Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism

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.

Author: Russell a. Potter
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 08/31/1995
Pages: 208
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.72lbs
Size: 9.18h x 6.04w x 0.54d
ISBN: 9780791426265

Review Citation(s):
Black Issues Book Review 01/01/2000 pg. 59

About the Author
Russell A. Potter is Assistant Professor of English at Colby College. He hosts a weekly radio program, Roots-n-Rap, in Waterville, Maine.

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