Kendrick Lamar and the Dialectics of Performing Hip Hop

In his recent performance at the 2015 Black Entertainment Television (BET) Awards in June, Los Angeles rapper Kendrick Lamar performed the song ‘Alright’ while standing defiantly upon a defaced police car, an impossibly large United States flag fluttering behind him. The obvious political nature of both the staging and song choice (with lyrics like ‘we hate po-po/Wanna …

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Snapshots of the Executioners

When the images of torture and abuse by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq became public in 2004, what was it that shocked so many people? It surely came as little surprise to…

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Extraordinary Renditions: Voicing Opposition to War

Andrea Brady’s recent poem ‘Saw Fit’ and Alan Jenkins’ ‘Descent’ explicitly address the historical context of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq…

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