Imani Perry

Occupying the Universal, Embodying the Subject: African American Literary Jurisprudence

Abstract This article introduces a theory of jurisprudential critique that has developed in African American letters. The author describes this form of critique as “sympathetic occupation”—a means of using the idea of the universal subject alongside racial subjectivity in order to transform the reader’s interpretation of the law with respect to African Americans. Her argument is fashioned using nineteenth- and twentieth-century works of literature, yet she locates “sympathetic occupation” within contemporary debates about critical race theory scholarship, and suggests that her theory may be used as a critical lens for interpreting critical race theory scholarship itself.

Black Arts and Good Law: Literary Arguments for Racial Justice in the Time of Plessy

In this article, the author demonstrates how late 19th Century writers who advocated for racial equality used the concepts of symmetry and equality, as represented in the 14th amendment, to argue that racial justice was beautiful — philosophically as well as politically, and to argue for constitutional interpretations which advanced racial justice. This is read as a species of argumentative formalism, nonetheless bearing political goals. In identifying this practice, the author hopes to enrich conversations about the conflict between abstract legal principles, and the belief that law is a product of social and political realities, as it relates to race, by demonstrating that the abstraction of law was appealing and even useful in historic struggles for racial equality.

Stinging Like Tabasco: Structure and Format in Hip Hop Compositions

This chapter begins with lyrical references to Muhammad Ali. Countless such references to Ali exist in hip hop. He was one of the forerunners of hip hop, with his introduction of black oral rhyming culture into the mainstream. Hip hop uses Ali’s style—whether referring to his Cassius Clay bragging or his Nation of Islam–inspired conversion into an outspoken black nationalist athlete—as a metaphor for skill and grace. Ali was one of a handful of the first black celebrity figures to bring black language styles and traditions into the public eye with dignity, self-possession, and power. He provided part of the foundation for the explosion of hip hop, an artistic variation of traditional black cultural forms, into the American popular cultural framework. Boxing may serve as a good metaphor for hip hop anyway. Not only because both foster a diverse group of bragging personalities with aggressive styles but also because they are strategic competitions. Hip hop is poetry that shifts styles of defense and offense, moving between