Good Girl Gone Melisma: the racial politics of Avril Lavigne’s “What the Hell”

Avril Lavigne’s newish single “What the Hell” offers us a quick, clearly defined lesson about racial signifiers in American pop music. It all has to do with the one little arpeggiated melisma in the chorus of an otherwise vocally minimalist…

Deconstructing “Born This Way”

Some prefatory remarks: (1) I really, really wanted to like Gaga’s new single. (2) Musically, it’s a pretty fun dance pop track; I’m sure it will make its way in to my workout playlists. In fact, I prefer the music…

How to subvert biopower? (on Foucault, Butler, and subversive repetition)

Monday night in my Critical Race Theory class, we were discussing the second half of Foucault’s Society Must Be Defended. Here, he argues that 20th (and, I think there are good reasons for also claiming 21st) century State racism/racist discourse…

This Is A Cold War, Society Must Be Defended: Janelle Monae as Reader of Foucault

Yesterday, I was prepping both a talk on Janelle Monae, and a class on Foucault’s Society Must Be Defended, when I realized that Monae’s “Cold War” single is more or less a condensed, poetic version of Foucaut’s concept of politics…

Further proof that Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” is about NOT getting married

It’s more like a negative proof, or an argument ad absurdam…This “All the Christian Ladies (Put a Purity Ring On It)” sort of demonstrates all that “Single Ladies” could have been (patriarchial, misogynistic, etc.) but actually isn’t.