The Rhizome of Blackness

A Critical Ethnography of Hip-Hop Culture, Language, Identity, and the Politics of Becoming

Ibrahim Awad, Awad Ibrahim

• Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
• Year: 2014
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781453912768
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Rhizome of Blackness is a critical ethnographic documentation of the process of how continental African youth are becoming Black in North America. They enter a «social imaginary» where they find themselves already falling under the umbrella of Blackness. For young Africans, Hip-Hop culture, language, and identity emerge as significant sites of identification; desire; and cultural, linguistic, and identity investment. No longer is «plain Canadian English» a site of investment, but instead, Black English as a second language (BESL) and «Hip-Hop all da way baby!» (as one student put it). The result of this dialectic space between language learning and identity investment is a complex, multilayered, and «rhizomatic third space, » where Canada meets and rubs shoulders with Africa in downtown Toronto, Vancouver, or Montreal in such a way that it produces its own «ticklish subject» and pedagogy of imaginary and integrative anti-racism.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Black Don’t Crack Marking the Unmarked: A Critical Ethnography of Becoming
• Chapter One: We Got A Situation Herre Race, Culture, Language, and Identity: Theorizing the Rhizomatic Third Space
• Chapter Two: “Wallahi, ils sont tous des racistes!” Striated Racialization and the Rhizomatic Process of Becoming Black
• Chapter Three: “Si tu allais faire un sondage, ça vient souvent de l’orientation ou des personnels” Teachers, Curriculum, and Pedagogy
• Interlude: Homeless Urban Dreams
• Chapter Four: “Oh, I Got It, It Gives Me Great Pleasure!” Hip-Hop Culture and Language, Post/Coloniality, and the Imaginary
• Chapter Five: “Peace and One Love!” A Rhizomatic Third Space: Race, Language, Culture, and the Politics of Identity
• Conclusion: What’s the Dillio? Towards a New “Ticklish Subject”: Pedagogy of the Imaginary as Integrative Antiracism
• Appendix I: Notes on Transcription of Interviews
• Appendix II: Profiles of Students Interviewed for This Book
• References
• Index