From Gucci Gucci to the Thrift Shop: white rappers & black culture
I was in the car this morning running some errands when (unsurprisingly) Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” came on the radio. Stuck in a bit of traffic, I actually listened to the lyrics this time. It had always been obvious to me…
The Pleasure Principle Meets the Performance Principle: Gary Numan, Marcuse, and Neoliberalism
So I think Gary Numan’s work—I’m thinking Tubeway Army & Pleasure Principle stuff—is a really helpful example of the ways neoliberalism and “global/info” capital reworks the structuring binaries of classical liberalism and commodity capitalism. Binaries like public/private, authentic/alienated, use/exchange—these all…
Johnny B. Goode, Back to the Future, and the Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle
Today I was in the gym, where have all my best ideas (I blame it on the increased oxygen to the brain). What I talk about in this post is definitely not on the list of Robin’s best ideas, but…
Hipster Racism
After Jezebel’s recent post on Hipster Racism, the topic is newly hot in the feminist/race blogosphere. And that’s great! We really need to be talking about the ways racism and white supremacy inform the everyday practices of “good, white liberal”…
Thoughts on “Xenomania” (or, Orientialism 2.0)
Earlier this week, Simon Reyonlds published a great little essay on what he calls “xenomania”—i.e., Western hipsters’ internet-enabled digi-crate digging for increasingly exotic-sounding “ethnic” pop and/or dance music. Now, I realize that its publication venue—one of the MTV sites—probably limits…
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