Critical Approaches to Hip-Hop and Religion Group at AAR

The Cipher — Competitive, aggressive, often times vulgar– has historically been deemed a space inappropriate for women. Still women leverage their sexual, spiritual and “masculine” capital to gain access to the constructive potential this sacred circle repre

sents. This essay considers the politics of gender, space and religion in the cipher and explores how the criteria for women’s participation compromises the art, the community and its participants.

Kamasi Hill, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

Sampling Broken Pieces: Historical Memory and Hip-Hop Aesthetic in the Vinyl Art of Walter Lobyn Hamilton

Walter Lobyn Hamilton from Indianapolis, Indiana is a former DJ turned visual artist who creates “popart” from broken vinyl shards. Hamilton’s work utilizes a hip-hop aesthetic – “sampling” 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’s 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’s 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.

Ilya Merlin, University of Western Ontario

The Cipher: “Its” Discursive Hierophany and Propensity for Capture

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’s emphasis on the cipher demands examination of other chains. This presentation explores Jacques Lacan’s notions of signifying chains—metaphor and metonymy—vis-à-vis Gilles Deleuze’ idea of “creative lines of flight.” 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 “objectivism” that such chains inevitably (re)present. The cipher is an organic human event wherein the signifying chains that keep us chained to “common sense” modalities are ruptured—liberating the orating and witnessing participants—if only fleetingly. We find discursive hierophany within the cipher, as it displaces “it,” and Lacan and Deleuze help us understand the ethical purport of keeping “it” fresh and real.

Joseph Winters, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Constructing Constellations: Adorno, Lupe Fiasco, and the Work of the Negative

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’s 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’s 2006 track, “American Terrorist,” 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.

Religion and the Social Sciences Section and Critical Approaches to Hip-Hop and Religion Group

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’s Ebony Utley’s Rap And Religion: Understanding the Gangsta’s God (2012) and Monica R. Miller’s Religion and Hip-Hop (2012) and many others highlight hip-hop’s 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—and 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.