I'm trying to figure out how to make my thesis topic narrower, so I thought I'd post my proposal to see if any has any suggestions, etc... I'm thinking about maybe just focusing on women. But perhaps as I dig deeper into the online communities I want to study, what I want to focus on will become clearer to me. Anyway, here's the proposal:

As postmodernism has influenced art and culture, it has also influenced the way we construct our identities. Under a postmodern model, conceptions of identity become more fluid, fractured, and wrought with a multiplicity of sources and meanings. Although postmodernism has been critiqued within the black community for its potential to deny the reality of lived experiences, I think that in this historical moment, postmodernism is crucial to expanding notions of blackness and black identity. The mainstream ideals of “authentic blackness” arise from social movements of the 1960s and often operate within the framework of a single-issue identity politics. Though these ideals were effective in achieving social, economic, and cultural gains for black people, they also “effectively hold the black community in stasis because they are not in sync with the fractures and fissures… that frame the contemporary black experience” (Neal 6).

So I'm currently trying to write my thesis proposal, but despite the fact that I have an outline and quotes, my brain is saying no. I was thinking, maybe if I blog about it, I can get the juices flowing again.

So basically, my thesis is about Black rockers, postmodern black identities, and virtual communities. Like we talked about when we discussed the bell hooks article, "Postmodern Blackness," postmodernism has often been overlooked by the black community, yet it holds some really powerful ideas that could help to create conceptions of black identity that are more fluid, open, relevant to contemporary black lives, and that take into account the reality of diversity in the black community. I've come across two terms that describe this: post-black and newblack. I haven't entirely figured what the difference between these two are, but newblackness is defined as a contemporary moment in blackness which "embodies a radical fluidity within the spheres of blackness that allow for powerful conceptualizations across black genders, sexualities, ethnicities... socioeconomic positions, and socially constructed performances of 'black' identity"(Neal 122).

bell hooks' writing about rap & Leesoid's blog have me wanting to say a million things, but since I'm presenting tonight & i'll probably talk more than enough then, I'll try to just mark a few main points:

-hooks writes that "much postmodernist critical inquiry has centered precisely on the issues of 'difference' and 'otherness'...in the absence of any sustained research into what artists of color and others outside the mainstream might be up to..."

First of all, where is all the research? Does it even exist? I've spent the past hour looking for some supporting evidence of a statistic that I've cited and heard many times in my life, but never gotten around to actually looking up: 80% of rap, r&b, and jazz production companies are owned by whites. Has anyone else heard this, and can anyone find any solid source?