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miguel's review
3.0
Putting all my cards on the table, this review is tainted by my feelings on academic analyses of youth culture movements. I categorically dislike them. I think there is something lost when an observer enters into a "scene" or subculture and tries to present a certain account of that group. There are far too many capital interests imbricated in such an account. For an anthropologist, stumbling on a new musical genre community or fandom can be like a gold mine. For what it's worth, though, I think Maira is conscious of these pitfalls. Still, from my perspective, they are unavoidable. I would prefer to hear from representatives of the group directly. Accordingly, this text is at its best when it provides first hand accounts and quotations, of which it offers quite a few.
The text itself is rather beautiful, filled with color photos of graffiti and hip-hop performances. I thoroughly appreciate Maira's plainly stated activist investments and her attention to language in furtherance of those goals. She lets none of the naturalized discourse of the Israeli colonizing settlement go uninterrogated. She also makes sure to theorize "youth" as a category. Unfortunately, her analysis when it comes to expressing the particularities of hip-hop culture are not quite as incisive. Just as Maira's interested prose would indicate, she extols Palestinian hip-hop culture. And yet, many of the conclusions she draws do not feel impactful. Her claims are that Palestinian hip-hop culture has opened up new political imaginaries, internationalist tendencies, democratized activism in the realms of age, class, and to a certain extent, gender, and served as a cultural education for Palestinian youth. And yet, aren't these conclusions drawn about most youth movements even in other cultural and historical contexts?
Maira recounts the skilled weaving of "traditional" Palestinian aesthetic idioms into hip-hop with great relish. And yet, the status of hip-hop at large remains mostly assumed. Maira falls squarely into a binaristic logic of "conscious"/"gangsta" or "independent"/"commercial" and sometimes ends up coming off as an irritating poster on a mid-2000s hip-hop message board. Maira even goes so far as to explicitly reference this ideological conflict, but more as a historical curio than an ideological conflict which influences all her readings and arguments. Maira is intent on portraying a uniformly positive perspective on Palestinian hip-hop, a cultural idiom which is rife with tensions (particularly in regard to gender) that cannot be resolved with just good intentions.
Maira's prose and historical accounts are valued, but hip-hop more broadly deserves a more attentive reader. Or perhaps it deserves to be left alone, and not read in an academic setting at all.
The text itself is rather beautiful, filled with color photos of graffiti and hip-hop performances. I thoroughly appreciate Maira's plainly stated activist investments and her attention to language in furtherance of those goals. She lets none of the naturalized discourse of the Israeli colonizing settlement go uninterrogated. She also makes sure to theorize "youth" as a category. Unfortunately, her analysis when it comes to expressing the particularities of hip-hop culture are not quite as incisive. Just as Maira's interested prose would indicate, she extols Palestinian hip-hop culture. And yet, many of the conclusions she draws do not feel impactful. Her claims are that Palestinian hip-hop culture has opened up new political imaginaries, internationalist tendencies, democratized activism in the realms of age, class, and to a certain extent, gender, and served as a cultural education for Palestinian youth. And yet, aren't these conclusions drawn about most youth movements even in other cultural and historical contexts?
Maira recounts the skilled weaving of "traditional" Palestinian aesthetic idioms into hip-hop with great relish. And yet, the status of hip-hop at large remains mostly assumed. Maira falls squarely into a binaristic logic of "conscious"/"gangsta" or "independent"/"commercial" and sometimes ends up coming off as an irritating poster on a mid-2000s hip-hop message board. Maira even goes so far as to explicitly reference this ideological conflict, but more as a historical curio than an ideological conflict which influences all her readings and arguments. Maira is intent on portraying a uniformly positive perspective on Palestinian hip-hop, a cultural idiom which is rife with tensions (particularly in regard to gender) that cannot be resolved with just good intentions.
Maira's prose and historical accounts are valued, but hip-hop more broadly deserves a more attentive reader. Or perhaps it deserves to be left alone, and not read in an academic setting at all.
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