‘At the table I sit, making it legit’: Legitimate knowledge, and the legitimacy of knowledge in a hip hop classroom in India

Abstract

Hip hop’s entrance into academic spaces is inextricably linked to the questions: what is legitimate knowledge, and how is legitimacy attributed? These questions stem from a concern about the exclusionary structures in academia that prioritize privileged positions of institutional power over the lived experiences of artists and practitioners: who warrants a seat at the metaphorical head table? We explore such questions of legitimate knowledge by considering the case of India’s first university-accredited course on hip hop, the certificate in ‘Introduction to Hip-Hop Studies’. Aimed at providing students with a sociocultural and historical understanding of hip hop, most of the 60-hour course is taught by homegrown artists who have been pivotal for the culture’s growth in India. In this article, we reflect on our experiences as researchers and knowledge producers as part of the inaugural batch of this course, in the summer of 2021. Through autoethnographic readings, we address the following questions: what constitutes legitimate knowledge, and how is this legitimacy determined? We pivot these questions on (sub)/cultural capital, woman-produced knowledge and emic and etic stances towards knowledge. Reflecting on our personal identities, we re-evaluate conceptions of legitimate knowledge created at the intersection of our roles as students of the course, and as researchers and academics. Problematizing our positions as knowledge producers, and latent extensions of hip hop’s fifth element, we dissect notions of legitimate knowledge, as well as the varying axes across which they are produced and legitimized, such as street cred, gender and membership in the Global Hip Hop Nation.

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