Recalcitrant Niggas: The Anti-Aesthetics of Black Gang Culture

This dissertation examines the intersections of the traditions and literature of the Western Sublime with contemporary drill rap music. The institutionalization of Black studies has forced academics interested in researching and exploring Blackness to wrestle with the question of what archives are worth spending attention and time on with increased urgency. Of course, drill rap, in ways that seem to align it with global capital, is pervasive and something of a nuisance (perhaps even menace) in our popular culture. Many devoted hip hop fans would claim drill rap is a distraction and that, aesthetically, it doesn't offer much substance. Nevertheless, this dissertation calls for and engages in a sustained analysis of the "drill world" as a means to explore the legacies and traumas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade as they still exist and manifest themselves in contemporary Black urban "ghettos." Furthermore, one of the major tasks of the intellectual work performed in this dissertation is to contextualize drill rap within the history of the modern Western Sublime. More specifically, this dissertation highlights the moments in hip hop music–exemplified by the work of Ye (who is analyzed in juxtaposition to Kafka's short stories)–that reach towards the heights while problematizing the observer's safety position as theorized most famously by Burke and Kant in the history of the Sublime. Many scholars have of the Sublime have noticed narratives and figures of violence and domination in theories of the Sublime, but this dissertation, in a line of accelerationist thinking suggested by Nick Land and qualified by Derrida, argues that the Sublime is most present in the abject hellscapes created by the catastrophic destruction of Western imperial savagery. With reference to Paul Gilroy, the Slave Sublime will be considered as a tool to be applied to both music and literature which offers a way forward for scholars invested in tracing the hidden residues of Black gang culture as they manifest themselves in our contemporary culture both popular and elite. Ultimately, with reference to the Guyanese scholars Walter Rodney and Andaiye, the n-word will be privileged as a linguistic site which offers clues to locate the presence of authentic Blackness in expression.