Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Author(s): R. A. T. Judy
Source: boundary 2, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 211-230
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/303605 .
Accessed: 15/01/2015 15:49
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Duke University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to boundary 2.
http://www.jstor.org
R.A.T.Judy
Almost every law and method ingenuitycould devise was employed
by the legislatures to reduce the Negroes to serfdom,-to make them
slaves of the state, if not of individuals..... [T]he Negro is coming
more and more to look upon law and justice, not as protecting safeguards, but as sources of humiliationand oppression.
-W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk
Judy / NiggaAuthenticity213
sentiment, and the OG was censured. Ending his contractualrelationwith
the transnational, he dropped more science.
"Youall ain't ready yet. You cannot even hear what is being spoken
by your own children, let alone understand, because you got your heads
up your asses and are on capitalism'sdick. You may thinkI'mtoo early, but
I'mjust in time. Some straight up niggaz with attitudedone already busted
some serious nigga moves."
At the same time he ended his contractual relation with the transnational, he incorporatedhis own independent label and hooked up with
another transnational network of distribution.When called to account for
his own blatant embrace of capitalism, his only reply was: "It's a home
invasion."
Nigga to Nigger
What is hard-core rap? We know it is an expression of something
called hip-hop. What is hip-hop? It is a kindof utterance: "Hip-hophooray
ho hey ho," an utterance of a habit of thought toward an increasingly rationalized and fragmented worldof global commodification.Itis thinkingabout
being in a hypercommodifiedworld.Rap is a way of this thinkingthat cannot
itself be rigorouslythought about withoutthinkinghip-hop. To think about
rap is to thinkabout hip-hop,although not necessarily in the way of hip-hop.
Thinkingabout rap in the way of hip-hop is to think it hard core, to think it
like a nigga.
4. Joe Wood, "Niggers,Negroes, Blacks,Niggaz,and Africans,"VillageVoice (17 Sept.
1991), 28-29.
Judy / NiggaAuthenticity215
Thinkingabout the nigga, to put it schematically, lies at the crux of
two genealogical procedures.5One, whichtraces the origins of rapto recog5. Withthree notableexceptions,by and large,the thirteensignificantbooks on rappublished in the past ten years have focused on its genealogy.Thereis a preoccupationwith
pointingout rap's"authenticorigins"in antecedentAfricanAmericanformsof expression.
DavidTopp'sRap Attack:AfricanJive to New YorkHipHop (Boston:South End, 1984)
leads the way as an exampleof popularethnography.Inthis same categoryis Havelock
Nelson and MichaelA. Gonzales's Bring the Noise: A Guide to Rap Music and HipHop Culture(New York:Harmony,1991). Six of the books are journalistic,and morethan
a littleimpressionistic,exposes: see Nelson George et al., Fresh Hip-HopDon't Stop
(New York:RandomHouse, 1985), Nelson George, Buppies, B-Boys, Baps and Bohos
(New York:HarperCollins,
1992), Steven Hager,HipHop:TheIllustratedHistoryof Break
and
Graffiti(New York:St. Martin'sPress, 1984), KeithElliot,Rap
Music,
Dancing, Rap
(Minneapolis:LernerPublications,1987), MarkCostello and DavidWallace,Signifying
Rappers:Rap and Race in the UrbanPresent(NewYork:Ecco Press, 1990),andWilliam
HauckWatkins,All YouNeed to Knowabout Rappin'(Chicago:ContemporaryBooks,
1984). HoustonBaker'sBlack Studies, Rap, and Academy (Chicago:Universityof Chicago Press, 1993) is a meditationon rap'ssignificancefor academics, and BillAdler's
Tougherthan Leather:The AuthorizedBiographyof Run-DMC(New York:New Amsterdam Library,1987) is a groupbiography.Of the exceptions mentionedearlier,two of
them-Tricia Rose's Black Noise: Rap Music and Black CulturalResistance in ContemporaryAmericanPopularCulture(Middletown,Conn.:Wesleyan UniversityPress,
1994), and Joseph D. Eure and James G. Spady's NationConscious Rap (New York:
PC International,
1991)-are attemptsto elaborateon rapin the contextof whatmightbe
termedthe politicaleconomy of hip-hop.The thirdexception-Greg Tate'sFlyboyin the
Buttermilk(New York:Simon and Schuster,1992)-is an exhibitionof hip-hopaesthetic
critique.As forjournaland newspaperarticles,the contributionsof GregTate to Village
Voice, and of Jon Pareles to the New YorkTimes have been prodigious.Finally,Jon
MichaelSpencer's academicjournal,BlackSacred Music:A Journalof Theomusicology,
became a forumfor scholarshipon rap, in vol. 5, no. 1 (Spring1991), a special issue,
entitledTheEmergencyof Blackand the Emergenceof Rap.
The dominanttendencyis to categorizerapintoperiodsof development,witheach successive periodcharacterizedby rap'sgreater,morediversifiedcirculation.The modelfor
this periodizationhas been DavidTopp'sRap Attack:AfricanJive to New YorkHipHop,
whose paramountconcernwas withestablishingrap's"rootedness"in AfricanAmerican
formsof culturalexpression.FollowingTopp'smodel,RonaldJemal Stephens delineates
three definitiveperiodsof rap.Thefirstperiod,datingfromroughy1973to 1985, Stephens
calls the "boogiewoogie hip-hopwave,"the hallmarkof whichare the SugarhillGang's
1979 "Rapper'sDelight,"and the 1982 release of GrandmasterFlash and the Furious
Five's "TheMessage" ("Nationof IslamIdeologyin the Rap of PublicEnemy,"in Black
Sacred Music). MichaelEricDyson calls this same period"message rap"("TheThree
Waves of ContemporaryRap Music,"in Black Sacred Music).The second period,the
rock'n'rollhip-hopwave (whichDysoncalls "poprap")is markedby the success of RunDMC's"Kingof Rock,"Tone Lotkc's"WildThing,"as well as that of LLCool J. The third
Judy / NiggaAuthenticity217
creature which knows itself knowing.The human can be enslaved but never
is a slave. The human can be designated a phenomenal thing of the slave
experience, nigger, but never is a nigger. This is a liberalknowledge that
presumes the universalityof apperception without knowing it and makes
the human the significance of experience. The purpose of AfricanAmerican
society, then, is the liberationof humans as subjects of knowledge fromthe
subject of experience, from the commodifiednigger of slavery.
Thinkingabout hard-core rap in terms of its significance for African
American society is a way of disposing of it, unless we are willingto think
it with the commodified nigga. Thinkingwith the nigga is to become concerned with it as an expression of an emergent utterance-hip-hop-which
does not work according to the purpose of liberalknowledge. Yet, because
we have failed to think about rap at the crux, nigga is misread as nigger.
Once this association is made, the departure of hard core from the purpose of African American society can only be thought of as regressive.
In this regressive thought, the hard-core nigga is an expression of angry,
self-destructive violence, the armed and insatiable beast of capitalism that
knows only exchange-value and the endless pursuitof greater pleasure:
"Youknow that the jungle creed says that the strongest must feed on any
prey at hand." The nigga of hard core blurs with the gang-banger, mackdaddy, new-jack, and drug-dealer,becoming an index of the moraldespair
engendered by a thoroughly dehumanizing oppression, and hence inevitably bearing a trace of that dehumanization:"AndI was branded a beast
at every feast before I ever became a man." In regressive thought, the
hard-core nigga is the bad nigger become gangster.7 In this way, we are
prevented from trulythinkingabout the significance of hard-core rap.
7. Writingfor the New YorkTimes in 1990, Jon Pareles identifieshard-core"gangster
rap"as a style initiatedby KRS-1butcommonlyassociated withthe LosAngeles rappers
Ice-T,Ice Cube, and NWA,andthe Houston-basedGeto Boys. He delineatesits definitive
features as rapid-firestyle of deliveryand "terrifying"
lyricalthematics.Amongthe latter
are: "scenes of inner-cityviolence, sometimes as cautionarytales, sometimes as fantasies and sometimes as chronicleswithoutcomment;detailedput-downs(withthreatsof
violence)of anyone the rappersdislike;at least a song or two per albumaboutsexual exploits;belligerentfoul-mouthedpersonas ... the badguys frominnumerablepoliceshows
[who,]armedand desperate, [tell]the storythe way they see it;the denouncingof ghetto
violence as genocidaland aimedat blackyouth[Parelescalls this the politicaltheme];the
connectionof crimeand drugsto povertyor [poverty-induced]
insanity;machismo,or the
translationfromboyhoodto manhoodthroughcombator sexual exploits;and a reflexive,
unquestioninghomophobiaand a sexism that easily slides into misogyny,as general
sensation turns back onto the closest targets"(Jon Pareles, "GangsterRap: Life and
Judy / NiggaAuthenticity219
The hard-corerappers,who engage in the insurrectionof subjugated
knowledges are "badmen" practicing self-determinative politicomoral leadership. They are ... politicalrappers ... who speak "attitudinally"but with knowledge about the conditions that the establishment has effected in their communities: social jingoism (such
as black stereotyping) and civil terrorism(such as police-on-black
crime). In response, the politicalrappers, alongside a new group of
Christian rappers, advocate the formationof community;unity over
disunity,economic self-determinationover black-on-blackcrime and
"gang banging."For them it is knowledge, and only knowledge, that
can lead to the overcoming of the fear, deception, and hatred that
cause division and disruptcommunity.9
The difference is attitudinal,then; it is a difference in order and type
of knowledge. The badman possesses a knowledge of self, which the bad
nigger lacks. This knowledge is of politicalsignificance, in that it is the basis
for a type of morality,or self-government, which then forms the basis for
community self-determination,which belongs to economy.
Leaving aside the question of the bad nigger for the moment in order
to focus on the badman as the source of hard core's legitimate genealogy, attention is drawn to the fact that Spencer defines politics in terms of
how self-government relates to the art of properlygoverning the community
and identifies the latterwith economy. This is no small point. In Spencer's
definition of the badman, we hear an echo of the liberalconcept of political economy, the notion that the upwardcontinuityof government defines
community: effective good government of the community derives upward
from good government of family,which derives from individualmorality,or
self-government. Spencer has drawn a very tight circle, whose epicenter is
reason, or the epistemological projectof modernity.The badman who has
self-knowledge is, by definition, the subject of knowledge. In this sense,
the function of the badman is pedagogical, providinga model of the formation of the leader; hence Spencer's definitionof him as "practicingselfdeterminative politico-moralleadership."There is a downward continuity
involved in this model of leadership in the implicationthat when the community is well run, then the head of the family will know how to properly
govern his family(this is the idea of role-modelingthat has become the sine
qua non of grass-roots communitywork among urban AfricanAmericans
9. Spencer, TheEmergencyof Black,8.
Judy / NiggaAuthenticity221
loristJohn W. Roberts has recentlydisputed this association.11The basis of
that critique is Roberts's analysis of the sociopolitical circumstance under
which late-nineteenth-centuryAfricanAmericanfolkloredeveloped. Given
that both the badman and the bad nigger are characterized in terms of their
resistance to the law, the most significantaspect of postbellum sociopolitical circumstances relative to these figures is the law. As W. E. B. DuBois
remarked in The Souls of Black Folk (1902), and subsequently analyzed
in Black Reconstruction (1935), the systematic use of the law by white
authorities to disenfranchise blacks after the resumption of home rule in
the South caused blacks to make avoidance of the law a virtue.12Roberts
elaborates this into the argument that maintaininginternal harmony and
solidaritywithinone's own communitywas a formof protectionagainst the
law of the state. In this understanding,the black community becomes the
police in order to not give the police any reason or cause to violate it.
Inother words, Roberts anticipates Spencer and claims that the postbellum black community was, in fact, self-policing in order to preempt any
intrusionfrom the external law of the state. Concurringwith the generally
accepted interpretationof the bad nigger as anticommunitarian,flaunting
the moralityof the communityas well as the law, Roberts argues the illogic
of a newly emancipated people, strivingto establish and defend their right
to participate in the general community of America, celebrating a figure
that challenged the very virtueof moralityon which communitysurvival depended. The bad nigger was not only uncelebrated in the black community
but despised as a threat to civil society. By contrast, according to Roberts,
the badman of black folklore challenges the unjustness of the law of the
state, while preserving the morallaw of the community.
The disassociation of the badman and bad nigger as two distinct
tropes addresses Spencer's essential concern with hard-core politicalrap,
which is how it can be employed to reconstitute a community in crisis.
The badman politicalhard-core rapperwill regain the moralitythat Roberts
claims preserved the postbellum community from both the law and bad
niggers. But what category of individualdid this community consist of?
Apparently,they were neither badmen nor bad niggers, but something else.
11. John W. Roberts, From Tricksterto Badman:The Black Folk Heroin Slavery and
Freedom (Philadelphia:Universityof PennsylvaniaPress, 1989), 171-219.
12. W.E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk(1902; reprint,New York:Fawcett,1961),
31, 131; Black Reconstructionin America,1860-1880 (1935; reprint,New York:Atheneum, 1962).
Niggerdom
According to the Oxford English Dictionary,nigger belongs to the
French negre, which, like its Spanish cognate, negro, was used in early
modern time to designate blackpeople. Itappears to have come into English
through the Dutch, sometime in the sixteenth century, and by the seventeenth century, it appeared in variantforms:neeger, neager, negar, negre.
In its earliest known literaryreference of 1587, it is already associated with
slavery: "There were also in her 400 neegers, whome they had taken to
make slaves."13 By the time it reaches the Virginiacolony, it simply designates black people as slave-labor, as in CaptainJohn Smith's 1624 observation: "ADutch man of warre that sold us twenty Negars."14 The Latinate,
niger, was used by Hellowes in 1574: "The Massgets bordering upon the
Indians, and the Nigers of Aethiop, bearing witnes";and by Reginald Scot
in 1584 in the precise sense of black-of-color:"Askin like a Niger."15By the
time Samuel Sewall began writinghis Diary,the appellationalso referredto
slave-labor as property:"Jethro,his Niger, was then taken" (1 July 1676);
"Meta Niger Funeral"(20 October 1712).16 In 1760, G. Wallace argued "Set
the Nigers free, and, in a few generations, this vast and fertile continent
13. OxfordEnglishDictionary,compacted., 1982.
14. CaptainJohn Smith,A TrueRelationof Virginia(1608; reprint,Boston:Wigginand
Lunt,1866).
15. ReginaldScot, Discoverieof Witchcraft
(1584;reprint,Totowa,N.J.:Rowanand Littlefield, 1973), 122.
16. Samuel Sewall, Diaryof Samuel Sewall, 1674-1729, ed. M. Halsey Thomas (New
York:Farrar,Straus and Giroux,1973).
223
Judy/ NiggaAuthenticity
RobertBurnsaddedthe second g to
wouldbe croudedwithinhabitants.""17
the Latinatein 1786: "Howgraceless Hamleughat his Dad,Whichmade
Canaana nigger."18
Hence,niggerdomas the designationof blackpeople
in general,whose despised status HenryFearon(1818)thoughtwas deserved-"The bad conductand inferiornatureof niggars(negroes),"19
and WilliamFaux(1823)lamented-"Contemptof the poorblackor nigger,
as they are called,seems the nationalsin of America."20
Ofparticular
importanceinthisregardis the belonging-togetherness
of the categoriesniggerand work,an associationarticulatedinthe American Englishexpression"toworklikea nigger,"
as inGeorgeEliot'sincidental
remarkingin 1861:"Charles... will.. . worklikea niggerat his music";21or
22Niggercould
Twain'smorerenowned"Helaidintohis worklikea nigger."
mean exceptionallyhardwork,because niggers,by definition,are labor
commodities(i.e., niggeris an indexof productivelaborthat is somebody
else's property).A niggeris bothproductivelaborandvalue,a quantitative
abstractionof exchange:the equivalentof three-fifths
of a singleunitof representationalvalue.Thevalueof the niggeris notinthe physicalbodyitself
but in the energy,the potentialforce,thatthe bodycontains.Thatforce is
there in the niggerbody,standing-in-reserve,
as it were, for its ownerto
consume as he/she likes.Thatforceis the thingthatthe planterowns. Itis
the propertyof the planterthatis the nigger.The niggeris thatthing.
the thingnessof the niggerinthe contextof knowing
Understanding
a bad niggerfromthat whichis simplya niggerleads to considerationof
17. OxfordEnglishDictionary,compacted., 1982.
18. Robert Burns, "Ordination,"
in The Complete Worksof Robert Burns (New York:
Houghton,Mifflinand Company,1987).
19. HenryBradshawFearon,Sketches of America;a Narrativeof a Journeyof Five Thousand Miles Throughthe Easternand WesternStates of America;Containedin EightReports Addressed to the Thirty-nine
EnglishFamiliesby Whomthe AuthorWas Deputed,
in June 1817, to AscertainWhetherAny and WhatPartsof the UnitedStates Wouldbe
Suitable for TheirResidence. WithRemarkson Mr.Birkbeck's"Notes"and "Letters"
(London:Longman,Hurst,Rees, Orme,and Brown,1818),46.
20. WilliamFaux, MemorableDays in America:Being a Journalof a Tourto the United
States, PrincipallyUndertakento Ascertain,by Positive Evidence, the Conditionand
Prospects of BritishEmigrants;IncludingAccountof Mr.Birkbridge'sSettlementin Illinois (London:W. Simpkinand R. Marshall,1823), 9.
21. George Eliot,Letterdated 13 Apr.1861,in TheYaleEditionof the George EliotLetters,
9 vols. (New Haven:Yale UniversityPress, 1975),3:404.
22. MarkTwain, A TrampAboard (Hartford,Conn.: AmericanPublishingCompany,
1879), 40.
. .
Judy / NiggaAuthenticity225
in the antebellum South. Inthe view of the white planters, bad nigger designated an obstreperous, dangerous nigger, who threatened the order of
the plantationby refusing to submit to its laws. For the slaves, bad nigger
indicated an individualwho, in challenging the laws of slavery, refused to
be a nigger-thing.
A bad nigger, then, is an oxymoron:rebellious property.In rebellion,
the bad nigger exhibits an autonomous will,which a nigger as commoditything is not allowed to exhibit. There is littlemore dangerous than a willful
thing; through the exhibitionof autonomous will,the bad nigger marks the
limits of the law of allowance by transgressing it. The bad nigger frightens
both white planter and other slaves because he/she reveals the impossibilityof completely subjugatingwill;it can only be eliminated in death, and
the bad nigger, by definition,does not fear death. The bad nigger embraces
death, and inthat embrace steps beyond standing-in-reserve,beyond thingness. This frightens the planter,not only because the force that he understood to be his propertyis being withheldbut because it is withheldthrough
an unknowable agency, through the will of another, an unbridled,lawless
force. The bad nigger indicates individualsovereignty, which is to say he is
self-possessed.
What is at stake here is not the obvious problem of the bad nigger
embodying the Enlightenmentsubject (i.e., exhibitingthe characteristics of
the autonomous subject who is the cornerstone of both civilsociety and the
state). The real threat of the bad nigger is in exhibitingthe groundlessness
of the sovereign individual.Being a nigger appearing as a human, the bad
nigger indicates the identificationof human with thing, that the human can
only be among things, cannot be beyond or abstracted fromthings. The bad
nigger is the human-cum-thing.Littlenoted this when he remarkedthat "the
man who was a 'bad nigger' in the South is here [in Canada] a respected,
independent farmer."25Anotherinstance of paralipsis,Little'sconversion of
bad nigger into respected independent farmer reveals the contrariness of
liberal civil society. The bad nigger indexes a radical incommensurability,
on the one hand exhibitingthe individualsovereignty that forms the basis of
moralorder in liberaltheories of politicaleconomy; on the other, embodying
the lawlessness that moralityis supposed to contain. We should not fail to
note that Little'sbad nigger starts out "the negro who is put in the stocks
Conditionof the ColoredPopulationof UpperCanada (1856; reprint,New York:Negro
Universities Press, 1968), 203, 219-20.
2 / Fall1994
226 boundary
or put in irons,"markingonce again the ironicmovementfromniggerto
negro. Thatwhichis called simplyniggeris essentiallythe blackhuman.
The differencebetweenthe bad niggerandthe simplenigger,then, is that
the formerindexes the open-endedpossibilitiesof being amongthingslawlessness;and the latter,convertedintothe negro,is the basis forcommunityidentityandcollectiveresistanceagainstcontinueddehumanization
undercapitalism-a communityof moralbeings.The bad nigger,by definithatis notsubjectto work.Thisthingnessof
tion, is that human-cum-thing
whenthe latteris understoodas
the humanputs intojeopardycommunity,
the
on
of
sentiments
or feelings.
based
communicability
being
Das Nigga Affekt
227
Judy/ NiggaAuthenticity
fromthose of cultureand politics.The resultis the end of moralityas the
basis for identitybeyondcommodification.
Anotherway of puttingthings
is that the identification
of society as economy has led to the displacementof the negro-subjectwiththe nigger-thing
fromwithinthe community.
the
crisis
refers
as
the
to
Although
Spencer
emergencyof black initially
resultedfromthe emergenceof an unbridledtransnational
capitalism,he
understandsits principalagent to be hard-corerapitself.Moreprecisely,
of the hard-coreniggato
Spencer understandsthe hypercommodification
be a chiefcomponentinthe demiseof blackpeople.
In response, the badmanhard-corepoliticalrapperis called for in
social defense, whichwe shouldnot forgetwas the slogan of the penal
theoryputforwardby Franzvon Liszt("DieAufgabenunddie Methodder
andthe socialschoolof law.Inthattheory,social
Strafrechtswissenschaft")
defense involvesintimidation,
inthe instanceof occasionaldelinquents,and
in
the
case
of
hardenedcriminals.Betweenthese two exneutralization,
tremes are the variousmodes of preventiveintervention
collectivelycalled
Unionof PenalLaw.The aimof social
"socialhygiene"inthe International
hygieneis to eradicatethe social conditionsthatbreedthe criminal,or, as
it were, the nigga.The police,then, is the orderof governmentality
called
the
that
construct
community-thatis,
practices
disciplinary
society as an
Whatdoes it mean,though,when
economy of well-managedindividuals.
communityis identifiedwithmoralpolice?Here,it means that any nigger
who doesn'tobey the lawand take moralresponsibility
forhis actions is a
bad nigger.
It is a grave error,however,to identifythe bad nigger with the
hard-coregangsterrapper,because regressivethoughtcannotcomprehend
the hard-corenigga. Whenthe OriginalGangster,Ice-T,exclaims,"I'ma
the differencebetweena nigga being
straightup nigga,"he is reiterating
and being a nigga.26Knowingthatdifferencerequiresan understanding
of
what is the natureof experiencein a globaleconomy.Whenthe OG further points out how the process of consumingrap is tantamountto the
of whitesuburbanyouth,he is doingmorethan remarking
"niggafication"
on the inevitability
of popularculture'sdissemination;he is also remarking
on the equallyinevitableloss of experienceto commodifiedaffect.27This
is the age of hypercommodification,
in whichexperiencehas not become
26. Ice-T,"Straightup Nigga,"OriginalGangster(New York:Sire Records)1991.
27. Ice-T,TheIce-Opinion:WhoGivesa Fuck,ed. HediSiegmund(NewYork:St. Martin's
Press, 1994), 144-45.
228 boundary
2 / Fall1994
and nigga designatesthe scene, par
commodified,it is commodification,
whereone is amongcommodities.Nigga
excellence, of commodification,
is a commodityaffect.The OG offersexhibitionof this, on the one hand,
remindingus that his rhymescome from"experience,"
and, on the other
hand,claimingthatvirtuallyeveryoneinvolvedinthe commodifiedaffectof
his experienceis a nigga:
I'ma nigga,nota coloredman,
or a black,or a Negro.
or an AfroAmerican,I'mallthat.
Yes! Iwas bornin Americatrue,
does SouthCentral
looklikeAmericato you?
I'ma nigga,a straightup nigga
froma hardschool....
I'ma niggain America,
andthat muchIflaunt,
cause when Isee whatI like,
yo Itake whatIwant.
I'mnotthe onlyone,
That'swhy I'mnot bitter,
cause everybodyis a niggato a nigga.28
The nigga is constitutedin the exchange of experiencefor affect.
This is not identicalwiththe bad niggerwhojeopardizedcommunityby insistingon havingunmediatedfree experience.Such an insistencerequires
an essential innocenceof identity,a way of understanding
experiencethat
is simplyimpossiblerightnow. A nigga forgetsfeelings, recognizing,inthe hard-coreones of
stead, that affects are communicable,particularly
intense
can
with
millionsof othersin an
One
pleasure.
anger,rage,
belong
moment
of
of
the
same
affect,the same passion.
consumption
asynchronic
Thisis not empathy.The possibilityof the niggarests on the twofoldof exit
perienceandaffect,andthe factthatexperienceis essentiallyunfungible;
cannotbe sold as is butmustbe abstractedandprocessedbythe formulaic
functionsof transnational
capitalism.Knowingthis,the hard-coregangster
in
and
not values. Inthis sense, hard-corerap is the
traffics
affect
rapper
residualof the nonproductive
workof translatingexperienceintoaffectit is pulpfiction,drawingintoits web all the realnigga experiencesit can
representinthe affectiveconstitutionof niggaz.
28. Ice-T,"Straightup Nigga,"OriginalGangster.
229
Judy/ NiggaAuthenticity
The statusas beingat once bothrootedinexperienceand available
for appropriation
marksnigga as the functionby whichdiversequotidian
as viable resistanceto
and
experiences
expressionsare "authenticated"
the dominantformsof power.Niggarealizesthatthe end of politicaleconomy involvesa shiftin the technologiesof government,and not a general
problemof government.A crucialaspect of hard-corerapis how it strives
to expose and problematizethe technologiesof governmentby constantly
becomingan expressionof overflowing
energythatis pregnantwithfuture.
This is why,at those momentsinwhichrap'sappropriation
by the transnationaleconomyappearsto signalitscomprehensionanddiluting,hardcore
is reclaimedas the source (i.e., KRS-1,Run-DMC,Naughtyby Nature).
WhenPublicEnemyreleased"Don'tBelievethe Hype"in 1989, they were
markinghow popularcultureis itselfa technologyof government.Thatis
to say, designatingthe contradiction
thatis constitutive
(other/appropriate)
of popularculture,nigga defines authenticityas adaptationto the force
of commodification.
Rap becomes an authenticAfricanAmericancultural
formagainstits appropriation
as transnational
popularculture.
then, is producedas the value everybodywants preAuthenticity,
cisely because of the displacementof politicaleconomywitheconomy;it
is not engenderedby virtueof its relationto thatwhichhas to be protected
fromcommodification
so that AfricanAmericansmightknowthemselves
as a collectiveidentityagainsta particular
social, political,and historical
is hype,a hypercommodified
affect,whose
threateningreality.Authenticity
circulationhas made hip-hopglobal-which is whythe immanentcritique
of rapfails. This is not to suggest that rapis no longerAfricanAmerican
but ratherthat one conditionof beingAfricanAmericanis participating
in
the consumptionof rap.Putdifferently,
hard-corerap,in its formaland rhetoricalstrategies,is akinto the blues as understoodby RalphEllison:an
oppositionalculturalmovementthat is thoroughlysymbolicin the face of
politicaldomination.But,whereasthe bluesis a collectiveresponseto political domination,the hegemonyrapcontendswithis of anotherorder,the
of culturalproduction,
inwhichthe relationof
globalhypercommodification
culturalobjectto groupbeing no longermatterspolitically.
Niggais not an
essential identity,strategicor otherwise,butratherindicatesthe historicity
of indeterminate
identity.
Withregardto understanding
then, the question
niggaauthenticity,
is notwhatis niggaauthenticitybutwhetheror notniggacan be eitherauwhethernigga can be either
thenticallyor inauthentically.
Understanding
authenticallyor inauthenticallyis an existential task. In other words, nigga
poses an existential problemthat concerns what it means (or how it is pos-
230 boundary
2 / Fall1994
sible) to-be-human.Incontrast,the badmanand bad niggerpose a moral
problemthatconcernsthe structuresand relationsof humans-their govof authenticity.Hardernability.Thereis a familiarcast to this formulation
withthe difference
core'sniggareturnsus to the existentialist
preoccupation
betweenthe subjectof knowledgeand the subjectof experience.Inthese
terms, the questionof nigga authenticityis an ontologicalquestionabout
the a priorifeaturesof humanbeing,andthe structuresitis concernedwith
have to do withthe habitsof thoughtby whichcertaintypes of consciousness are possible.The moral-political
questionis concernedwithparticular
modes
of
behavior-it
or
is an onticalquestion.
decisions,
acts,
Inthe readingof nigga as an indexof blackemergency,it is presupposed that authenticbeing derivesfrommorality.That is, the nigger
becomes the negro throughmoralbehavior,or good works,foundedon
control).
moralityas a governmentalhabitof thought(policeas internalized
Atthe rootof the despairaboutthe demise of blackmoralityis the recognitionthat onticalmattersare made possible by the habitsof thoughtof
humanbeing. Withthis recognition,we understandthat it is an errorto
thinkthat being negroexistentially(i.e., beinga blackhuman)resultsfrom
a particular
set of morallydeterminedsocialdecisionsand acts. Tothinkin
to
this way is turnaway fromthe questionof whatit means to-be-human,
preciselybecause it refusesto take care of the questionof how a person
reallyis. Moralbehavior,by definition,is an ontologicallyinauthenticway
the hard-coreniggato be amoral,even this
to be. Still,in understanding
in
the
of
niggaan emergenthabitof thoughtat the
way thinkingrecognizes
end of blackmorality.As such, the questionof niggaauthenticityis not a
moralquestionbutis aboutthe verypossibilityof beinghuman:itis a strictly
existentialmatter.Inwantingto understandwhatit is to be a realnigga, it
is crucialto rememberthat humansare the entitiesto be analyzed.To be
authentic,because ittakescareofthe questionof how
niggais ontologically
a humanreallyis amongthings.Niggadom,then,is a newdogmatics-that
is, an attemptto formulatean ontologyof the higherthinkingcalled"hip-hop
29
science."
29. Of course, in pursuingsuch a science, we are well advised to recallDilthey'squalification:"Alldogmas need to be translatedso as to bringout theiruniversalvalidityfor
all human life. They are crampedby theirconnectionwith the situationof the past in
whichthey arose"(GrafPaulYorckto W. Dilthey,in RudolphBultmann,"NewTestament
Mythology"in Kerygmaand Myth,ed. Hans-WernerBartsch,trans. ReginaldH. Fuller
[London:SPCK, 1960], 23).