Freedom as constraint, and US "freedom" curdling into purchasing power
echoes
From: Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present
- Early text: Side 3 opens under Eliot: "Freedom is only true freedom when it appears against the background of an artificial limitation." [3-acquisition:p2-3] [e-text]. D. argues rap's formal constraints are what make it art [d-3d:p6], then turns the screw: "‘freedom’ becomes not qualitative but quantitative, quantifiable, a cold logical function of where you are and what you have to exercise it on. For the unfree citizen, U.S. freedom now equals the very ‘power’ it invented itself against" — pop freedom "finally resembling most closely, today, the prisoner’s COMPLETE FREEDOM to beat his head on the cell wall just as much as he likes." [d-3g:p12]
- IJ echo: Marathe vs. Steeply on freedom-from vs. freedom-to and choosing one's temple (scene 035, pp. 105-109; scene 088, pp. 418-430); Schtitt's discipline-as-freedom pedagogy; AA's constraint (clichés, Commitments) as the working cage — the
cage-self-built cluster.
- Weight: prefiguration