1,720,957 research outputs found
‘The Sagacity of Words’: Gandhi and 21st Century Hip Hop
No full textBest known for his ideas of ahimsa and satyagraha, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a prominent figure in the Indian freedom movement. Even today, he is highly revered for his philosophy of non-violence which was also an integral part of India’s freedom struggle. Gandhi was responsible for making non-violent protests an important part of the movement. Now famous as a global expressive culture including forms of dance and music, Hip Hop, too, was conceived as a reaction to the violence that pervaded the gang culture of the late-1960s to early-1970s in The Bronx, New York City. Drawing from this thread of similarity, this article fleshes out parallels between the ideas of Gandhi and Hip Hop culture. Divided into three sections, it begins by establishing the cultural linkages between Gandhi, the Gandhian foundations of Hip Hop, and marking out the rationale of the study. The following section goes on to discuss the intertwining strings between Gandhi’s perceptions of knowledge and the significance of knowledge in Hip Hop culture. Finally, the third section discusses references to and representations of Gandhi in selected works of 21st century Hip Hop. In doing so, the article posits that Gandhism and Hip Hop culture belong to a similar lineage of ideas, if not the same one.
Exchanges Discourse Podcast
In Conversation with Elloit Cardozo [14:01
‘That rug really tied the room together’: Knitting Dudeism and Camusian Philosophy into a Larger Tapestry
Get PDFEven though parallels between the philosophy of Albert Camus and The Big Lebowski have been drawn repeatedly, a sustained enquiry into several possible dimensions of the matter is yet to have been conducted.This dissertation makes an attempt to conduct the aforementioned enquiry in some detail. In doing this, the study will try to analytically compare Camusian philosophy and Dudeism and bring out the similarities between them. This does not imply that there are no differences between the two; but the focus of this study is the similarities and not the differences. Dudeism, for the purpose of this study, will not be restricted to The Dude and the literature written on The Dude and Dudeism. It will also be expanded to accommodate certain other parts of the larger discourse of Ethan and Joel Coen’s filmography as well as a few other parts of The Big Lebowski itself. It is crucial, however, to “draw a line in the sand” (Walter, The Big Lebowski) at the very outset. In embarking on a comparative analysis between Camusian philosophy and Dudeism, this study does not intend to propose that one of them is influenced by the other and “what-have-you” ("The Editorial Preface" 12). Instead, it simply attempts to point out some of the discursive elements that they share with each other as well as with several of the sub-discourses they comprise of. The analysis in the dissertation that follows is split into three major chapters:
1. ‘Well, I’ll tell you what I’m blathering about’: An analytical frame of reference.
2. ‘You can’t be worried about that shit, life goes on, man’: Life, Death and Absurdity in Camus and Dudeism.
3. ‘Somebody this square community won’t give a shit about’: Camus’ Absurd Man and Dudeism
The first chapter, “‘Well, I’ll tell you what I’m blathering about’: An analytical frame of reference”, provides an analytical framework for the discussions that follow in the rest of the dissertation. It is further divided into three sections. The first section lays out a basic understanding of a few fundamental ideas of Dudeism for the readers. The second section discusses a few important aspects of the philosophy of Albert Camus. The third section briefly establishes the connections between Dudeism and the philosophy of Camus which are examined in greater detail later in the study. The second chapter, “‘You can’t be worried about that shit, life goes on, man’: Life, Death and Absurdity in Camus and Dudeism” looks at Camus’ takes on Life, Death and Absurdity
while also pointing out the parallels they seem to strike with Dudeism. The chapter is further divided into four sections. The first section examines strands of Camusian thought, especially the Absurd in the other films of Ethan and Joel Coen before establishing a connection to The Big Lebowski. The second section explores the attitudes towards Death in Camusian
philosophy and Dudeism. The third section compares the ideologies of Life in the works of Camus and Dudeism. The fourth and final section explores parallels between Camus’ novel The Stranger and The Stranger: the cowboy narrator of The Big Lebowski.
The third chapter picks up on the Camusian trope of the Absurd Man and its relation to Happiness in both: the works of Camus as well as the discourses of Dudeism. It comprises of three sections. The first section explores the notion of Alienation in Camusian philosophy and Dudeism and looks at how it eventually leads to the trope of the Absurd Man in Camus. The second section explores Camus’ creation of the Absurd Man through the Cycle of the Absurd and looks at how it fits into Dudeism. The third and final section delves into a comparison of the Absurd Man’s quest for Happiness in Camus and Dudeism.M.A. Honours with Research in Englis
‘Haq Se Main Chapri’: Casteist Slurs and Cultural Commentary in India
No full textRapper Altaf Tadavi aka MC Stan has been a divisive figure ever since he first made a splash on India\u27s Hip Hop scene in 2018. His eccentric mannerisms and style, paired with an abundant use of hyperlocalized slang that has now become characteristic of his artistic and public persona, have continued to split perceptions even as he has eventually risen to mainstream prominence enroute winning the 16th season of Bigg Boss (the Indian adaptation of the Dutch reality show Big Brother). While MC Stan has previously faced criticism for his artistic output, the mainstream attention that has come with Bigg Boss has seen him labelled ‘chapri’: a term that has gained considerable cultural currency in India since the fallout between Indian content creators on TikTok and Youtube in 2020. We contend that cultural figures and platforms such as MC Stan and TikTok occupy an in-between space. MC Stan’s occupation of space on a reality show and his ensuing popularity destabilizes accepted notions of who is worthy of respect and fame. Similarly, the popularity of predominantly low-income influencers on TikTok disrupts ideas about who can be a cultural creator. While the criticism levelled at them does begin with questions of ‘standards’ and what makes a work good or bad, such commentary quickly slips into name-calling revealing the underlying anxiety that has less to do with quality and more to do with gatekeeping. We discuss online responses to MC Stan’s stint in Bigg Boss, focusing on the usage of the word ‘chapri’, and draw parallels to the discourse in online communities during the YouTube v/s TikTok controversy in India. We pair this with an etymological reading of the word to look at how conversations centering the high and low in popular culture descend into the casual usage of casteist slander, before discussing how Hip Hop culture provides these artists with a space to reclaim their personhood.
Keywords: MC Stan, Bigg Boss, chapri, casteist, TikTok, Hip Ho
Panoptic Pranksters: Power, Space and Visibility in the Information Panopticon in Scare Campaign
Get PDFFoucault, in his seminal work Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975) discusses Bentham’s architectural design of the Panopticon as a means to exercise power and enforce discipline. He extends this metaphor to speak of Panopticism as a social phenomenon used to discipline work forces through covert strategies. Shoshana Zuboff, in In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power (1988) contextualizes Foucault’s discussion in an age where the work culture uses Information Systems extensively for surveillance. She calls such a structure an “Information Panopticon”. This paper aims to bring out the various nuances of the Information Panopticon in Cameron and Colin Cairnes’ film Scare Campaign (2016) and how it facilitates the exercise of power. The paper firstly looks at Zuboff’s Information Panopticon in light of Foucault’s discussion before evaluating the Information Panopticon created in the film and its hierarchal structure. Next it endeavours to demonstrate how the Information Panopticon in the film is not solely reliant on literal visibility. It wraps up with a discussion on the relation between spatiality, visibility and power in the film’s Information Panopticon
Recommended from our members
Narrating the Indian hip hop OG: Ethnography, epistemic-deontic stance, chronotype
No full textIn this chapter, we trace how the figure of the OG is evoked in oral narratives to construct moral stances that position the narrator as knowledgeable of and affiliated with Indian underground hip hop. In global hip hop language, the OG (Original Gangsta) is a figure of personhood that indexes chronotopic firstness and underground authenticity. The OG is someone who was there at the beginning and has practiced a particular element of hip hop for the first time in a given locale. When the figure of the OG is evoked in narrative talk, the narrator positions themself both as knowledgeable of the history of underground hip hop and as morally responsible for sustaining underground hip hop culture in the future. The positioning practices we discuss in this chapter are thus future-oriented, although they are embedded in narratives that recount events that have taken place in the past
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
- …
