Walter Lobyn Hamilton<\/i><\/p>\n

Walter Lobyn Hamilton from Indianapolis, Indiana is a former DJ turned visual artist who creates \u201cpopart\u201d from broken vinyl shards. Hamilton\u2019s work utilizes a hip-hop aesthetic \u2013 \u201csampling\u201d vinyl records. However, Hamilton takes vinyl that is broken, shaped, and altered from its original state and re-imagines them on canvas in the form of a historical figure, musician, symbol or entertainer. Very rarely are the shards the same size and most of them are taken from records across genres thus resignifiying a vinyl sampling aesthetic from fluid sound to fluid visual representation. Hamilton\u2019s work pays homage to the veracity of the vinyl record as a historical artifact. Cultural critic Mark Anthony Neal, artist Jay-Z, and scores of others have written and discussed how vinyl records were central to their formative years, not merely as the arbiter of music but a symbol of love, community, literacy, and creativity. Utilizing, the framework of race and representation in bell hooks Black Looks, my project will explore the connection between historical memory and aesthetics of hip-hop in the vinyl artwork of Walter Lobyn Hamilton. The project will locate Hamilton\u2019s use of vinyl as a site for cultural and religious signification and representation, thus extending the notion cypher and its inclusion of visual artists and the products they produce.<\/p>\n

Ilya Merlin, University of Western Ontario<\/b><\/p>\n

The Cipher: \u201cIts\u201d Discursive Hierophany and Propensity for Capture<\/i><\/p>\n

The link has been established, both by Emcees and scholars, between historical chains of material oppression and the iced out chains that presently adorn hip-hoppers. This year\u2019s emphasis on the cipher demands examination of other chains. This presentation explores Jacques Lacan\u2019s notions of signifying chains\u2014metaphor and metonymy\u2014vis-\u00e0-vis Gilles Deleuze\u2019 idea of \u201ccreative lines of flight.\u201d If, in becoming subjects, we are subjected to ready-made signifying chains (language) that necessarily subordinate our thought thus actions, the event of cipher holds promise for breaking free from the oppressive \u201cobjectivism\u201d that such chains inevitably (re)present. The cipher is an organic human event wherein the signifying chains that keep us chained to \u201ccommon sense\u201d modalities are ruptured\u2014liberating the orating and witnessing participants\u2014if only fleetingly. We find discursive hierophany within the cipher, as it displaces \u201cit,\u201d and Lacan and Deleuze help us understand the ethical purport of keeping \u201cit\u201d fresh and real.<\/p>\n

Joseph Winters, University of North Carolina, Charlotte<\/b><\/p>\n

Constructing Constellations: Adorno, Lupe Fiasco, and the Work of the Negative<\/i><\/p>\n

It has become quite commonplace to associate Theodor Adorno with resentment toward popular culture and black cultural forms. This reductive association usually hinges upon his notorious critique of jazz. In this paper, I challenge this trend by identifying other dimensions of Adorno\u2019s thought and practice that resonate with contemporary cultural expressions, particularly hip hop. I look specifically at his use of constellations, a term that refers to the assemblage of disparate ideas, images, and motifs, an assemblage defined by the dissonance, tensions, and playful relationships that exist among the gathered concepts. Because constellations attest to the fissures and breaks within our lifeworlds, they expose and thwart desires for stability, comfort, and assurance. I argue that Lupe Fiasco\u2019s 2006 track, \u201cAmerican Terrorist,\u201d performs a constellational style, placing concepts and images together in ways that unsettle conventional understandings of terror, history, and the relationship between the past and present.<\/p>\n

Religion and the Social Sciences Section and Critical Approaches to Hip-Hop and Religion Group
<\/b><\/p><\/span><\/div>\n

Theme: The Meaning of Methods: Religion in Hip-Hop Meets the Social Sciences<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n
Saturday \u2013 4:00 PM-6:30 PM
Convention Center-327\n

Now over 40 years old, hip-hop culture has proven a noteworthy and robust terrain of critical analyses for some time. Today, texts such as R3\u2019s Ebony Utley\u2019s<\/a> Rap And Religion: Understanding the Gangsta\u2019s God (2012) and Monica R. Miller\u2019s Religion and Hip-Hop (2012) and many others highlight hip-hop\u2019s religious diversity, existential weight, social and cultural texture and thugged-out philosophical edges. Yet, within religious studies, few opportunities have been offered that allow for extended discussion of how various methodologies interact, overlap, compete\u2014and work together to push studies in religion and hip hop forward. As such, this panel is made up of leading scholars working from fields such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, and cultural studies for the study of religion, theology, and hip-hop culture. The invited panelists will provide a rigorous account of the ways in which various methodological endeavors engage and unearth new insights regarding hip-hop material culture and religion.
<\/p><\/span><\/div>\n

Panelists:<\/span><\/div>\n
Carol B. Duncan, Wilfrid Laurier University
John L. Jackson, University of Pennsylvania
Alton B. Pollard, Howard University
Margarita Simon Guillory, University of Rochester
Ralph Watkins, Columbia Theological Seminary\n

<\/p><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Panels from the Hip Hop and Religion group of the American Academy of Religion that meets in Baltimore, Maryland November 23-26.\u00a0 Theme:\u00a0The Religion and Hip Hop Cipher: Ciphering the Critical Approaches Christopher Driscoll, Rice University, Presiding Saturday \u2013 1:00 PM-3:30 PM Convention Center-326 In hip hop, the cipher is a locale where artists of various […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nCritical Approaches to Hip-Hop and Religion Group at AAR<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Panels from the Hip Hop and Religion group of the American Academy of Religion that meets in Baltimore, Maryland November 23-26. Theme: The\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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