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French Moves: The Cultural Politics of Le Hip Hop . By Felicia McCarren . Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2013. xxxviii + 202 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-993995
Reviews
The popularity of rap in France is well known, from its receptiveness to American artists since the 1980s to the international success of IAM and MC Solaar and the bustling scenes in Paris and Marseille. Yet social scientist Hugues Bazin has argued that 'among the hip-hop disciplines, dance is undoubtedly the expression that best allows the understanding of the development of hip-hop in France' (Bazin 2003, p. 99). The Mitterand administration's endorsement of hip hop in the 1980s (simultaneous to its condemnation by conservative social groups in the United States) has given it a privileged, if contentious, place within contemporary French culture: as an institutionalised part of dance pedagogy; as a government-funded programme of dance studios and festivals; and, more broadly, as a medium for France to negotiate its claims to cultural exceptionalism in light of postcolonial immigration.
Through an examination of live dance productions, Felicia McCarren's book presents the first sustained examination of hip hop in French culture. The emphasis on France and the French 'le hip-hop' in her title signals a different approach to her subject from that found in most studies of global hip hop, which treat the genre as a local inflection of an essentially American phenomenon:
In focusing on what makes French hip hop different, I am of course going against the grain of studies of global culture and its circulation. ... I am asking: is modernity really global or does it still have a national character and a particular national history in some places? Indeed, by asking this question I am arguing ... that...