Content area
Full text
Houston A. Baker, Jr. Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1993.110 pp. $16.95.
Houston Baker's Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy has two goals: First, Baker analyzes Black and Afro-American Studies departments and rap music as "ground[s] of contestation" between various forces of modern American life; second, Baker enacts his concepts of Black Studies as an organic link between black communities and mainstream American universities, and rap music as an authentic, black poetic voice.
For Baker, the principal contribution of rap music and Black Studies is their respective oppositions to mainstream, white, American popular culture and universities. As a function of this opposition, Baker claims that Black Studies "arrested 'normal' academic practice" and "forged a connection between everyday black urban life and traditionally dis-interested academic provinces." Using "post-structuralist" Cultural Studies terminology, he describes "Black Studies as a sign . . . [, as] a signifying amalgam of energies" which "was committed in the first instance of its determination to undoing all prevalent 'authentic' notions of such disciplines as history and English." So, for Baker, especially in early moments, Black Studies was able to act as an authentic connection to "everyday black urban life," thereby dislodging notions of authenticity in the "academic provinces." The problem with this approach is in large part contextual. Both at present and in 1993 when Baker's book went to press, I see scant evidence that either one of these "victories" was widespread or longlived.
Baker's "post-structuralist" account of Black Studies seems to be in tension with his Levi-Straussian, binary structuralist analytical methods, which frame both Black Studies and rap music in opposition to mainstream institutions. Many of the vital contributions of, and issues faced by, rap and Black Studies seem to have fallen into the silence of this methodological interstice. Given the limitations of Professor Baker's knowledge of rap music, Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy becomes a symptom of its own mis-alignment. The silences created by the methodology of the book limit its value as a source on the historical development of Black Studies. Baker's treatment of rap music relates to select incidents in which the "mainstream" mis-perceives the music in particularly heinous ways. However, his analysis lacks depth and fails to address key issues...