Deathlife: Hip Hop and Thanatological Narrations of Blackness

In Deathlife, Anthony B. Pinn explores how hip hop uses Blackness as a framework to define and guide the relationship between life and death in the United States, challenging white supremacist definitions of Blackness and anti-Blackness.

Format: Hardback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 12 January 2024
Publisher: Duke University Press

In his book "Deathlife," Anthony B. Pinn delves into the realm of hip hop to examine how Blackness serves as a framework for defining and shaping the relationship between life and death in the United States. Pinn argues that white supremacy and white privilege are rooted in the right to differentiate between death and life. This distinction is created and upheld through the construction of Blackness as a symbol of death. Pinn draws upon Afropessimism and Black moralism to theorize "deathlife" as a technology of whiteness that projects whites' fears and anxieties about their own mortality onto the Black other. By analyzing the music of artists such as Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Tyler, the Creator, and others, Pinn demonstrates how hip hop configures the interconnection and dependence between death and life in such a way that death and life become indistinguishable. Through this exploration, Pinn showcases that hip hop offers an alternative to the prevailing "deathlife" narrative that challenges the white supremacist definitions of Blackness and anti-Blackness more broadly.

Weight: 572g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781478020608