THE BROTHERWISE DISPATCH vs JESSE CHASE

The BROTHERWISE DISPATCH, VOL.2, ISSUE#7, MARCH-MAY/2013

Jesse Chase is a Canadian born novelist, singer/songwriter, essayist, poet and literary critic whose work has been published and exhibited in ARC Poetry, Hypermedia Joyce, Ecotones Festival, Prague Microliterary Festival, Ditch Poetry and Soliloquies. He currently works as a farm labourer in British Columbia, Canada.

BROTHERWISE DISPATCH - I recently read an essay of yours called “Linguistic Babylon”, which you mentioned is actually part of a series of essays you’re working on, what’s that intellectual project all about?

JESSE CHASE - My "Linguistic Babylon” project aims to introduce a radical Afro-Judaic discourse into the world of western pop philosophy. By writing theory fictions based on post-Nietzschean aesthetics, largely influenced by Foucault's 'histories' and Derridean de-constructionism, I point out how Rastafari (Afro-Judaic) symbolism is equivalent to the methods of human liberation that those philosophers sought out to articulate.

The thing is that everyday Rastafari symbolism like Babylon, i & i, Zion, and even Hip Hop idioms like 'word is bond' or 'Hip Hop is dead' are all up to par and even exceed post-Nietzchean thought because their aesthetic nihilism is an 'active nihilism'. In other words, Rastafari and Hip Hop culture actually make these post-modern crisis thinker's look all to reactionary when it comes down to 'practicing what they preach' because these cultures, whose origins were born as an affirmative response to imperialist oppression of 'Babylon', take the supposed post-modern 'crisis' that these thinkers and too busy thinking about and make it a lived experience. They face the problem head on and assert their identity as an actualization of the oppositional identity that cannot be disregarded from the discourse that is pop philosophy. Hip Hop says, 'fuck you' to the discourse, I am here, I am real, what are you going to do about it? To ignore me is your hypocritical fallacy. Let me show you my method. They act as (Rastafari and Hip Hop) an acceleration of intensities to the discourse that wishes to define and control them. The project, the essays, are a role reversal. It throws everything back in the face of pop philosophy. So I figure, in order to do so, we just have to put the identity of Rastafari and Hip Hop discourse up to its opposition of western pop discourse that was conceived by Socrates but has fully dominated intellectual thinking since the enlightenment. This should display the power of 'i & i'.

BD - How did your first become interested in “Rastafari Afro-Judaic symbolism” and how did you then go about making connections between Rastafari theology and whatever “methods of human liberation” you claim “Derridean de-constructionism” seeks to articulate?

JC - I first became interested in these symbols through reading poetry. specifically reading Black Canadian poets like Kaie Kellough, Wayde Compton and George Elliot Clarke. I quickly realized all these connections to reggae music. I did research into the roots of Rastafarianism, learning about Marcus Garvey, Ethiopianism, Haile Selassie and the Judaic roots dating back to the story of Menelik being born by the Queen of Sheba after she visited King Solomon, son of King David. The connection between Africans and Jews was made. But it was all mythical 'superstition' so to speak. Israel denies most credibility to the Africans who claim to be Jewish except for those of a certain Ethiopian demographic. But then on the other hand you have Rastas who fully embraced and perpetuated this mythology, this ancient connection to Judaic tradition. But because I was reading about all this, 'reading' being the key word, I understood that through language the Blacks of Jamaica took on this identity, primarily from the passage in the Bible, "princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch her hands unto God", Psalms 68:31. They wanted a Black god, Haile Sellasie, someone like them, not a white god who resembled their colonial oppressor. The words of the Bible were reinterpreted by the Rastas to create, assert and uphold an identity that they believe can liberate them and bring them to 'Zion'. The fact that words have this power just kept me making further connections. But why couldn't we just 'know', 'be', what was/is stopping us? It was Babylon, like the allegory of the Tower of Babel and God scattering the people among the earth, making them all speak separate languages so they couldn't communicate and reach 'Zion'.

Once I read James Joyce's 'Ulysses' it was all too clear that this really was the 'crisis' or problem that a lot modern and post-modern thought confronts. The confrontation was a search for expansion, or a liberation beyond. And I had that feeling since the beginning, that I could write my way to some resolution, in a sort of Joycean way. A friend I've made through correspondence, Ian Hays, introduced to me, through his work on James Joyce, Marcel Duchamps, and the philosophical jester Jacques Derrida.

I know The BROTHERWISE DISPATCH doesn't think too highly of Derrida or deconstruction. That he avoids any real confrontation. But Derrida is a heavily influenced by Nietzsche. So going back to Nietszche for a minute, remembering that he claimed the world to be a work of art itself, constantly creating and recreating itself, isn't this what Hip Hop does? Or those who participate in Hip Hop culture? They create themselves, create identities, they 'play' with reality, like players in a game, they create their own world. In its essence the 'name game' of Hip Hop liberates the mind and soul of the emcee, the breaker, the graffiti artist, the dj, from the identity that babylon knows them as, they elevate themselves above Babylon, they overstand that game and make their own game out of it. This is the true (a)e(s)thetic of Hip Hop. I use Hip Hop and Rastafari interchangeably because there both connected at the root, the Black diaspora.

BD - Given the overwhelming commodification of Hip Hop culture by advanced neo-liberal capitalism, what is it about your own lived experience and your relationship to Hip Hop culture which enables you to perceive the emancipatory potentialities of Hip Hop aesthetics in relation to established power or “Babylon” as you put it?

JC - The hyper-commodification and over amplification of the Hip Hop aesthetic sometimes reminds me of a grand carnival spectacle. It reflects a response to the schizophrenic deterritorialization and reterritorialization movements of neo-liberal capitalism. It becomes more and more extreme, exaggerated. Today, the Hip Hop artist willfully participates as an agent of the spectacle for material compensation that he/she has unfortunately been indoctrinated by, holding onto their material success as the only means of escape from their existential crisis. I don't even want to go as far as to point out the clowns of the industry because I dislike their music and don't want to perpetuate their product but I think NAS's statement, "Hip Hop is dead" points to the fact that Hip Hop has reached this critical mass, the carnival spectacle point, that what Hip Hop once stood for, the constructive consciousness it once embodied, is for the most part, dead. It's been consumed back into the belly of the beast.

With that said, just look at how Hip Hop spread across the world in a matter of a decade. Hip Hop itself went from remixing and sampling culture to being remixed itself. From the U.S. to Latin America, to native reserves, to France, South Africa, Senegal, Japan, everywhere. There's still a Hip Hop life force, but its given life to children. So when I grew up half my life in a small town on the border of Canada and New York state, Hip Hop was something I identified with, it connected me to my African diaspora heritage that lacked in my nearly all white community.

As for my lived experience and Hip Hop aesthetic. For me personally, it comes down to two things. Its that thing that Hip Hop often boils down to, or emancipatory talk, the lumpenproletiariat, those caught up in the struggle. So not to brag or boast, but I do have that street credibility, from growing up around certain people and watching in my community and hearing about their running and smuggling over the border, small town nickel and diming, to moving back to the city and hustling for a while.

As for the constructive consciousness, I graduated from high school with a 58% average. I also went to college and failed research methods three times before I dropped out. Why was I so bad in school? It sure as hell wasn't the weed. When I heard about John Ogbu's work I realized that I was struggling to realize any relevance this system had for me, I had grown up embodying an oppositional identity within the school system, within society. But I also came to realize that my mind didn't work the way the school system wanted it to work, it wasn't subservient enough, I didn't want to learn for "them", I wanted to learn for me. I dropped out of college, out of university too, and started to educate myself. It was at the age of 19-20 that I made the conscious decision to read, write, play music everyday, to become an artist and make something of myself on my own terms. I provided myself with a custom made art education. I think this proves that at a level, the education system is a load of bullshit. That's an emancipatory realization in itself. To learn how it's bullshit, how it fails so many smart people, that's a weapon against Babylon, a Deleuzean 'war machine'. And then when I read your book, HIP HOP INTELLECTUAL RESISTANCE, it really made sense that this was like a fifth element to Hip Hop that we needed. Hip Hop intellectuals. So another major part of the “Linguistic Babylon” project is like an art education program of emancipation.

BD - In an early draft of your “Linguistic Babylon” essay, you state that “This isn’t a traditionally logical discourse . . . It’s a schizosophy”. Would you mind breaking down just what exactly you mean by that for our readers?

JC - Well schizosophy, its a term I stumbled upon, the name of a philosophy blog heavily on Deleuze. I find it just makes the whole Deleuzean/Guittari opus more cohesive. It's like a pipe bomb, a set of conditional parameters that explode, rupture, out AT you, from the rhizomatic fountain. But when you think of the conditionals that constitute schizosophy you realize that they’re all undetermined, that is, the conditional polarities can match up and move, deterritorialize, together, or separate, at exponentially limitless rates.

So I suppose that if the governing parameters of movements, of the discourse that we use to talk about a discourse of movement, is made up of signs, it would feel natural to intuitively, creatively, radically, or, schizophrenically freestyle, mash-up and remix the philosophical work done by the thinkers I reference in order to articulate a discourse, like an improvised jazz solo, that speaks as the text and not for the text.

I'd like to believe this sort of schizosophical discourse holds a semblance to the dionysian immediacy matched by the proportionate apollonian light in human consciousness that paradigmatically shifts towards a cathartic cultural event horizon that often finds its aesthetic origins in black culture, whether that be Rastafari, jazz, Hip Hop. The cultural icons that amplify and carry these artistic movements, these traditions, recognize and narrate signied values within their parametrical artistic medium that illustrates the pros and cons accentuated by their artistic statements. It doesn't take much history to look at the signifying consequences to Black artistic achievement, it's almost always introduced and stigmatized as being from the ghetto, from the criminal, from the addict, the substance abuser, the mad primitive genius, an art brut, the schizophrenic. So philosophically, schizosophy would be a natural response of the oppositional identities, I, as a result of the African diaspora, recognize as my cultural heritage. In one sense I'm shifting and transposing white thought to Black thought. Developing a more immediate techno-poetic discourse that the traditional parameters of Rastafari, jazz and Hip Hop all exercise in the theistic idioms of the Rasta, the creative improvisation of jazz and the transglobal and nomadic shift-shaping phenomenon of Hip Hop in all its varying intersectional dynamics of race, color, language, sex and gender and class.

I would consider this type of "Black" thought/discourse a functionalist reterritorialization of the movement, of the tradition. But also as a reterritorializing 'regime of signs'. This suggests to me that Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis aims to provide an aesthetic model of the parameters in which the schizophrenic's creative rupture derives from, for our own use, as a learning method to rework and deal with the problems we face in our 'age of the sign'. It just so happens that white bred imperialism has all too often made the Black man a definitive cultural scapegoat for problems that conflicted with it's imperial means of oppression orchestrated through a neo-liberal manipulation of sign values. Schizosophy would then be like a functional schizophrenia.

BD - Leaving aside your unfortunate characterization of the urgent ontological need for constitutive self-determination by Black subjectivity within the context of Hip Hop culture as a ‘play with reality’, how does your emphasis on the Hip Hop “name game” as liberation of “mind and soul” translate into potentialities of emancipatory praxis against established unjust power or “Babylon” as you have designated it?

I'll try to answer your question as real as possible, but I'll have to clarify some things. Firstly, as a techno-poetic ontology, the “Linguistic Babylon” project (LBP) is an interdisciplinary discourse. It functions like a Nietzschean will to power's (like the self-determination of hip hop subjectivity) literary-mythico-philosophy. It's preliminary phase is constituted on the basis of mapping out Babylon via 1) a Foucauldian method of 'histories' through the means of a double hermeneutic system; and 2) the deconstructionist assertion that language is a necessary requirement to literally deconstructing the western paradigm of a messianic-like 'Zionism' of a hierarchical, linear discourse/thought. I recognize this paradigm as the i³ problem, or obstacle, that babylon poses. I DO NOT claim it as a solution but as a temporal territorialization of existential movement. It's the realization of, and consequential development towards, an understanding of the elemental manipulation that babylon employs as its instruments of power that refuses existential emancipation.

I find the simplest way to understand the elements of i³ would ironically be through Plato's five forms of knowledge. 1. the name 2. the definition 3. the image 4. the science. the fifth element is the exercise of the preceding four elements, it's the oscillating acceleration of the preceding four intensities.

This is where the “Linguistic Babylon” project remix comes in because it's the first four forms of knowledge that Babylon manipulates in order to make it very difficult, if not almost impossible, to subjectively appropriate, choose and exercise our right to live free. But look at some of the other fields and disciplines in where our will to power is contained within the cubed paradigm: you have hip hop; the kabbalah; the ancient African diagram of the four elements; the holy Christian trinity with humans; in words with power Northrop Frye claims there to be 4 kinds of languages; Plato's 'divided line' idea of four metaphysical models of the world; the third dimension that governs our reality which is in turn governed by the forces that govern physics: gravity, electromagnetism; the weak force and the strong force. these are the cubed parameters that concern me the most. In one sense the “Linguistic Babylon” project is already preparing for it's next phase: inventing a cyberspace matrix, a fourth dimension. (very schizosophical, but in my defense also very relevant to today's poetic explorations).

So, to answer your question, look at the subject -- i. the name game paradigm of Hip Hop likens ‘i & i’. It's the first phase of the sign's 'cell division' so to speak. It's really the reappropriation of Plato's first four forms of knowledge, or like a promethean expropriation from Babylon's will to force its desirable characterization of these elements onto us for its own consumptive purposes. The original (a)e(s)th(e)ic of Hip Hop's name game was an expropriation of space and time, a virtual reality created as a response to make itself something that couldn't be digested in the belly of the beast. Although that didn't last because capitalism has a way of latching onto a sign, commodifying it, and liquidating it of any inherent value it ever had. So the “Linguistic Babylon” project seeks out to illustrate how Hip Hop did this once by doing it again, that is, by expropriating its proper space and time. It's in its preliminary phase of cell division. Defense is the best offense. I am learning from the enemy, from the past, picking up the pieces that have been laid out by those who came before me and trying to beat Babylon at its own game. Continuously deterritorializing like a nomad, always keeping one step ahead, occupying unused times and spaces of discourse and liquidating Babylon's values, because Babylon can't digest this schizosophy, not yet anyway.

This has been another one of our BROTHERWISE FIVEinterview series, during which The BROTHERWISE DISPATCH interrogates intellectuals, artists and activists with five probing questions to the delight of our readers.

On behalf of Jesse Chase and The BROTHERWISE DISPATCH,

Peace.

-A. Shahid Stover

(this interview of Jesse Chase for The BROTHERWISE DISPATCH was conducted by A. Shahid Stover through email correspondence from April 30th – May 17th of 2013)