While reading Salon.com's piece on Kayne West as one of the sexiest men alive, I came accross a hyperlink to this performance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9ygY17VsXg
Okay, that was the hook. Interesting valences exist between Zizek's notion of hyperconformity and the concept of "Signifyin'" in the Black American literary theory. In his book "The Signifyin' Monkey," Henry Louis Gates uses the term "Signifyin'" to refer to modes of (often verbal) resistance that diffuse oppressive situations by deplying signifiers that ostensibly affirm, but simultaneous recode and undermine, their dominant logic. For example, the boss comes to an employee and says, "Get to work," to which the employee responds, "Yes, sir! Right away sir!" The idea is that extreme-supplication destabilizes the hierarchical relation between worker and boss. If the worker had refused (with silence, or a glare, or a verbal Rage-Against-the-Machine-style, "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me"), he actually would have reinforced the hierarchy between worker and employee; instead the latter's "compliance" problematizes the operation of power. In some sense, though, this subversion-through-compliance can only occur when more than one employee is present; for Gates, it becomes necessary that at least one other individual acknowledge the subversive impact of the hyperconformitive action. In that case, two separate domains of signification result: one goes from employee to employer transmitting an affirmative message ("yes, I will do the work"); the other goes from employee to employee transmitting an altogether different message ("I hate you, boss," etc.) I believe something of the same is at play in the Kayne West / Raine Wilson clip from above. When Wayne Brady says, "You chose a bad time to start speaking properly," are the audience members, on the one hand, and Kayne West himself, on the other, laughing at the same thing? Perhaps. But it's also possible, I think, that Brady is purposely tracing two distinct channels of signification - one to the white-dominated audience, and the other to Kanye West (and others who might detect the irony behind his remark). In any case, Zizek's notion of hyperconformity only seems to function as long as it involves more than one individual, which is already radical in our hopelessly solipsistic landscape.
and i think even then, it is sketchy and perhaps unreliable. Because might not we also need to say, not only that there be a second individual (or subject, as Butler would have it) be present, but one for whom the intended dsiruption of hyperconformity is apparent? If 3NT, and say, aha (random) walk into class today and KF asks "Boys did you do the homework?" and while 3NT responds "Yes, I read every word of every reading and every blog post and comment" aha simply says "Yeah, as much as I could" well poor lil' aha looks a bit like a slacker now...and 3NT, well you're just a goody two-shoes (Not that KF leads an especialy tyrannical classroom, by the way). The point here is that there is room for great misinterpretation and confusion in the instance of hyperconformity, which often works in the interest of those working to, in simple terms, regain the upper hand. However, there is also the very distinct opportunity for hyper-oppression as a result of said overconforming. This to me is part of the problem with the language reclamation issue Butler brings up and Blankman spoke of. While the words are now reclaimed by those who they were once intended to oppress, there is still the same existing framework of power, which allows for things like Blankman's experience on the soccer field to occur.
What do we do with this, I wonder? What does it mean that there's a decent chance that a good number of folks in that audience were thinking "Oh man those rappers, they just can't talk," made more profound by the fact that in this little exchange, the white man beat the black man at the one cultural avenue he is given authority over? Personally, I struggle with the hyperconformity model because I am not convinced of its ability to work around real practical hierarchies of power.
I'm split about this issue of hyperconformity--while I use it as a rhetorical device as a source of humor on probably a daily basis, I can also see the political problems that it spells out re Anonymous' comment. Discussions of hyperconformity must take into account who/what groups set the standard for that which is conformed to, and even though adhering to that standard can be a form of subversion, the process can easily be subverted, as in the Kanye/Raine clip. The conclusion I drew from Raine's reading of the lyrics was that his deadpan voice, rhythm-less "flow", and strict phonetic imitation mocked the conventions of the rap song, and the improper grammar of Kanye's song--a racially charged moment. The exchange mocked Kanye's speech by rigidly adhering to it, thus reinforcing the ways it is wrong and is obviously not "correct."
So rather than a worker subverting the boss with the "sir, yes sir, aye-aye cap'n", a subversion of the status quo, of entrenched power mechanisms, the Emmy exchange is the reverse--the analogy would be that of the white boss chastising his black employee's speech patterns by imitating them as a way of calling attention to them as not normative.
As an aside, does anyone remember the Wayne Brady skit on the Chappelle Show? It plays with of similar notions of hyperconformity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SEp4oVPx0A
I suppose you could read it as Wayne Brady exposing the extremes of gangster culture by rigidly adhering to them, but it is more complex than just that--the reading that Brady's showbiz career ("Wayne Brady makes Bryant Gumbel look like Malcolm X") leads us to is that he is satirizing his whiteness--the whiteness he is perceived to embody on "Whose Line is it Anyway", etc.--by reclaiming his blackness: street violence, hookers, drugs, cop killings. The commentary circles back on itself to ask complex questions about what black v. white identities entail in popular media, that being black entails being a ruffian. The hyperconformity to the false blackruffian v. whitegoodytwoshoes dichotomy exposes the falseness/constructedness/scriptedness of that dichotomy--at least in the case of Wayne Brady. It questions the practice of pigeonholing Brady as "white" when he's just an actor doing his job, whether that job places him in the esteem of soccer moms or urban thugs--his on screen persona is performance. Perceptions of racialized culture are perceptions of theater.