Critical Essays on Hip Hop and the Study of Hip Hop Doing the Knowledge

This book explores some of the various ways in which hip hop has tragically and perilously been misused by scholars and how the study of hip hop often entrenches antiblackness as well as other social problematics.  In the end, the book is a collection that provides a much-needed perspective on hip hop culture as well as some new ways to think about the study of hip hop. It is an event of sorts: an interdisciplinary collection of debates and interventions by scholars and intellectuals in Black Studies, Cultural Studies, Theatre Art, Gender Studies, and English. The perspectives are theoretical and practical, philosophical and historical, engaging a variety of theories and practices.

Chapter 1: “Doing the Knowledge:” A Critical Introduction.- Chapter 2: 'Peep the Technique’: Afro-Pessimism and Hip Hop’s ‘Turn Toward Blackness.- Chapter 3: TransCultural Flow and the Problem of the Cipher.- Chapter 4: Jay-Z’s afro-pessimism black femme(inism)s makes black all lives matter.- Chapter 5: Towards a [Black] Hip-Hop Aesthetic: Against Manifestations of the Neoliberal Universal.- Chapter 6: On the Dilemmas of MAN: Intersections Reconsidered.

P. Khalil Saucier is Professor of Critical Black Studies at Bucknell University. He is the author of Necessarily Black: Cape Verdean Youth, Hip Hop Culture, and a Critique of Identity (Michigan State Press, 2015) and co-author of African Migrants, European Borders, and the Problem with Humanitarianism (Lexington Books).  He is also the editor and co-editor of various books.