Brass orchids : techniques of the posthuman in Black popular music
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In this dissertation, I analyze the musical and sonic techniques employed in works by four Black American artists - the musicians J Dilla and Kanye West, and the authors Nathaniel Mackey and Samuel Delany - to develop three overlapping conceptions of the posthuman. Popular music has been a powerful tool for humans to navigate the intersection of subjectivity and technology, and the history of African-American music in particular is characterized by experimentation with music's ability to augment, extend, or mediate human subjectivity. To unpack this history, my project follows the work of theorists like Kodwo Eshun, Alexander Weheliye in proposing a critical methodology in which, as Eshun puts it, "Instead of theory saving music from itself... music is heard as the pop analysis it already is." By treating these artists' work as both aesthetic and theoretical documents, I develop a conception of the posthuman subject based on an enhanced notion of technique and reframe the posthuman not as a singular, clearly-defined subject position but rather as a broader tradition of skepticism towards the human subject woven into the legacy of Black cultural production.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2023; ©2023 |
| Publication date | 2023; 2023 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Suechting, Maxwell Joseph |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Bukatman, Scott, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | Bukatman, Scott, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | Elam, Michele |
| Thesis advisor | Kronengold, Charles (Charles Stewart) |
| Degree committee member | Elam, Michele |
| Degree committee member | Kronengold, Charles (Charles Stewart) |
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Modern Thought and Literature |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Maxwell J. Suechting. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Modern Thought and Literature. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2023. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/bp229pf5732 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2023 by Maxwell Joseph Suechting
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC-SA).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...