Imagining the Black Feminine: Radical Performances in Rap Music Público

Abstract

Canonical scholarship on rap music (i.e. Joan Morgan's When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost) assumes a link between female sex and gender. This gendered conversation limits the scope of analysis and often renders rap as, simply, misogynistic. It is often the Black feminine p that is silenced, misread, and ignored in these analyses. In this thesis, I seek to reevaluate the influence of Black feminine performances in rap music. I apply black feminist theorist Hortense Spiller's concept of the flesh, explicated in her landmark text "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book," to theorize a radical practice of imagination through Black feminine performances. I define imagination as the ability to conceive of that which is not immediately present and argue that performances of imagination break from all dualities, particularly man/woman/ and male/female. Through close readings of OutKast's "Elevators (Me & You)" and "Jazzy Belle" from the album ATLiens and Missy Elliot's "The Rain [Supa Dupa Fly]" and "Work It," I read for the flesh expressed as imagination to explore the ways in which rap musical and visual productions are used to imagine and create alternative selves, identities, and realities. I conclude that Outkast interrogates the alienation and outkasting of Black populations in America and imagines the endless possibilities of that which is outside of the norm. Further, though Jazzy Belle is critiqued for failing to adhere to the patriarchal construction of women as pure and chaste, I read her failure as a demand to imagine non-normative femininities. In the case of "The Rain [Supa Dupa Fly]," I posit that imagination is expressed through the theatrical depictions of Elliott's imagined body. The iconic plastic bag suit and the manipulations of her proportions through special effects combine to make a body which is not legible within the gendered discourse. Additionally, her subversion of language in "Work It" is an example of the ways in which performance imagines possibilities for expression that language alone cannot sufficiently provide.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

I. Forward............................................................................1

II. Chapter One: Theoretical Framework...................................3

III. Chapter Two: Outkast: From Alienation to Alien-nations ......16

IV. Chapter Three: niaR ehT: Missy Elliott and Assemblage.........30

V. Conclusion.......................................................................42

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Women's Studies
Degree	BA
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Women's Studies
Palavra-chave	rap music imagination flesh Black feminine performance
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Willett, Cynthia, Emory University
Committee Members	Gordon, Michelle Yvonne, Emory University Sheth, Falguni A, Emory University

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