‘Disrupt Tha Police’
N.W.A’s 1988 album Straight Outta Compton is an obvious example of an aesthetic disruption as Rancière described, that “compelled the mainstream audience to see the hostile, underprivileged side to American living” as critic Maxine Headley wrote. A clear example of a political moment as Rancière described it, representing an aesthetic disruption that makes apparent the inherent contradiction of ‘the part who have no part’. But Rancière’s theory requires a greater level of sophistication when discussing failed attempts at political change; and their value to future successful political moments. This blog elaborates on how a successful example in N.W.A can illuminate the value in these failures.
It is important to note that Rancière does not argue that “the work of producing such special circumstances [for political acts to occur] is somehow not political work” as Samuel Chambers wrote in “The Lessons of Rancière”. Rather, my critique is that such political work often comes directly as a result of failed political acts, and that as such a more detailed view of them is useful in understanding the foundations of the successful political act. Attempts to create political change that fail to make oppressed communities intelligible to the established police order still have value particularly in two aspects illustrated by N.W.A.
Firstly, N.W.A’s 1988 album Straight Outta Compton was successful in piercing the white dominated police order and the public consciousness in part due to the style of the music, lyrics and artistic personas that had been built on the traditions of generations of black artists and protest music. N.W.A are an illustration of how past attempts which ‘failed’ to bring about concrete political moments may inadvertently create the cultural language which may succeed in making the peoples intelligible to the police order, a form of communication resembling the ‘logos’ Rancière believes is distinct from mere cries of pleasure and pain that previously is all that society can understand from these outsider groups.
Secondly, N.W.A provide interesting insights into how failed political moments may make their causes intelligible to the communities for whom they, deliberate or not, represent. New generations of artists from these communities were given stark examples of the relative effectiveness of various styles at bringing about political change; whilst also arguably creating a deeper understanding not only of the oppression that they faced, but that it could be changed. In the decades that followed, artists like Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar further pushed the boundaries that N.W.A had shattered, articulating new avenues of political struggle. N.W.A may have forged a political moment, but their own success was inspired by previous generations of artists making their struggle intelligible to them similarly how they did for the next generation of artists.
By continuing to develop an aesthetic style within these communities that brings them closer to successful political moments, and by making intelligible the struggle of oppressed communities to those within such communities N.W.A demonstrate the value in a more nuanced approach to failed political moments in Rancière’s theory.
