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Hip Hop Aesthetics and the Will to Culture 1
Author(s) -
Maxwell Ian
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
the australian journal of anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1757-6547
pISSN - 1035-8811
DOI - 10.1111/j.1835-9310.1997.tb00177.x
Subject(s) - legitimacy , graffiti , aesthetics , hop (telecommunications) , semiotics , sociology , key (lock) , art , computer science , epistemology , visual arts , philosophy , law , politics , telecommunications , political science , computer security
In this paper, based upon my field work with the self‐styled ‘Hip Hop Community’ in Sydney, in the early 1990s, I examine the material processes by which ‘cultural’ significance is articulated to a number of key practices, specifically, break‐dancing, rapping and graffiti. I argue that these practices are understood, within the scene, as being aesthetic practices, which operate to mimetically ‘represent’ a pre‐existing cultural essence—Hip Hop. Using a Peircian semiotic model, I argue that the maintenance of performances of these key Hip Hop practices functions over time, within the Hip Hop community, to affirm the legitimacy, authenticity and reality of the idea of Hip Hop.