Reviving Soul(s): Hip-Hop as Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy in the United States and South Africa

• In Event: Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Educational Justice in a Changing World

Abstract

In contexts that are so aggressively anti-Black, how do the arts provide ways for People of Color in the U.S. and South Africa to sustain one’s humanity? In this paper, we consider Hip Hop cultural and linguistic practice in the U.S. and South Africa as organic forms of culturally sustaining pedagogy. Beginning with the Hip Hop art of sampling, we theorize Hip Hop as a project of linguistic remixing and reclamation that revives what Gates (1981) refers to as “the negated signs of Blackness.” We consider three cases—(1) Critical Hip Hop Language Pedagogies in the U.S., (2) the Hip Hop theatrical production and documentary Afrikaaps, and (3) the Afrikaans language movement by South African artist, Hemelbesem—as examples of organic projects of linguistic remixing and reclamation through Hip Hop cultural practice. We conclude by considering the implications of these efforts for theories of pedagogy in increasingly diverse and challenging contexts in the U.S. and South Africa

Authors

• H. Samy Alim, Stanford University

• Adam Haupt, University of Cape Town