Shine

Watch The Throne by Kanye West and Jay Z, album artwork/creative direction by Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy

The Theoretical Status of The Concept of Race by Howard Winant

Main Points:

Race as an Ideological Construct: the theory the idea of race came about after slavery in order to keep those in power in power, and that it took on a life of its own and turned an illusion into reality.

Reasons why this theory is lacking:
1. It can only explain the origins of race thinking
2. Does not explain how race thinking evolved from these origins
3. Logically, race cannot take on a life of it's own because it is an illusion, pure ideology
4. Cannot train ourselves to be colorblind
5. Fails to recognize race has become a principal of social organizing and identity formation after the diffusion and enforcement of race thinking over five hundred years
6. Fails to recognize that at the level of experience of everyday life race is an impermeable part of our identities. To be without race is akin to being without identity.


Race as an Objective Condition: the theory that "sociopolitical circumstances change over historical time, racially defined groups adapt or fail to adapt to these changes, achieving mobility or remaining mired in poverty"and "one simply is one's race"

Reasons why this theory is lacking:
1. In this theory there is no reconceptualization of group identities
2. The groups roles are assigned and performed
3. Not everyone can fit into the box American race thinking (black, white, yellow, red, brown)
4. There is no account of the performative aspect of race "act black" or "act white"
5. Cannot grasp the processual and relational character of racial identity and meaning
6. Denies the social and historical comprehensiveness of the race concept
7. Cannot account for individual and collective actors have to manage incoherent and conflictual racial meanings and identities every day

Racial Formation:

A) Contemporary political relationships:

1.       Race is forever being reconstituted in the present because counterhegemonic and postcolonial power is attained and the meanings and political articulations of race proliferate. (South African Apartheid for example)
2.      Competing racial projects, or efforts to institutionalize racial meanings and identities. 
3.      The denial of race perpetuates the importance of race (by denying there is a problem or saying it is invisible, or making it invisible, the problem continues. Much like Azoulay's theory of rape as an invisible crime).
4.      The complex nature of new racial identities
5.      Political culture is beyond the edges of imperial boundaries, colonialism and postcolonialism are long gone

B) The global context of race:

1. Racial space is becoming globalized because it is no longer in terms of imperial reach, colonization, or conquest.
2. The distinction between developed and underdeveloped has been overcome in the sense that those that were previously "immigrants" challenge the status of those in power.
3. Rise of diasporic models of blackness and the creation of panethnic communities (latino/a vs. mexican, puerto rican, chilean). 
4. Breaking down of borders in Europe (European Union) and North America is internationalizing and racializing previously national identities.
5. To recognized the "panethnic" phenomena and it's construction of new racial identities is to recognize the global extent of racial hegemony.
6. Racelessness once meant dominance, if you didn't think about your race, you were in power. Now, people are starting to feel anxiety about their "whiteness" meaning that racial identity is becoming globalized.

C) The emergence of racial time

1. The overdetermined construction of the world civilization as a product of the rise of Europe and the subjugation of the rest of us still defines the race concept.
2. Race was seen as a natural condition, then as an illusion, and now we are nearing the end of that theory too.

A hopeful conclusion for the possible future of the concept of race is that it neither signifies a comprehensive identity nor fundamental difference, but instead works as a marker of the infinity of variations we humans hold as common heritage and hope for the future.

The Sound of Light: Reflections on Art History in the Visual Culture of Hip-Hop

First off, I loved this paper. She is a great writer and such an interesting subject matter and fascinating conclusions are drawn.


Important main points:

1. The importance of being seen being seen.
2. Hip-hop's concept of bling parallels Baroque, Dutch, and Renaissance paintings and the importance of the surface.
3. Bling refers to a visual language that is so "loud" that it breaks the barriers of vision and becomes sonic, or audible. (To keep going with the thought of breaking through one sense, hip-hop's bass breaks the barriers of audible spectrum and is literally felt)
4. Members of the African diaspora often, due to being invisible in society, resorted to sound in order to be heard (importance of music in hip-hop culture)
5. The effect of sheen or shine was to point out the materiality of objects and highlight them as commodities. In the painting styles referred in this paper, the wealth of the subjects were accentuated in their sheen, both in actuality and on the canvas, where as the skin of the subjects was the only part of the painting that did not have sheen. Shine of black skin was used in slave trade to cover the humanity of slaves and heighten their value as commodities. This is important as it relates to the use of shine on black women's bodies in hip-hop music videos and the idea of shine and blackness as objectification.
6. History of hip-hop: started as subcultural movement in the Bronx in the late 1970's. For related yet different types of expression: deejaying, emceeing, break dancing, and writing/graffiti. Though marketed as an "African American" genre, it was actually a product forged within and between the African diasporic communities (Afro-Caribbean, African American, and Latino). "Golden era" of hip-hop used music to creatively and critically respond to the poor conditions of black and Latino communities. Then we moved into the era of MTV in the 1980's and hip-hop achieved commercial and global success. There was a shift from political messages in hip-hop to lavishing in pleasure and capitalism. Due to hip-hops commercial and global success, it's visual culture was produced, promoted, and propagated everywhere. Thompson relates this to the Hans Holbein painting, where both groups, Dutch and hip-hop cultures, enjoyed success and relished in it by making their success visible.
7. Corporate America's visual culture and the height of the MTV era pushed and celebrated capitalistic hip-hop globally.
8. More on bling: bling attracts attention, a to-be-seeness, but is so bright that it blinds the viewer. Bling is a state between hypervisibility and blinding invisibility. Bling=status, power.
9. Surfacism historically goes against, or gives an alternate perspective to, the normative forms of representation. (Dutch painting's quality of light vs. Cartesian perspectivalism, hip-hop visual culture vs. all other genre's visual culture).
10. Kehinde Wiley is a genius.
11. Wiley ideas: Power as performance, visual propagation of power, act of being represented=power (having portrait painted in 16th century meant you had power, paparazzi prom goers are being represented), importance of light and the quality of light (limelight, lineup light), blinding light to reveal modes of black subjectivity concealed and rendered invisible by bling's shine, hypermasculinization and hypersexualization and questioning that in his paintings (sitters taking on feminine names, poses), ephemerality of all that shines (ice sculpture).
12. Material value of light itself
13. Global commodification of black culture
14. Gispert's focus on the illusion of gravity. Gispert questions illusions of gravity and how they are used to show the super-humaness of black athletes (Michael Jordan and Nike, Air Jordans) and how it's used to market black youth culture in advertising. Black body as a commodity in this practice. Gispert's figures are unable to transcend earthly gravity, weighed down by jewelry.
15. Cruising to see and be seen being seen.
16. The shiny surface, independent of the object, has become central to the value of things
17. Visual expression exceeds the optical realm
18. Blackness, and bling, as a commodity in visual culture historically and contemporarily.


Beyond Multiculturalism, Freedom? by Holland Cotter

Main points:

1. Multiculturalism wanted to bring diversity to the art-world, but instead ghettoized it.
2. Postethnicity, where artists don't just think about race, but race is viable content as it has to do with one's identity. Art world must change too.
3. Hope for future: to be beyond labels.

Photo Review: Camera as Accomplices, Helping Race Divide America Against Itself by Holland Cotter

Main Points:
1. "Race is a social concept... that permits a certain group of people to control other groups by establishing heirarchal ranking and sustaining that ranking through physical and psychological force"
2. Photography helped record and reinforce racial hierarchies.

The Thong Song by Sisqo = the epitome of what Krista Thompson discussed. Winner of the MTV Music Video award for Best Hip-Hop video. Antigravity, shiny objects, cars and to-be-seeness, Sisqo's hair is actually silver, the women are objectified, overly sexualized and are wearing oil that makes their bodies shine.


Just something I don't understand: Horrorcore rap: Monster, OFWGKTA. Here are criticisms of Tyler the Creator as redefining blaxplotation. Here is another take of the same video. Reasons for not understanding it: why would women want to get down to this? It's about rape and violence against women, it's degrading.

Here is a section of the Times relating to how race is being redefined.

Here is an interview with Harry Belafonte, a man who's racial identity did not fit into the stereotyped box and he achieved great success.

I thought this was interesting, as it relates to the rise of MTV and teens. Teens income is 100% disposable in suburban America, and it's interesting, MTV's corporate propagation of hip-hop and youth culture and brands like Nike and Juicy Couture's fame through hip-hop and youth.



The Roots making fun of hip-hop music video stereotypes

Notorious B.I.G.

Notorious BIG, Puff Daddy, MJ Blige. All big names in hip-hop at the time. Sean Combs (aka Puff Daddy, P. Diddy) is famous for his consumerism and bling (Black and White party comes to mind).  Biggest names in hip-hop fought against each other, BIG and Tupac died in these wars.  Themes that appear in this video: money, consumerism, women as objects, being seen being seen (at the end the we watch the crowd watch them).

Jay Z and Kanye, big names in hip-hop today, collaborate instead of being at war with each other. Both are still surfacists.

Watch the Throne is explicitly about consumerism. Kanye went to Occupy Wall Street recently, which is interesting seeing that this album raps about spending $50,000 being no big deal. Themes in this video: brand names, capitalism, materialism, youth, to-be-seeness.

Ludacris, a southern hip-hop artist. Themes in this video: seen being seen, objectification of women, cars, brands, consumerism, sex, pleasure.

Anything But What You Were Ha by Carrie Mae Weems

Notes on the Margin of Black Book by Glenn Ligon

I saw Glenn Ligon's mid-career retrospective titled Glenn Ligon: America at the Whitney Museum in March and spent the most time with this piece. Ligon took Mapplethorpe's Black Book and showed it to black men and black gay men and asked them what they thought about the work. I added Carrie Mae Weem's appropriated image from Mapplethorpe's Black Book and put it with this because both are commenting on the exploitation, objectification, and sexualization of blackness through the appropriation of the same body of work.