The work of art in the age of hip hop reproduction: Ice-T and the cultural capital of keeping it real again in Kings of Vice (2011) and Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap (2012)

In turning his talents to fiction in his 2011 debut novel, Kings of Vice, gangsta rapper Ice-T has faced a particularly intricate challenge in “keeping it real”. At this point in the twenty-first century, the credibility of hip hop’s harder core seems to have been undermined by the distance gangsta rap has travelled from the street realities that gave it birth in the 1980s to the millionaire enterprises that have emerged since. A “rapocracy” of incredibly successful rappers and producers, most of them associated with gangsta rap (such as Diddy, Dr Dre, Jay-Z and Russell Simmons), has taken the gangsta ill-logic of exploiting the street for maximum profit to the extreme. Ice-T’s intervention in this dynamic has been to try to remind us of hip hop’s more “auratic” origins while acknowledging that the past is indeed a different country. The turn to authorship of books and making of documentary films in the context of a post-2008 economic meltdown environment constitutes an imaginative way to revivify the creative possibilities of the gangsta. The very title of Ice-T’s 2012 documentary film, Something Out of Nothing: The Art of Rap, betrays an almost nostalgic yearning for a purer age and the form that erupted out of it. This same retrospective paradigm for thinking a better way forward for gangsta aesthetics is also at the heart of Kings of Vice. Ice-T’s inventive return to origins shows us how even at a moment of its maximum commodification, gangsta culture (precisely because of its contradictory relationship to capitalism) can provide a uniquely critical perspective on a deregulated world.     

Neoliberalism and the death of the social state: remembering Walter Benjamin's Angel of History

This article argues that for the past 30 years, the values and practices of disposability and social death promoted by casino capitalism have replaced important elements of a democratic polity with a culture of greed and cruel spectacles of violence. In its current form neoliberal politics, economics, and public pedagogy have become a register of how difficult it is for American society to make any claims on the promise of a democracy to come. As the realm of democratic politics shrinks and is turned over to market forces, social bonds crumble and any representation of communal cohesion is treated with disdain. As the realm of the social disappears, public values and any consideration of the common good are erased from politics, while the social state and responsible modes of governing are replaced by a punishing state and a Darwinian notion of social relations. This paper argues that if we are to imagine another type of society than the one which we currently inhabit, it is imperative for intellectuals, educators, artists, and other cultural workers to once again put the social question on the political agenda. In part, this means not only making evident how neoliberalism intensifies the pathologies of racism, war, inequality, and violence but also how we might take up the challenge of developing a politics and pedagogy that can serve and actualize a democratic notion of the social.     

“迷醉”或“清醒”：瓦尔特·本雅明对耶拿浪漫派“批评”概念的研究初探

本文以《德国浪漫派的艺术批评概念》为核心文本,考察了瓦尔特·本雅明的浪漫派研究。在这部早期的作品中,本雅明讨论了耶拿浪漫派的“批评”概念,并在此基础上指出,这一思潮的精神气质不是迷醉而狂热的,而是冷静而清醒的：它不沉迷于主观幻想,而是通过严肃的沉思追求客观真理;它并非偏狭的特殊性,而是关照着人类精神整体的发展脉络。这一讨论为本雅明回应现代性危机奠定了基础,它跨越了艺术理论的范畴,呼应了德国在世纪之交的现实处境,分享着德国社会理论的问题视野。讨论“批评”概念及其冷静清醒的气质有助于我们理解现代社会的危机以及本雅明早期作品对社会理论所做的贡献。     

米契尔的认知社会学习理论述评

米契尔在满足延宕方面做了大量研究,取得了一些富有创新性的成果,成为这方面的头号代表人物。他在批判传统人格理论的基础上,强调个体与情境之间的相互作用,提出了五种认知社会学习个体变量,来解释个体间行为的差异,和坎特一起探讨了个体对人和情境进行分类的认知原型方法。1995年,米契尔等人扩展了社会认知方法,提出了认知-情感人格系统理论,做出了整合人格心理学的尝试。