Ka-Knowing Latour

Jeff Rice's article ties the writing of Ong and McLuhan, which hints at technology transforming rhetoric, to hiphop's unique innovations, and depicts hiphop as an aurally based way of communicating that springs from technology. The ties that he makes are primarily to the above writers, along with Berlin and a few others, almost all of whom seem to align his discussion with the social nature of rhetoric; the only surprise in his citations is maybe Peter Elbow. Elbow's discussion of the "juice" that spurs writing, which seems to stem from a Platonic view of invention, is equated with the "juice" of the Notorious BIG, and both depicted as difficult to pin down. This "juice" reminds me of Latour's "plasma," which also seems to bring the ineffable into discussions of the social.

All of the above remind me of our classes focused on ANT. Donna pointed out that Rice's article ties network discussion in to hiphop, and I'm wondering now, more than ever, if some hiphop might be considered ANT documentation of community life. Rice's citing of the Wu-Tang Clan has all of them saying their names, representing a multiplicity of actors, and how many hiphop songs could be said to offer actors that are nonhuman, like brand names and place names? This other-referentiality seems more common to hiphop than to other genres of music. Certainly, other songs refer to brand names and band member names, but the sense of each band member playing a part that constitutes the band as an entity is more common than in hiphop. Too, one mainstream hiphop group tends to lead us to another, as in any network, that's ultimately borderless; Outkast has the Goodie Mob and the Dungeon Family, and so on. Does the hiphop song function as a piece of ANT documentation?