american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang

156 AMERICAN POLITICAL POETRY
where the former identifies causes that dictate outcomes, whereas the
latter identifies limits and constraints that affect action rather than dictate
effects (29, 44–45), suggests a way to understand these factors.
Determinism, he shows, is too crude a model because it leaves out the
chance for revisability. It gives little space to actors for achieving even
realistic goals. Determinate factors, on the other hand, suggest that
no outcomes are impossible, but that many are unlikely. The determination
approach suggests that moving from poverty in the South
Bronx to the ownership of a private yacht is highly improbable,
becoming a millionaire small business owner less so, and so on. This
approach establishes useful parameters without demarcating absolutes,
which the aforementioned poles do. Thus, Hall’s framework is more
useful in beginning to understand the figures of voice in contestatory
urban agency.
Before discussing specific songs, it is useful to consider hip-hop’s
distinctive linguistic codes, as hip-hop agency is produced by and
reflected in a poetics with its own forms of knowledge. First time listeners
often attest that understanding hip-hop lyrics is challenging.
These difficulties are partly due to the speed of a rapper’s delivery,
complex rhyme schemes, bass heavy beats that drown out lyrics, or an
inability to understand a rapper’s denotations. Although these issues
affect a novice’s capacity for digesting content, another overarching
factor is paramount, the ever-mutating hip-hop vernacular. This vast
set of terms, phrases, substitutions, metonyms, metaphors, and
coded meanings requires active listening and a working knowledge
base of hip-hop’s discourse conventions. As in Wolfgang Iser’s reception
theory, there is no work of art without the continuous active participation
of the reader/listener. This theory indicates that the
reader/listener must understand the conventions and codes that a
work uses to create meaning. 1 While Iser’s theory has its limitations,
such as his implication that only certain readers are capable of a
“proper” reading, it suggests the prominence of shared codes of
understanding, which are used to disseminate knowledge in a community.
Similarly, Russell A. Potter discusses how hip-hop embodies and
employs its own forms of knowledge, discursive forms, and traditions
(22). Hip-hop’s contestatory urban agency, moreover, is expressed in
vernacular specific to the hip-hop community. Rappers understand
their place in the world, as mentioned earlier, through the lens of their
own language(s).