超越貧民窟中心論：《嘻哈故事》中的黑色資本主義與非裔美國人雄風

Abstract

本論文結合文化研究理論和文學理論，探討Heru Ptah的小說《嘻哈故事》裡嘻哈音樂與文化對黑色資本主義與非裔美國人雄風的影響。第一章以歷史的角度出發，探討嘻哈音樂如何從一個代表貧民窟中心的文化現象轉變為以資本為主的利益工具。第二章採用了蓋慈 (Henry Louis Gates, Jr.)「表意猴」(the Signifying Monkey) 理論，針對胡克絲 (bell hooks) 的階級論下的負面黑色資本主義進行「表意」的動作，討論Ptah如何認為在配合非裔美國人特殊種族和階級經驗後，嘻哈資本主義如何成為一個對黑人社群具有正面貢獻的力量。第三章結合裴克 (Houston A. Baker, Jr.) 非裔美國文學「世代遞嬗」(generational shift) 的理論和胡克絲對非裔美國人雄風的觀察，以歷史的角度處理自畜奴制度以來黑人雄風典範 (paradigm) 的遞嬗，並進一步探討小說中呈現的嘻哈黑幫雄風背後所承擔的被剝削與受苦的歷史經驗。

Heru Ptah’s A Hip Hop Story is one of the first novels to specifically deal with hip hop music, rappers, and their impact on African American culture. Like the novel, this thesis will discuss this relatively new cultural phenomenon within the field of literature. This thesis takes on a historical approach combined with various literary and cultural theories to the studies of hip hop culture in terms of rap, rappers, the music industry, and their influence on African American male identity delineated in A Hip Hop Story. The first chapter studies the historical factors, including governmental politics, policies, and historical events, behind the inception of hip hop and the change of sounds and themes throughout rap’s development. Through a chronological historicizing, the thesis is able to account for hip hop’s process into capitalization so as to conduct a more complex discussion behind the problems of hip hop’s gangsta masculinity in the second and third chapters. The second chapter applies Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s theory of the Signifying Monkey to bell hooks’ observation of the negative black capitalism as well as to the novel, arguing that Ptah’s ideal of a constructive hip hop capitalism can only occur when the hip hop generation practices the art of signifying in the production of hip hop. By combining Houston A. Baker., Jr.’s theory of generational shifts with hooks’ observation of black male coolness, the third chapter identifies the paradigms of African American masculinity since slavery and their representations in A Hip Hop Story, then argues that the problems concerning gangsta masculinity is an extension of a history of suffering, exploitation, and resistance, and are not problems specific to this generation.