Decolonial Resistance in Hip Hop:
Decolonial Resistance in Hip Hop: Re-Colonial Resistances, Love, and Wayward Self-Determination
Joe Hinton
Partial resistances vary as to the terms to which they reify colonial
resistances, but most do to one extent or another. N.W.A's "Fuck tha
Police" emphatically decries the historically biased and anti-Black
prosecuting tendencies of the City of Los Angeles quite creatively while
also reifying the colonial oppression of gay people by using homophobic
slurs. The sexual domination narratives promoted by Cardi B and Nicki Minaj
take a step towards a less subordinate position for Black women and do
promote positive narratives that Black women can be proud of their
sexuality, but also reify the objectification and exploitation of the Black
female body by offering limited options for how a famous Black women is to
present herself and her body. This is not to say that other options are not
presented by other Black females; to do so would be myopic. I am rather
emphasizing that the female rappers with the most prominence do not fit
these narrow images, coincidentally; they are approved by a
white-controlled media elite that has never shied away from aligning Black
female exploitation and lucrative profits. In the wake of the death of
Nipsey Hussle, an LA rapper known for his generosity and devotion to
community uplift, Jay Z exclaimed that Black people should look to gentrify
their own neighborhoods before white people can.
U.S. Puppeteering and the Philosophy of Chavismo:
Nicolas Maduro as a Symbol of Venezuelan Sovereignty
Canyon Ryan
In 2006, the U.S. Department of State began barring the sale of new
military equipment and spare parts to Venezuela. In 2011, the U.S. placed
sanctions against the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA. In 2013, further
sanctions were placed against the state-owned firearms manufacturer, CVIM.
By 2015, President Obama sanctioned Venezuelan officials and declared
ludicrously by Executive Order a "national emergency with respect to the
unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security… of the
United States posed by… Venezuela." Today, the U.S. Treasury
Department has sanctions on 115 Venezuelans and hundreds of visas have been
revoked by the U.S. State Department (Seelke & Sullivan, 2019). A 2019
report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research conducted by Mark
Weisbrot and Jeffery Sachs found that sanctions imposed by the Trump
Administration since August 2017 alone have resulted in the preventable
deaths of more than 40,000 Venezeulans and have contributed to the
suffering of millions due to restrictions on Venezuela's ability to import
food and medicine. With continued sanctions placed on PDVSA in 2019, it is
clear the U.S. intends to undernourish the nation. Since 2013, the Venezuelan economy has contracted by more than 47%
(according to the Venezuelan..
Students, Peasants, and Communism in Colombia:
An Interview with Oliver Dodd (Part Two)
Devon Bowers
Since the early 1990s Colombia engaged on a process of neo-liberal
restructuring, largely to finance the counter-insurgency war against the
powerful Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In return for
economic and military aid, the United States and the International Monetary
Fund, demanded neoliberal reforms that entailed economic privatisation,
liberalisation of foreign trade, financial deregulation, and reduced
tariffs. As a result, Colombia's economic model today is largely
extractivist and its capitalist accumulation strategy is dependent on those
multinational corporations based in the core of the international political
economy. In terms of production of revenue from exports, Colombia's traditional
export - coffee - which in the 1980s produced more than half of the
country's export revenue, now represents only around 5% of export revenue.
Currently, coal, oil and gas, make up more than 60% of export revenue.
These economic changes have led to political changes. The multinational
corporations invested in extractivism are overwhelmingly based in the
capitalist core. The majority of the profits generated in Colombia's
economy are put into the pockets of the finance capitalists, based outside
Colombia. Furthermore, relative to other sectors - manufacturing (around
10%), services (around 35%), oil, coal and gas generates significantly
higher profits. This trend puts multinational corporations in a stronger
economic position vis-à-vis Colombia's declining national bourgeoisie.
Nationally based companies are increasingly being bought out by
multinational corporations, further extending foreign based influence over
Colombia's economy and making the country more vulnerable to social forces
organised at world order levels. The peace accord signed with FARC in 2016 is under severe threat.
Paramilitary killings of social activists since the signing of the peace
agreement..
Orientalism and the Cultural Constructions of Modern-Day Mass Tourism
John Nightengale
Said follows a post-structuralist model in an attempt to dismantle the
binary established by imperial discourse; he tries to highlight the power
structure that establishes the Occident as superior to the Orient. Said
drew upon theorists of his time to construct his theory. One key theorist
he drew inspiration from was Foucault; in particular his study of power
(Gilbert-Moore, 1997; Lester, 2003). Foucault said that power and knowledge
are intrinsically linked in that the creation of knowledge was an exertion
of power (Foucault, 1991; Lester, 2003). The "Orient" was constructed
through the systematic learning, discovery and practice from the west (Said
2003; Burney, 2012). Here it is seen through an imagined geography, the
east was produced through travel writing, novels and poetry, which sought
to bring the east into a realm of understanding (Abdul Janmohamed, 1985;
Mostafanezhad, 2013). What is important to remember is that only the west
was producing knowledge, the east was not able to produce literature and
art about the west. This illustrates Foucault's idea that knowledge is
power, in which the west has more power and therefore is producing more
knowledge, thus directly demonstrating the dominance of the west over the
east. The example Said (2003) gives is, Cromer referring to the Orient as
"lethargic and suspicious", and "devoid of energy and initiative". This was
the only representation that the people in England received of the Orient
at this time (Said, 2003). This creation of "false knowledge" along with
other examples of literature and art contributes to the social construct of
the "east", in which meaning is ascribed onto people and place (Crang,
1998, Ashcroft, 2008). It is seen that the "real east" is reformed into the
"discursive east", meaning that the east is now conformed into the
imagination of west, in which the "discursive east" will always be the
submissive (Moore-Gilbert, 1997).
