Dissing Baudrillard: Public Enemy and Foucault`s

Todd
F. Tiachen
Dissing Baudrillard: Public Enemy and
Foucault's "Masked Other"
Released in 1988, Public Enemy's
It
Nation Of Millions
To Hold Us Backmarked an important moment in Hip-Hop's maturation. On an album which many still consider to be the finest Hip-Hop
album ever produced, Public Enemy revolutionized the genre in regards
to bottr its technical execution and lyrical content. While the album's subject matter ranged from racial stereotyping in the media ("Don't Believe
The Hype") to the role ofvarious police agencies in the systematic oppression ofAfrican-Americans (Touder Than A Bomb'), underlying these
overtly-presented lyrical expositions was a multi-layered musical backing
of equal political relevance. As a creative unit, Public Enerny shifted fundamentalrap music techniques suchas "sampling" into a site ofpolitical
contestation, as sound-byes from Malcotn X and Martin Luther King Jr.
mixedwithvarious samples fromcommercial culture into a funked-out
heteroglossia whose multiple voices and references did much to buttess
the album's more overtly-stated political concerns. By means of embedding tactically-deployed samples within new lyrical stuctures, Public Enemy demonstrated how the rearrangement ofpublic discourse equates
with a socio-political act of empowerment and, in the process, re-established the public language ofpopular music as a site ofpolitical dissent.
Of course, the very notion that electronic reproduction technologies
can produce altemate orpolitically-radical discourse has been the subject
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Dissing Baudrillard 27
Baudrillard and Adorno casts artists intojust ttris sort ofvictim-role by
suggesting that they have somehow been pimped by the all intusive "system of assimilation," that they have somehow been hoodwinked (unbeknownst to them) into having theirmessages-which they originally intended to be radical--<ommodifi ed in a self-defeating way. Some HipHop artists, including Chuck D (Carlton Ridenhour) from Public Enemy,
have suggestedjust the opposite: that Hip-Hop artists have consciously
chosen, and should still choose, to pimp the system. In his recent book,
Fight The Power: Rap Race and Reality,Chuck D offers the following
suggestion to Hip-Hop artists: "I believe you can have a foot in the game
and do your shit with the other foot. . .We need to have the double advantage ofbuilding our own and still [working] the game" (54). Similar to
Russell Potter's claim that "rappers have managed to bum-rush the spectacle [and] hijack the media by its own devices" (14), Chuck D implores
HipHop artists to use the entenched signifying auttrorities against themselves, to both play the game and work the game simultaneously in a way
that is consistent with other postnodern political geshres.
The creative/political stance that Chuck D articulates is analogous to
Michel Foucault's conception ofthe "masked other"-a model I find
useful for explaining and understanding the paradoxical nature of
postnodem political gestures. In'T.{ietzsche, Genealogy, History," Foucault locatespower in discourse and suggests that ahistorically-notable
event is not to be understood as "a decision , ateaty,a reign, or a battle,
but the reversal ofa relationship of forces, the usurpation ofpower, the
appropriation of a vocabulary turned against those who had once used it
. . . the entry of a masked 'other"' ( 1 54), and l believe that public Enemy's
teatrnent of language and sampling onlt Takes A Nation ofMiltions To
Hold us Bacft occurs injust this sort of site. I would like to suggest that
the notion ofbeing simultaneously'tnasked" and "othe,f '-ihe somethingdilferent which cl oaks its deviance, the that-whic h-is-not-you which
pc$ses as that-which-is-you,the entity which can "play the game" and
"work the game" simultaneously-is congruent with the consenting
altemativism ofthe posfinodem which, in the words oflinda Hutcheon,
as
22.3 April 2000
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Dissing Baudrillard 29
Since the rise and fall ofpopular taste is directly related to the pro-
duction and satisfaction ofsuch tastes through electronic mediums, Hip
Hop's interest inrecuperation and regenerationvia electronic technologies destabilizesthenotionthatalternative gestures are endlessly subsumed by the mediums which frame them; in otherwords, Hip-Hop's
interest in healing the brealcs in black musical orality is accomplished vr'a
the same electronic technologies which cause these breaks and fissures
in the first place. In the name of recuperation, Hip-Hop employs these
technologies to (re)popularize ttrat which has been previously popul anzed
(and afterwards discarded) by means ofthe same technologies, thereby
mending the rift in oral tradition caused by record companies who subjected that tradition to the whims ofpopular taste. Still, there are other
instances in which a sample may be identified as dissenting and contary,
rather than affrmative and recuperative, and I believe these instances are
equally altemative in nature. Rap music is undeniably a language-based
art form, and in many instances Hip-Hop artists use language with the
ultimate hope ofturning the tables---orperhaps more accurately, turning
the turntables---on their sampled material. Coinciding with the recuperative fiadition modeled by Rose is another sampling tadition which identifies language as a site of ideological struggle and attempts to enact a
syn(tactic)al terrorism from the position ofFoucault's masked other. while
this altemate tadition is similarly based in a communal approach to musical composition, its ultimate hope is to deconstruct its sampled text by
means of guerrilla semiotics.
In'"Towards a Semiological Guenilla Warfare," Umberto Eco suggests that "the battle for the survival ofman as a responsible being in the
Communications Era isnottobe wonwhere the communication originates, but where it arrives" (142). Sounding much like Foucault, Eco
suggests that the path to individual empowerment can be discovered by
"reversing the meaning ofthe messages" disseminated by the mass medi4
that "the message [the audience] receives can change the meaning that the
Source had attributed to that message" (143). In other words, Eco realizes that a truly engaged politics operates in those spaces, and via those
22.3 April 2000
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chains, remote-control televisions, and beepers. In short, the Beastie
Boys defined cool (orwhat they call "ill") as participation in a Reagan Era
economy which lacked ideals, and this undeniable lack is best summed up
intheircall to "FightForYourRight (To Party)," avacuous call which
suggests that listeners mobilize against authority in orderto secure their
right to consume various commodities.
Compared against.If Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back,
the Beastie Boys' belief in all that is "ilf 'suggests belief in another type of
illness, a thoughtless and uncritical acceptance ofthe Reagan Era values
which Public Enemy's album (released a year later) attempts to challenge.
The messages containe d,in Nation Of Millions ran directly counter to
America's popular image ofitself as expressed inLicensed To lll and
attempted to give voice to an often repressed '80s reality. As a group,
Public Enemy suggested that for many life was the inversion ofglamorized
pop lyrics-that beneath ttre popularly-conceived glitter and glitz of '80s
Americ4 African-Americans were still enduring economic and social restraints on a daily basis. 1 987 and 1988 were in fact marked by a heighteningracial tension inAmerica" eqpecially inNewYorkCity, Public Enemy's
base of operations. As is often the case, this tension did not abate peacefuIly, but instead expressed itself in a series ofbrutal racially-motivated
attacks and contoversies: In Howard Beach, three white teens attacked
three black men and one of the victims was run over and killed by a car
while fl eeing his bat-waving pursuers, kr Bensonhtns! white teenager Joe
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Fama shot and killed black teenager Yusef Hawkins who was in
Bensonhurst shopping for a car. Anottrer black teenago, Tawana Brawley
(who would later appear in Public Enemy's "Fight The Power" video),
claimed that she was raped by a group ofwhite men in Wappingers Falls,
and while a grand jury found no evidence to back her charges, the case
was hotly debated in the media with the issue ofrace dominating many of
the conversations.
It
Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back responds to
these tensions by suggesting that for African-Americans, America had
never ceased to be a dangerous place. Songs such as "Black Steel in the
t
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Dissing Baudrillard 33
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like you but has something quite different to say. This is also the epitome
ofpostnodern irony as articulated by Charles Jencks in his writings on the
"double code"; that which is being challenged (the original texQ is forced
to coincide dialectically with its challenger(the intertext) in the same aesftetic space (orinthis case, the same sonic field), forcingadialoguewhere
only a declaration existed.
On 1990's "Welcome to the Terrordome," Chuck D wams listeners
that "every brother ain't a brother / cause a colorjust as well could be
undercover" and the sampled chorus of '?arty For Your Nght To Fight"
s€ryes as an aesttretic example ofhis waming. Public Enemy's roconfigured
chorus emanates from a hybridized subject position, speaking wittr a voice
that is simultaneously'khite" and "black." So to an extent, the masked
other may be read as deconstructive (ofrace in this instance), an entity
which occupies two opposite subject positions simultaneously and thus
cannot be categorized according to binary configurations. Yet this notion
ofbeing "masked" or 'tnde,rcoved' suggests adherence to an agenda which
runs deeper than show, a convenient front employed in the name of a
iegitimate core of concems. Foucault's masked other (or Chuck D's
'tndercover brottrer') is more equivalent to a spy in enemy territory, fhking an accent to avoid detection while planting bombs in stategic sites.
While, to some extent, it blurs distinctions, the masked other should be
understood more as an oriented pluralism (strucfurally equivalent to
Jenck's Postmodern), than as an attempt to eradicate difference via
deconstnrctive sfategy-a means to affirm, ratherthan deny, an identity
that mainstream society (and its discourses) attempts to silence. The
reconfigured chorus of "Pa(y For Your Right To Fight " represents not a
searnless blending ofblack into white, but an attempt at manipulating an
existing (entrenched) discourse so that it reveals the concerns of those it
previously excluded.
For those who feel threatened or oppressed, the "right to part5r',
espousedbyttre Beastie Boys ishardly an issue, buttheirabilityto mobiLize,to organize or "parly" themselves together into a resistive stance is.
By means ofreconfiguring the original chorus ofthe Beastie Boys, public
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Dissing Baudrillard 35
In [the postmodem] situation, the taditional anti-art position is
abandoned in favor of a politics of invisibility, mimesis, speed,
and paganism. What unifies these subversive currents is not
their form, nor their material, nor their "message," b:ut their relationship to the antagonist; it is a question, to borrow a current
film title, of "sleeping with the enemy." (101; emphasis mine)
As Corbett suggests, postmodern aesthetics are not afraid of climbing
into bed and coupling with their antagonist. The postrnodem artist-as
Chuck D suggests-knows how to work and play the game simultaneously, to enact an "invisible" mode of subversion which hopes to infiltate mainsteam culture (and all the social influence such access grants)
on the artist's own terms. American Hip-Hop artists have long demonstated a talent and wilingness to respond to the dictates and ideologies of
cultural institutions with a semiotically informed criticism based in just this
sort ofconsenting altemativism. For example, on the radio mix of 1989's
"Straight Outta Compton" NWA used backward masking-sampling a
word, playing it bachvards, then inserting the remixed word back into the
spot ofthe original word-to circumvent FCC guidelines regarding pro-
fanity (Corbett 70). Worked through a process ofbackwards masking,
words strchasfuck&come l<cuf,and in this way, NWA was able to play
along with FCC guidelines ("the game') by removing profanity, while at
the same time substituting the missing words with newly invented signifiers
whose meanings were equally recognizable to the listener.
The subversive semiotics
ofNWA constitute yet another instance in
which Hip-Hop artists have acted counter to the rules while appearing to
followthem, andas such, are emblematic oftheways inwhichreproduction technologies allow their operator to enter into the dominant discourse
on his or her own terms. Along with the work ofpublic Enemy, works
such as "staight outta compton" should be viewed as the foundational
texts of Hip-Hop's fradition of syn(tactic)al terrorism-a tadition which
poses a serious challenge to Baudrillard's aforementionedthesis regarding eleckonic technologies. In a more general sense, Hip-Hop aesthetics
have posed a challenge to Baudrillard's claim since their inception. That is
to say, thebirth ofHip-Hop is directly linkedto the increased availability
22.3 April 2000
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Dissing Baudrillard 37
WorksCited
-
Adorno, Theodor. "On the Fetish-Character in Music andthe Regression of Listening." Art and lts Significance.Ed. Stephen David Ross. Albany: State U ofNew
Yort P,1994.539-547.
Baudrillard, Jeat Simulacra and Simulations. Ann Arbor: U of Michi ganP, 1994.
Beastie Boys. "Fight For Your Right." Zicensed To llL DefJam Records, 1986.
Corbetl Joln. Extended Play: Sounding OffFrom John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein.
,.
D, Chuck and YusufJah. Frglt the Power: Rap, Race, and Reality.NY: Delta, 1997.
Eco, Umberto. '"Towards a Semiological Guenilla Warfare." Travels in Hyperreality.
Trans. William Weaver. San Diego: Harcourt, I 986.
Foucault, Michel. 'Nietzsche, Genealogy, History." language, counter-memory,
practice. Ed. Donald F. Bouchard. Ithaca: Comell U P, 1977 . 139-163.
Hutcheon, Linda. "Theorising the Postnodern, Towards a Poetics." The Post-modern Reader. Ed. Charles Jencks. London: Academy, 1992.76-93.
Jencks, Charles. What is Post-Modernism? London: Academy, 1996.
Durham:DukeUP, 1994.
.
,'
r
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rI
Potter, Russell. Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of
Postmodernism.Albany:SUNYPress, 1995.
Public Enemy. "Welcome To The Terrordome." Fear OfA Black Planet Def Jam,
l9E0.
Public Enemy. "Party For Your Right To Fight.".Ir Takes A Nation Of Mittions To
Hold Us Back.DefJam, 1988.
Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America.
Hanover: Wesleyan U P,1994.
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