Crip walk, villain dance, pueblo stroll: the embodiment of writing in African American gang dance.

Crip walk, villain dance, pueblo stroll: the embodiment of writing in African American gang dance. "Look, it's double Dutch double dutchalso double Dutch ?n.A game of jump rope in which players jump over two ropes swung in a crisscross formation by two turners. ." "What?" "It's double Dutch!" "What?" "Just look at it!" "Oh ... oh yeah!" Thus ran the exchange between myself and a nine-year-old boy, oneof five young men who introduced me to the Crip Walk The Crip Walk, or C-Walk, is a steady movement of the feet used to spell out gang-related symbols and images. It originated in the early 1970s in Compton, a poor suburb of Los Angeles, California, popularly referenced in rap lyrics. , a gang-relateddance, in November 2.000. After making sure that I understood what hewas saying, the boy ran to jump in with his companions. It was doubleDutch. Two boys, one at either end, mimed the motions of coordinatedjump ropes while three others hopped and jumped in between. Periodicallythe boys would switch, handing off invisible dueling ropes to continuethe performance. At one point, their sync was disrupted by somenegotiation about who was supposed to be doing what. One boy, thenthirteen, pointed, motioned, and commanded, and the choreography wasquickly again underway. Then the eldest, a tall fifteen, knelt to theground, tracing letters with his index finger to spell out the names ofthe "homies that had been lost." "He's writingRIPs," the littlest boy had explained to me earlier (RIP is acommon gang memorial saying based on the traditional "Rest inPeace"). The other boys soon joined him, each writing the names ofdead companions, or sometimes crossing out enemies with mimed spraypaint. Then they Crip crip?n.1. Offensive Slang Used as a disparaging term for a person or animal that is partially disabled or unable to use a limb or limbs.2. Walked in miniature with two fingers, as if thedead continued to reside in the hands of those that remained (see Plate1). The unexpected presence of double Dutch jump rope jump ropeor skip ropeChildren's game in which players hold a rope (jump rope) at each end and twirl it in a circle, while one or more players jump over it each time it reaches its lowest point. and invisiblewritten commemorations of the dead had come in the midst Adv. 1. in the midst - the middle or central part or point; "in the midst of the forest"; "could he walk out in the midst of his piece?"midmost of a videotaping session consisting of myself and five boys from Imperial Courts,a public housing development in Watts, California. This development ishome to the Project Watts Crips, who are more commonly known as the"PJ Watts" Crips. I had first found about gang dancing in1995, when a young woman had demonstrated and tried to teach me two gangdances. The first was a version of the multifaceted "CripWalk," a generalized name for the dances that will take up the bulkof this paper. The second was a specific neighborhood dance called the"Villain Dance." Like the Crip Walk, which spelled out theword "Crip" or other signifiers of Crip identity with complexfootwork, the signature moves of the Blood Stone Villains insteadspelled out the word "Villain." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] These danced demonstrations provide a vivid example of gangmembers' preoccupation with the power of written representation andits crossover into inter-modal forms of written and oral expression.Gang dancing extends the expressive culture of African American African AmericanMulticulture A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa.See Race. Bloodsand Crips to a semiotic semiotic/se��mi��ot��ic/ (se?me-ot��ik)1. pertaining to signs or symptoms.2. pathognomonic. arena that blends movement with writing tocreate powerful body-centered images of gang affiliation. It also linksthe usually distinct fields of incorporation and inscription, where theassumed abstraction of written media fuses with the corporeality cor��po��re��al?adj.1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of the body. See Synonyms at bodily.2. Of a material nature; tangible. ofphysical domains. Gang dances in Los Angeles Los Angeles(lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. are widespread, rich in textualpotential and adaptable to a variety of gang needs and circumstances.None of my existing knowledge of the Crip Walk or related dances,however, prepared me for the complexity of what the five young men fromImperial Courts would show me in November of 2000. As they danced, theboys combined written representation with memorializing, mimesis mimesis/mi��me��sis/ (mi-me��sis) the simulation of one disease by another.mimet��ic mi��me��sisn.1. The appearance of symptoms of a disease not actually present, often caused by hysteria. , andmovement. In doing so, they were challenging common associations withwriting by integrating their written system into a body-centeredperformance that merged words and letters with the sweat, joy, andsensuality of dance. The significance of such combinatory practices has helped to shapemy thinking with regard to how gang writing is linked to race in theUnited States Racial demographicsMain article: Racial demographics of the United StatesThe United States is a diverse country racially. It has a majority of persons of White/European ancestry spread throughout the country. . Before analyzing examples of videotaped dance clips, Ireview briefly ideas from scholarship on writing, linking it to AfricanAmerican cultural experience, to debates on the place of the oral inwritten traditions, and to the position of gangs in American societytoday. Gang Writing as Counterliteracy Urban youth, gang members, and kids flunking out of school turnliteracy hierarchies on their heads. Although the rise of ancient urbancenters is entirely bound up with the development of writing in history,scholars generally frame urban populations in the modern-day UnitedStates United States,officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. as part of a growing crisis in illiteracy. This paper argues thatlocal neighborhoods, ghettos, and inner cities have instead served asfertile ground for literacy innovation among those people who areusually targets of educational intervention. (1) The writing of youthmarginalized from mainstream standards of literacy integrates mind andbody, seamlessly interweaves oral and literate practices, and, in themanner that Brian Street (1984) and Keith Basso (1974) suggest in theirwork on the subject, help us recognize how multiple literacies intersectwith social life. Traditionally, scholarship on writing has tended to emphasize theindependence, abstraction, and autonomy of writing rather than centeringit within orality or daily life (Goody 1977, Basso 1974). Whetherintentionally or not, much of this literature has reinforced Cartesianmind/body dichotomies that later were expanded by Levi-Strauss andothers into the divergent categories of savage and civilized. Manyscholars since have begun to establish methodologies that move us beyondsuch binary divisions. In particular, they suggest that the study andethnography of writing in practice allow us to re-think the place ofwriting in society. Shirley Brice Heath (1982), for example, describesliteracy "events," arguing that the social context of literacybelies traditional distinctions between oral and literate culture. ForHeath, children first encounter writing in oral contexts, where peopleread bedtime stories, or even coupons and the mail in social settingswith social outcomes. Keith Basso (1974) further argues that all writingshould be placed squarely into the ethnography of communication The Ethnography of communication (EOC) is the a method of discourse analysis in linguistics, which draws on the anthropological field of ethnography. Unlike ethnography proper, though, it takes both language and culture to be constitutive as well as constructive. . Forhim, studies of writing should investigate the "social patterningof this activity or the contributions it makes to the maintenance ofsocial systems" (Basso 1974:431). Brian Street (1984) takes theconcept of literacy even further, flexibly treating the multipleliteracies that force us to question autonomous constructions ofwriting. All of these works contribute to a changing scholarship onwriting, which recognizes the importance of ethnography, whichprioritizes local exegesis exegesisScholarly interpretation of religious texts, using linguistic, historical, and other methods. In Judaism and Christianity, it has been used extensively in the study of the Bible. Textual criticism tries to establish the accuracy of biblical texts. on writing, and which charges that context isthe most powerful centerpiece for the analysis of written systems. In one sense, re-matching oral and written traditions constitutes astruggle over physicality. The mind and its handmaiden--writing--havebeen portrayed consistently as civilizing agents over sensual andindulgent bodies, a fictive fic��tive?adj.1. Of, relating to, or able to engage in imaginative invention.2. Of, relating to, or being fiction; fictional.3. Not genuine; sham. process that masks the rawness of humanexperience with a veneer of cultural symbolism. The use of writing as atool of colonial oppression is thus strongly linked to categoricaldefinitions of self and other historically based on this veneer. NikoBesnier's work on literacy also draws the same conclusions. Besnier(2001) asserts that ... when literate communities are embedded in a colonial context,or when they constitute different social classes or gender groups in acomplex society, the differences in their literacy activities are nolonger simply instances of the heterogeneity of literacy as a mode ofcommunication. Rather, they become part of dynamics of domination andresistance, structure and agency, and reproduction and change. In suchcontexts, certain literacy activities are valued, exalted, and employedas gate-keepers restricting access to institutions and other organs ofpower. Other are devalued de��val��ue? also de��val��u��atev. de��val��ued also de��valu��at��ed, de��val��u��ing also de��val��u��at��ing, de��val��ues also de��val��u��atesv.tr.1. To lessen or cancel the value of. or simply not defined as literacy orcommunication at all (Besnier 2001:142). Today, othering discourses surrounding writing continue to besuccessful because of widespread popular belief in the dichotomies thatthe scholars noted above are attempting to challenge. Writing findssolid footing on the foundation of Cartesian mind-body divides which, inthe United States, have been particularly damaging to communities ofcolor not of the white race; - commonly meaning, esp. in the United States, of negro blood, pure or mixed.See also: Color . Consider bell hooks Bell Hooks (or bell hooks, born Gloria Jean Watkins, on September 25, 1952) is an African-American intellectual, feminist, and social activist. Her writing has focused on the interconnectivity of race, class, and gender and their ability to produce and perpetuate , who writes of African Americans in the U.S.:"Both then and now I think about the meaning of healing the splitbetween mind and body in relation to black identity, living in a culturewhere racist colonization has always deemed all black folks more bodythan mind" (hooks 1995:204). Writing's link to the violence ofinstitutional oppression has always been close to its analysis,Levi-Strauss himself stresses the pernicious uses of writing on the partof the civilized: "If my hypothesis is correct, the primaryfunction of writing, as a means of communication, is to facilitate theenslavement en��slave?tr.v. en��slaved, en��slav��ing, en��slavesTo make into or as if into a slave.en��slavement n. of other human beings" (Levi-Strauss 1967:292; see alsoDaniels and Bright 1996:2). How, then, do we analyze writing as part of social struggle, racistcolonization, or enslavement? If violently oppressed bodies areproducers of writing, how can we use their bodily practice to rethinkrelationships between rationalism and need, abstract thought andexistence? Thomas Csordas (1994) analyzes the dominance of semiotic,"nominal" arenas over phenomenological,"experiential" ones, providing an integrated theory ofincorporated representation within human lived experience that is usefulfor this topic. As he writes, "The distinction betweenrepresentation and being-in-the-world is methodologically critical, forit is the difference between understanding culture in terms ofobjectified abstraction and existential immediacy. Representation isfundamentally nominal, and hence we can speak of 'arepresentation.' Being-in-the-world is fundamentally conditional,and hence we must speak of 'existence' and 'livedexperience'" (Csordas 1994:10). The divisions between semioticand phenomenological arenas to which Csordas and others refer (see Leder1990; Ricoer 1991) are accentuated even further when scholars attempt toconnect writing as an abstract nominal form to experiential realms. Inparticular, examining the relationship between writing and the bodyengenders conflict because it binds what is supposedly insulated fromphysicality to the very epicenter of sensation, feeling, and emotion. Allen Feldman's work on political terror in Northern Ireland Northern Ireland:see Ireland, Northern. Northern IrelandPart of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland occupying the northeastern portion of the island of Ireland. Area: 5,461 sq mi (14,144 sq km). Population (2001): 1,685,267. suggests that, as the body enters a political field, the "opticdiscloses the formation of the political subject, the discontinuitiesbetween formal ideological discourse and political practice, theperformance codes shared between adversaries, and the materialconditions within which ideological reproduction takes place"(1990:9). The enduring qualities of writing negotiated within thecorporeal Possessing a physical nature; having an objective, tangible existence; being capable of perception by touch and sight.Under Common Law, corporeal hereditaments are physical objects encompassed in land, including the land itself and any tangible object on it, that can be spheres Feldman describes not only disclose the materialconditions of reproduction but become the site upon which thoseconditions are based. Extending body-centered politics into the realm ofwriting ties the corrupt body to that which has traditionally beenconsidered outside of the physical. Anthropologist Marc Blanchard Marc Blanchard is a professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory at the University of California, Davis.Before coming to the UC campus in 1971, Blanchard taught at Yale and Columbia. contends that "... the idea that writing is the successor to voiceand its civilized substitute and enforcer ... just confirms in thesubordination of writing to speaking, the very authority that oppressesin the first place" (1994:295). In Blanchard's view, Westernthinking internalizes only the constructs that reify reify - To regard (something abstract) as a material thing. its superiority.His work on tattoo alludes to "the particular pain" (1994:288)of using one's own body as a messenger that must navigatecontrasting fields of social interpretation. Black bodies in particularneed no brand, tattoo, mutilation MutilationSee also Brutality, Cruelty.Mutiny (See REBELLION.)Absyrtushacked to death; body pieces strewn about. [Gk. Myth.: Walsh Classical, 3]Agatha, St.had breasts cut off. [Christian Hagiog. , or torture to communicate this pain;the virtue of their blackness carries a message of pain without thecompromise of corporal intervention. Dwight Conquergood's (1997) description of graffiti writingamong Chicago gang members stresses how gang members transform dominantliteracy practices in a manner that "transposes embodied oralperformance, the spoken word, into a visual text ..." (357).According to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. his analysis, "Property owners react to graffitiwriting with revulsion because they viscerally experience it as aflagrantly sensuous sign of gang presence, as the contaminating touch ofgrotesque bodies out of place" (Conquergood 1997:357, emphasis inoriginal). His analysis demonstrates how embodied aspects of materialculture challenge dominant hierarchies of signification SIGNIFICATION, French law. The notice given of a decree, sentence or other judicial act. . ForConquergood, "'Local' and 'vernacular' are notstrong enough adjectives to capture the moral outrage and repressionthat this literacy practice provokes. Graffiti writing is acounterliteracy that ... must be situated within the discursive andvisual practices of power and control that it struggles against"(354-355). Gang counterliteracy places writing directly into the hands ofthose popularly depicted as modern-day savages, animals, or defiled de��file?1?tr.v. de��filed, de��fil��ing, de��files1. To make filthy or dirty; pollute: defile a river with sewage.2. sub-humans--as blacks in America were once depicted; as gang members inAmerica still are. What does it mean to bring "letters" intoworlds considered to be primitive, uncivilized, and undereducated world?Conquergood describes gang writing as disrupting "theliterate-illiterate hierarchy that naturalizes class privilege andsupports the uneven distribution of cultural capital" (1997:354).Gang counterliteracy has becomes a powerful part of what bell hooksterms an "outlaw culture," just one example of the many"cultural icons that are defined on the edge, as pushing thelimits, disturbing the conventional, acceptable politics ofrepresentation" (1994:4-5). In analyzing the culture of outlaws,hooks contends that no form of African American representation can beinterpreted separately from the patriarchal culture of mainstream, whitesociety. No matter how isolated such cultural forms appear, hooksemphasizes how white media and mainstream society persistently classifyblack cultural expressions as uncivilized, primitive, or exotic(1994:10; see also her treatment of gangster rap gangster rapn.Variant of gangsta rap. , 115-123). Within anoral culture of outlaws, writing is no longer linked to the controllingviolence of colonialism or slavery. In gang dancing among Bloods andCrips, the answer lies in connections between black bodies in motion,social and structural violence, African American expressive culture andthe position of writing in what Walter Ong calls a"post-literate" society (Ong 1988). Possibilities oftribalistic, inter-gang violence forever follow a writer of graffiti, awearer of tattoos, or a performer of gang-related dances. For African American gangs, dancing is just one of manybody-centered expressive genres suggestive of suggestive ofDecision making adjective Referring to a pattern by LM or imaging, that the interpreter associates with a particular–usually malignant lesion. See Aunt Millie approach, Defensive medicine. performative per��for��ma��tive?adj.Relating to or being an utterance that peforms an act or creates a state of affairs by the fact of its being uttered under appropriate or conventional circumstances, as a justice of the peace uttering patternsestablished during slavery. The violent oppression of black Africanidentity during the slave era meant that danger was inherent in overtexpression. Slaves were explicitly forbidden to learn to read or write.They were forced to rely on orality and performance--and thus onephemerality and subtlety--rather than on permanent material displays.Deborah Gray Deborah Gray is a former Australian high fashion model & actress who is now best known as an internationally best selling author and jazz singer.Gray was signed to a modelling contract by Vivien's Management after winning the Teen Model of the Year competition in her White (2000) writes that: "... the best defenseagainst unpredictability [in the slave world] was silence, the key tosecrecy. It kept masters ignorant of everything that went on behindtheir backs. [....] Silence protected the slave quarters. It kept theslave family and the slave's religious life removed from whiteinvasion" (182). Such patterns remain a powerful legacy withinBlack America, where linguistic traditions such as preaching,signifying, the dozens, rap and so forth provide creative counterpointsto the silence alluded to above (see Abrahams 1970, Kelly 1997,Mitchell-Kernan 1972, Morgan 2002, Rose 1997). From silence andsilencing grew practices of encoding, informed by African rhythms,beats, and oral traditions. African Americans since slavery have honedthe ability to be simultaneously invisible and visible, to participatein the myriad "hidden transcripts" that both protect divergentroles and identities (Scott 1990). Today, much of African American gangexpression--danced or otherwise--constitutes an opposition to the largersociety that recalls the subtlety and ephemerality of this historicalinheritance. Negotiating positions of subdominance, hypervisibility, andinvisibility is particularly important for an analysis of gang writing.The combination of mystified mys��ti��fy?tr.v. mys��ti��fied, mys��ti��fy��ing, mys��ti��fies1. To confuse or puzzle mentally. See Synonyms at puzzle.2. To make obscure or mysterious. totemism totemismComplex of ideas and practices based on the belief in kinship or mystical relationship between a group (or individual) and a natural object, such as an animal or plant. The term derives from the Ojibwa word ototeman, signifying a blood relationship. , black bodies, and violencedefines the rawness and thus the attraction of gang writtenrepresentation both inside and outside the gang community. Theuncivilized specter of resistance in gang culture has become one of itsprimary attractions to outsiders. While this resistive resistive/re��sis��tive/ (re-zis��tiv) pertaining to or characterized by resistance. stance does notguard black cultural life against "white invasion" viaco-option, neither does it guard against the continued influence ofwhite patriarchy and domination on the interpretation of cultural forms.Slave-bound patterns thus clearly continue--not only in black Americancultural expression but in the constancy con��stan��cy?n.1. Steadfastness, as in purpose or affection; faithfulness.2. The condition or quality of being constant; changelessness.Noun 1. of white reaction to blackness. Gang Written Systems Let me now turn to a more formal treatment of gang writing as awritten system. Gang members within the three major gang systems of theUnited States have created comprehensive written practices through whichthey position themselves within political systems of their own making.African American Bloods and Crips, as well as Chicano gangs, originatedin Los Angeles and have now spread nationally and internationally(Phillips 1999). People and Folk, a third, multi-racial gang system,originated in Chicago and now dominate parts of the North and Southeast,as well as the Midwest of the United States (see Conquergood 1997,Cintron 1997). Each gang system has a multigenerational writtentradition, through which individual gang members designate neighborhoodidentity and territory, personal and place names, enemies and allies,and broader markers of ethnic and social identity. In thus communicatingtheir identities, gang members bring writing into totemic systems ofclassification, where social systems and modes of representation arelinked in a classic Durkheimian sense. This section analyzes gangwriting as one of the world's modern written systems and situatesinterrelationships within a range of gang semiotic genres. All forms of gang writing in the United States are what Daniels andBright (1996) characterize as adaptations of existing written systems.Gang writing uses some pictography pictographyExpression of words and ideas through drawings (pictographs), considered a forerunner of true writing. Pictographs are drawn in a standardized way, omitting unnecessary details. and sign language alongside a base ofRoman letters, both Arabic and Roman numerals Roman numeralsSystem of representing numbers devised by the ancient Romans. The numbers are formed by combinations of the symbols I, V, X, L, C, D, and M, standing, respectively, for 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500, and 1,000 in the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. , and words related to thestandard literate traditions of the larger social world. Like manynon-narrative forms of writing (lists, indexes, inventories, and thelike), much of gang writing can be written and read multi-directionally.Gang writing may rely on singular ordering sequences, but it may alsoderive this order from features not usually considered grammatical, suchas scale or artistic elaboration. Gang writing in all its forms is rule-driven. It bears a distinctsyntax and lexicon, and represents speech to a greater or lesser degree.As Ralph Cintron points out in his work on gang graffiti, "Indeed,if my earlier descriptions of street-gang graffiti relied heavily onlinguistic terms such as 'syntax' and 'lexicon,' itwas to prepare the foundation for describing graffiti as a special kindof narrative genre whose deeper meanings were not explicit but whichrested on a large substratum sub��stra��tum?n. pl. sub��stra��ta or sub��stra��tums1. a. An underlying layer.b. A layer of earth beneath the surface soil; subsoil.2. A foundation or groundwork.3. of related but private oral and writtentexts" (1997:176). Cintron indicates that the range of subjectiveexperience that gang graffiti represents may be limited, but may alsocommunicate wider concepts such as "respect" or"heart." Graffiti thus becomes a narrative tactic, related toother gang forms both written and oral, which can relay abstractconcepts as well as concrete ideas. Adams and Winter, two scholars who studied graffiti in Phoenix,Arizona Phoenix /ˈfiːˌnɪks/(English: Phoenix, Navajo: Hoozdo, lit. "the place is hot", Western Apache: Fiinigis) is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. , also make use of extensive linguistic metaphors to investigatetheir topics (Adams and Winter 1997). While Cintron describes therampant crossing out and disrespecting practices in writing as"negative morphemes," Adams and Winter describe graffiti ascomprised of "utterances," "turns,""monologues," and "dialogues." The linguisticinvestigations by the above authors suggest that gang writing is therule-driven representation of direct speech. For example, Adams andWinter describe how "gang graffiti also typically includes generaldialect characteristics of the communities in question," (344)going onto describe how African American gang members create writtenversions of African American Vernacular English African American Vernacular Englishn. Abbr. AAVEAny of the nonstandard varieties of English spoken by African Americans. Also called Black English, Black English Vernacular, Black Vernacular English, pronunciations throughphonetic spelling spelling in phonetic characters, each representing one sound only; - contrasted with Romanic spelling, or that by the use of the Roman alphabet.See also: Phonetic , such as writing gangsta Noun 1. gangsta - (Black English) a member of a youth gangAAVE, African American English, African American Vernacular English, Black English, Black English Vernacular, Black Vernacular, Black Vernacular English, Ebonics - a nonstandard form of American English for gangster. (2) They write,"we refer to graffiti writing as utterances. While the term isgenerally associated with spoken language, the interactional nature ofthe writing, the norms governing its use, plus the lack of completephrases and clauses in the writing make the choice of this termappropriate" (1997:344). Already, gang writing in its strictestform (graffiti), crosses boundaries between communicative genres usuallytreated as distinct. Scholars tend to treat orality as ritualistic rit��u��al��is��tic?adj.1. Relating to ritual or ritualism.2. Advocating or practicing ritual.rit , performative, andlocus specific, while writing bears the distinction of abstraction,possibilities of interpretation in multiple times and places, and theability to separate from original arenas of production. RosinaLippi-Green (1997) presents several such distinguishing characteristicsin her chapter called "The Linguistic Facts of Life." Thischapter is included in a broader study of accent precisely because ofthe widespread agreement among linguists about the features of languageshe describes. One element of this argument describes how writing andspeech have distinct histories and properties. Unlike speech, sheindicates, writing is without context, it is not produced socially, andits audience is removed primarily in time and space. It is durable andrigid, while speech is ephemeral and tolerant of ellipses. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Gang writing, because it links writing, the body, and sociality,counters the above distinctions. The combined traditions of hiddenmetaphor, social history, and written performance within gang genresboth reinforce and disrupt ideologies surrounding conceptions of writingsuch as those reported by Lippi-Green. Gang writing clearly acts both as"visible speech" (DeFrancis 1989) and as a representation ofabstract notions that cannot be expressed orally. It frequently evincesa marked grammatological and oral equivalence. The written statement"43'2GC" in Plate 2, for example, is equivalent, if notprecedent, to the oral statement "This is East Side Foe TrayGangster Crips," or "East Side Foe Tray Gangster Crips,"either of which may be used during a gang confrontation to identify aneighborhood to potential enemies. Gang concerns with safety, conflict, and communication arose withinan existing literate tradition. Gang needs, rooted in daily protectionand survival, simply nudged gang members to adapt aspects of an existingwritten system into a novel form uniquely suited to their purposes. Thisis what Daniels and Bright (1996) refer to as "bisystemy,"where people create more than one tradition of literacy within a singlelinguistic sphere. Aspects of bisystemy are evident in the uses and meanings of ganginitials. Above, the initials "es43GC" stand for "eastside Foe Tray Gangsta Crips," an African American Crip gang basedaround 43rd Street and Central Avenue in Los Angeles. Although theinitials comprise a written format unique to gang culture, each elementstems from existing written or spoken forms that represent particulargang concerns. First is the citywide designation that distinguisheseastside from westside. This is clearly based on standard Englishliteracy, but in the gang world carries its own sociopolitical so��ci��o��po��li��ti��cal?adj.Involving both social and political factors.sociopoliticalAdjectiveof or involving political and social factors significance. Second, the numbering sequence "Foe Tray" isbased first on Black English Vernacular Black English Vernacularn. Abbr. BEVSee African American Vernacular English.Noun 1. Black English Vernacular ("Foe" for"Four") and second on Creole gambling terminology("Tray" is an alternate spelling of the word "trey,"commonly used to mean "three" in cards and dice). The numberstogether stem from the city-sponsored designation of 43rd Street, whichis also ultimately based upon standard English literacy. Third, the word"Gangsta" derives from a black English Black Englishn.1. See African American Vernacular English.2. Any of the nonstandard varieties of English spoken by Black people throughout the world. spelling of the word"gangster," which prioritizes the distinctive African Americanstreet pronunciation of the word. Fourth is the term "Crip," aword whose origins are debated, but that has emerged most strongly inthe gang community as one of two broad designations of African Americangang identity (Blood and Crip). (3) Crip gang members today cite amultiplicity of acronyms that constitute the meaning behind this word:"Community Revolution in Progress" or "CaliforniaIndependent Pistol Slangers" are just two versions. Each element ofthis statement combines traditions of writing and speaking, and recallshistorical and cultural traditions well framed within both urban lifeand the racial identity of the writers. The statement of gang identity in Plate 2 is just the beginning ofa detailed system of writing for African American gangs, the complexityof which is mirrored in other forms of gang writing in the United States(see Phillips 1999). Table 1, based on the work of linguist Naomi S.Baron (1980), demonstrates how the placement, semantic range, stability,and syntax of gang writing depend on the media through which it isexpressed. Topics may range from current love interests (4) on the partof a specific gang member to past or present enemies on the part of aspecific gang. Some aspects, such as gang identification, bridge allexpressive genres. Others, such as membership lists or memorials, applyonly to some. While Jack Goody Sir John (Jack) Goody (born 1919) is a British social anthropologist. He has been a prominent teacher at Cambridge University, he was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1976,[1] and he is an associate of the US National Academy of Sciences. (1977) might not consider gang writing a"fully developed" written system, taken as a whole, the formalfeatures of gang writing are broad enough. They are also differentenough from that of the larger society to classify gang writing as aunique form of writing, defined by particular systems of users, forms,functions, and topics (following Basso 1974). Neither graffiti, nor tattoo, nor dance, in and of itselfconstitutes gang writing. Taken as a totality, they express themulti-sited nature of gang literacy, and the varied locations in whichwriting is composed and interpreted. Table 1 demonstrates how three ofthe four major genres of written expression in African American gangculture are body centered. Some are directly expressed by the bodyitself (hand signing, dance); others work from a body as canvas(tattoo); yet others that seem separate from the body (graffiti) maycontinually reference body imagery through content. What does it meanwhen a hand sign imitates the physical shape of a letter, only to bere-represented in graffiti or tattoo in pictographic pic��to��graph?n. In all senses also called pictogram.1. A picture representing a word or idea; a hieroglyph.2. A record in hieroglyphic symbols.3. representation ofthat sign? What does it mean to write invisible words and letters withones fingers or to use hands to imitate a word-based dance? Gang membersplay endlessly with crossover in expressive genres that extend domainsof interpretation along with the basis of written production. Plate 3, for example, represents a tattoo on the back of a man fromthe 7-9 Swans neighborhood (said "Seven-Nine Swans"), near79th Street and Central Avenue in Los Angeles. The image of a hand thatwould form the shape of the 7-9 and a Swan (with two fingers for wings,pinkie for the tail, and thumb for head), is placed beneath the skin intattoo, and indeed is placed all over the Swans neighborhood ingraffiti. In all cases, people objectify the body to become metaphoricalwalls on which letters are inscribed. Such semiotic overlaps asevidenced in Plate 3 recall the power of multiple grammatologies:Derrida's embedded signification combined with a comprehensive,self-referencing written system. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] However it is expressed, gang writing signals identity in hostilesocial worlds where affiliation equals protection. When written ondisembodied walls, this protection comes from the definition of abstractpolitical landscapes, control over the use of specific gang territories,and the association of names with neighborhoods. Gang members thus usewriting to "communicate at a distance" (Goody 1986). As Goodysuggests, "writing represents not only a method of communication ata distance, but a means of distancing oneself from communication"(1986:50). Gang members use writing to indicate both presence-in-absenceand power in numbers--to represent their neighborhoods without the riskof physical presence. However, even when they use embodied media--handsigning, tattoo, or dance--gang members also rely on visual rather thanverbal means to communicate identity in ways that range from thepermanent to the evanescent ev��a��nes��centadj.Of short duration; passing away quickly. . Dancing with Literacy: Extending the Boundaries of Communication The development of gang dancing began in 1960's Los Angeleswith the "Slauson Shuffle," when members of the large AfricanAmerican gang known as Slauson Village would dance in unison to aparticular song. Although Slauson members did not dance out the lettersof their gang name on the ground, as later gangsters would, this was anearly association of a particular style of movement linked to aparticular gang identity, which distinguished African American gangsfrom gangs of other ethnic groups in Los Angeles. Because this followed a popular dance craze surrounding a Del Tonessong of the same name, gang dancing has never been isolated frominfluences outside of gang culture. Today, gang dances that includewriting (5) remain primarily associated with African American gangs, andpeople generally perform them individually or in groups at parties ordance clubs. Although the dances vary greatly, within gang circles theyall share a written component (see Plate 4). Each dancer writes, indance steps, a gang name or initials, using right or left feet, eitherin place or moving across the floor and often using handsigning incombination with these moves. The Crip Walk, Pueblo Stroll, and VillainDance in Plate 4 are just three examples among many. Most AfricanAmerican gang neighborhoods within the city have worked out formulae forrepresenting their particular gang insignia through dance. People dancethem out at parties and clubs, and, like traditions ranging from jazz torap, engage one another in creative style competition. Dance is mostimportantly Adv. 1. most importantly - above and beyond all other consideration; "above all, you must be independent"above all, most especially a social activity. In this social arena, a dance like theCrip Walk can also be situated within a broader range of popular dancesthat wind in and out of trends, such as the Clown Walk The Clown Walk (also known as the C-Walk) refers to a modern dance style. It is a variation of the popular Crip walk. Clown Walking was created to distance the relationship between the dance style and the Crips gang. , The Old ManWalk, and the Cry Baby, just to name a few. This section describes fourvideo clips shot in November of 2000. I present the clips to givereaders an idea of the complexity and subtlety of gang dances, and alsoto explore the themes that emerge within their content. These includelinks with other forms of gang expressive culture, childhood play, andsymbols of death and remembrance common to the gang life. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] CLIP 1 : The first clip shows a man of about 35 who does an oldergeneration of dances. He is a Blood and had originally intended for hissons to perform in front of the camera for me. When they failed to showup, he took this burden upon himself after some prompting over the phonefrom a mutual friend ("I know you still got those moves up in thatass!"). Three of us were sitting in a unit of the Pueblo del Rio Del Rio(rē`ō), city (1990 pop. 30,705), seat of Val Verde co., W Tex., on the Rio Grande opposite Ciudad Acuña, Mexico; founded 1868, inc. 1911. low-income housing development in South Central Los Angeles, in theupstairs bedroom that belonged to a friend. After the phone call, sheput on some music. He began dancing in the hall way, while I shot thevideo out of her bedroom door. His body and hand movements were assmooth as his footwork, which traced in circular movements the letters"P" and "B" for Pueblo Bishops, the Blood gang towhich he belonged (see Plate 4 and Plate 5). During this initial clip, this man literally re-teaches himself thedance: he gets better and smoother as he goes along, as if his bodyitself helps to reacquaint him with moves that have remained unpracticedfor years. His own bodily memory reminds him how the right foot formsthe circular P shape, then how his left forms a rounded backward Bshape. Far from being a foot-centered performance, his choreography is awhole-body drama, and the subtle spelling would have been blind to mehad I not already known what was going on. After we stopped the video,he described how people would "look at a nigga crazy" when heused to perform these dances in public at clubs. Gang dances are arenasof potential conflict precisely because they represent particulargangs--a risky endeavor in a world full of enemies. Out of the foursequences I describe in this section, this clip most straightforwardlyrecalls basic gang identity--reduced here to the two fundamentalinitials (P and B) that stand for the Pueblo Bishops neighborhood.Because of the difficulty interpreting what people write even withingang culture, gang members frequently combine their dancing withhandsigning, the forms of which are generally more familiar to a rangeof enemies and allies. This version of the so-called "Pueblo Stroll," as shownby the 35-year old Blood above, runs stylistically counter to versionsof the "Crip Walk" I describe in the rest of the clips. I hadthe chance to video tape five young men, ranging in age from 9 to 15years old. They were two sets of brothers, along with a friend, fromImperial Courts, another public housing development claimed by the P]Watts Crips. I taped the boys for about two hours, frequently passingthem the video camera, so that I could shoot still photographs, or elsehaving one of them take stills. They seemed to enjoy these activities asmuch as the dancing, and they proved themselves to be far more adept atvideo camera operation than I. By the end they were sweaty but happy,and I arranged to give them free movie passes and two copies of thevideo in exchange for their time. It felt like a true collaboration, andeveryone seemed pleased with the outcome. (6) The relative youth of the five boys (ages nine, eleven, eleven,thirteen, and fifteen) who perform gang dances is indicative of thepower their neighborhood identity carries very early on. Dance is oneamong many forms of gang-related cultural expression that are availableto young people, that they can add to and expand upon as they grow. Thistype of cultural knowledge must be in place at a young age, because itallows young people to negotiate hostile, gang-oriented circumstancesthat begin in junior high and high school. Younger children learn from their older siblings and friends how todo these dances. One of the boys in the video described it to me: Showing off your ... [yeah dog ... ] ... moves.... [intimidation]. Cause like everybody over here. Like the big, like our homies, sometimes they do dances and then they show us, and then they tell us to do it and all that and stuff. And then we practice at our little parties. And we just know how to do it. At one point, the youngest boy started to joke with me, groaningthat they not only had to do the dances, but that I wanted them toexplain everything too? CLIP 2: In the first clip of this series, the 13 year-old boyspelled the initials "PJWC," which stand for PJ Watts Crips.First, he formed the P in blocks with his right foot, toe pointedforward and arms generally not above the waist. After he had traced fourkey points of a triangulated P with his foot on the ground, the boyrendered the J three dimensionally by kicking his foot backwards. First,his right toe made three dots to form the top line of the J. He thenwrote the curved body of the J by kicking back his right foot, and witheach kick he would slap his hand against the heel of his rising shoe(see Plate 6 and Plate 4). He rendered the W by blocking out the fivemain points of the W on the floor. Last, he wrote the C in similarmanner, by tracing its four key points onto the ground with his toe.During the entire performance, his left foot would move from side toside to propel his motion across the floor, while his arms helped tobalance him during this complex routine. When he was done, he hadwritten the initials "PJWC" in about four feet of floor space.He repeated the performance three times: once with his back to me, onceto the side, and once facing me, eventually walking forward andlaughing. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The boy's emphasis on block style letters was unlike thesmooth rounded letters of the 35 year-old in the example above. All theboys I taped that day relied exclusively on their right feet as writingimplements, much as they would on their right hands. This formed acontrast to the Pueblos example, as well as the Villain dance, both ofwhich utilized left and right feet for writing in different ways.Letters can be adapted to fit any neighborhood circumstance, anddifferent generations have different styles. Each generation schools thenext on performative techniques, and new generations subsequently addtheir own twists. I had started out taping just two boys, the thirteen year old andhis nine year-old brother, who were then joined by their twostep-brothers and a friend. All of them were dancing and spelling outalternately, PJWC, for PJ Watts Crips, or BSC (Binary Synchronous Communications) See bisync. , for Bull Side Crips, theside of the housing development that they were from. "Those are thehood letters," one of them told me, explaining. All of thesespellings were somewhat within the realm of what I had expected in termsof gang dancing. But once the boys formed a larger group, they begandancing in unison and doing things I had not anticipated--kneeling onthe ground and writing with their fingers, for example, which they toldme were "the names of the dead homies." This comes up again inthe following sequences. CLIP 3: The third clip is the double Dutch jump rope sequence Iused to introduce this paper. During this sequence, two boys beganmiming imaginary jump ropes, linking their gang-based identity to a richgenre of African American childhood expression. The three remaining boysCrip Walked in between, hopping and jumping around in the middle, asthey would have with real jump ropes (see Plate 6). They wouldoccasionally switch off rope swinging duties with the other boys, whowould then take over and dance. I was frankly stunned by the appearanceof double Dutch jump rope in the middle of this Crip Walk sequence (orvice versa VICE VERSA. On the contrary; on opposite sides. , in this case). The arena of dance is a powerful crossover of schoolyard andneighborhood play activities with gang culture. I have often watchedyoung girls making up dance routines or jump rope together in thecontext of their play. The integration of these traditionally femininepastimes into gang cultural expression (and their combination withgraffiti, hand signing, and other masculinized expressive genres)effectively switches them from girl-centered to boy-centeredactivities--something that has made double Dutch increasingly popularwith both boys and girls boys and girlsmercurialisannua. alike. When I discussed jumping rope and dancing with a teenaged girl fromImperial Courts, she began to tell me excitedly of a male friend thatknew how to Crip Walk while doing double Dutch, something he frequentlydid at parties. Another, older gang member from this same neighborhoodindicated that many people in the neighborhood learned how to Crip Walkby doing it with actual ropes. In attempting to check how representativethese comments and activities were, I asked a thirty year-old man fromthe Pueblos neighborhood (not the man in the first video clip A short video presentation. ) aboutaspects of the boys performances from PJ Watts. He indicated that theyused to do all the same things in his neighborhood--dancing withfingers, writing on the ground, and throwing up handsigns while dancingin a variety of ways. He went on to say that, when he was younger, theyused to perform the dances with real jump ropes as well as imaginaryones. He said: "That's how they come with the Crip walk, withthe hopping and jumping and all that." At first, this combinedcommentary lead me to believe that double Dutch might potentially be oneorigin of the dance, although more work needs to be done to create astronger ethnographic and historical portrait of this practice and itsinfluences. (7) Double Dutch has frequently been cited as an importantaspect of New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of style break dancing, due to its rhythms andrepetition (Gaunt 1998). Double Dutch's link with Crip Walkingimpacts one potential form of this dance, rather than serving asabstracted inspiration through its rhythmic components. Double Dutch,however, is not the only form of play present in Crip Walking. One canfind individuals miming a variety of things: rolling dice,skateboarding, spraypainting graffiti, yo-yo-ing, driving a car,fighting, shining shoes. This style of memesis has been presentthroughout the history of African American dance African American dances in the vernacular tradition (academically known as "African American vernacular dance") are those dances which have developed within African American communities in everyday spaces, rather than in dance studios, schools or companies. . On the plantationdancers would "hoe hoe,usually a flat blade, variously shaped, set in a long wooden handle and used primarily for weeding and for loosening the soil. It was the first distinctly agricultural implement. The earliest hoes were forked sticks. the row" or "shuck the corn."Later, in 1970s breakdancing, dancers would play battle, row the boat,give CPR Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR)DefinitionCardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a procedure to support and maintain breathing and circulation for a person who has stopped breathing (respiratory arrest) and/or whose heart has stopped (cardiac . And the legacy has passed along to Los Angeles. Dancersincorporate these into their moves depending upon concerns of dailylife, including in this case death itself. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Toward the end of this sequence, the boys ceased their doubleDutch. They knelt to the ground and began writing memorials with theirfingers and lightly touching the index and middle fingers of their righthands to the ground in a soft rhythm (please refer again to Plate 1). Itwas at this point that I asked the youngest boy what it meant when theyput their fingers on the ground in such a manner. He indicated that theywere Crip Walking with their fingers, where two fingers became the legsof a miniature dancer. Because this action was integrated with writingmemorials, it impressed me both as a resurrection and a veritable danceof death. The repeated motions brought back the dead to dance with themagain, while simultaneously reminding them of death's constantpresence within their lives. I explore such themes of death andresurrection in the last clip. CLIP 4: In this clip, the eldest boy of fifteen kneels on theground directly beneath the video camera to Crip Walk with the index andmiddle fingers of his right hand. Simultaneously, he uses his left handto sign the name of a dead companion named Elbo. The sequence lastsabout 30 second total, as his left hand spells out each individualletter of Elbo's name, while the fingers of his right handrepresent Elbo himself performing the Crip Walk. Plate B shows the youngman's left hand forming a handsign of the letter "L" inElbo's name, while his right index and middle fingers perform theabstracted motions of the Crip Walk. After this is completed, the youngman proceeds to trace the letters "ELBO" on the ground withhis right index finger, followed by an "RIP," for "Restin Peace." Elbo was one of the youngest gang members to die in thePJ neighborhood at Imperial Courts. He was shot by rivals at onlyfifteen years of age, and he and the fifteen year old dancer Ivideotaped were from the same generation of young people. The significance of death symbolism in dance resonates within anextended framework of gang activities. Gang members commemorate thedeaths of fellow homeboys by writing graffiti on walls or in concrete,by making memorial t-shirts, and by observing so-called "hooddays," festivals that celebrate both life and death within anygiven neighborhood (see Phillips 2001, Cintron 1997). These activitiesact as reminders of the dead and constitute a highly conscious processof memorializing, enacted at both individual and group levels. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] People remember the dead in countless ways throughout the course oftheir lives. It is almost a cliche, for example, for gang members topour some beer onto the ground during communal drinking, saying"for the homies that ain't here"--so hackneyed a gesturethat it has been enacted on an episode of "The Simpsons," apopular television cartoon. This evokes the idea of a homeboy who wouldhave otherwise been hanging out sharing a beer with his companions. Bythe same token, dancing is a communal activity. The integration ofwritten memorials and miniature finger dancers into gang dancing insertsthe presence of someone who might at that moment have been dancing withfriends to represent their hood together. Dance allows gang members toembody those who have been lost by using their bodies to write the namesof the dead repeatedly, as well as by acting out the danced writing thatthe dead would have performed themselves. The four examples above demonstrate the variety of social linksembedded in gang dancing, from writing graffiti to jumping rope, tomaking up dances, or memorializing dead homeboys. This is a complexdemonstration of how writing through dance intersects with livedexperience. For many dancers, writing basic forms of gang identitythrough the body becomes a competitive forum, not unlike a linguisticduel in which dancers compete with one another as they subtly engage inwritten wordplay. When dancers integrate their written movements withmemorializing through tracing letters or finger dancing, they areengaged in ritualized resurrections and reminders of the presence ofdeath as an everyday aspect of life. Gang dances thus powerfullydemonstrate the abstract concerns of gang life-identity, violence,death, remembrance--even as the abstraction of the writing itself iscountered by the physical power of their written performance. The four clips described above present several challenges. First isthe business of describing in words what is performed. This I haveattempted to enhance with video frame grabs and diagrams. However, theseare woefully woe��fulalso wo��ful ?adj.1. Affected by or full of woe; mournful.2. Causing or involving woe.3. Deplorably bad or wretched: inadequate when compared to watching the video clips, orseeing people perform dances live. They inevitably sterilize sterilize/ster��i��lize/ (ster��i-liz)1. to render sterile; to free from microorganisms.2. to render incapable of reproduction.ster��il��izev.1. anotherwise visceral experience for dancer and viewer alike. Second, thestyles and content in the clips I describe above are in no waydefinitive of gang dances from the 60s until now. I intend thesedescriptions as snapshots--fragments of the potential for expressivecommunication embedded in gang dances through time. Last, all of thevideotaped performances described above were reenactments--specialperformances designed for my video camera and the furthering of thisproject. More developed documentation of the original contexts willbecome important as gang dances, particularly the Crip Walk, becomeco-opted into mainstream arenas--with or without the writing thattraditionally accompanies them. Conclusion: Writing and the Body Writing among gangs is as much a part of surviving broader problemsof oppression in the United States as it is about living through theinternalized violence that endemically plagues gang arenas. Hostilitiesin both neighborhoods and in prisons, a lack of hierarchicalcommunication, and the need to communicate identity in absentia in absentia(in ab-sensh-ee-ah) adj. or adv. phrase. Latin for "in absence," or more fully, in one's absence. Occasionally a criminal trial is conducted without the defendant being present when he/she walks out or escapes after the trial has begun, since the accused allforce gang members to rely on messages that can be communicated bybodies, separated from bodies, as well as placed upon them permanently.As writing intermingles with the body in dance, gang members not onlypurify or decorate bodily arenas. They harness the physical power oflettering and person-centered experience. Gang members meld flesh andconcrete into coherent representations of gang political life. In thesestylized arrangements of social movement, performance and metaphorcritically combine. By linking human sweat and blood to an idealizedexpressive medium, writing becomes the focus of the body's physicaltransformations. Dance enters the arena of writing with a clear message: Thatwriting and the body can never be considered as truly distinct. Neithercan gang writing be interpreted without reference to the floors, walls,and skins onto which gang members inscribe in��scribe?tr.v. in��scribed, in��scrib��ing, in��scribes1. a. To write, print, carve, or engrave (words or letters) on or in a surface.b. To mark or engrave (a surface) with words or letters. it. As both Brian Street andKeith Basso suggest, writing actively represents the socioeconomicposition of its makers in the society from which it ultimately derives.Studying the social and physical "place" of writing throughethnography thus opens up relationships between all aspects of humansocial life and mentality, effectively countering othering language thathas encapsulated analyses of writing since Descartes. The multiple dichotomies of mind/body; civilized/savage;written/oral frame a primary racialized duality that mars the politicaland social life of American society: that of white/black. As mind is tocivilized and to written, so it is to white; as body is to savage and tooral, so it is to black. An analysis of gang dancing both challenges andreinforces this racialized dualism. As bell hooks indicates of writerslike Eldridge Cleaver Eldridge Cleaver (August 31, 1935 – May 1, 1998) was an author and a prominent American civil rights leader who began as a dominant member of the Black Panther Party.Born in Wabbaseka, Arkansas, Cleaver moved with his family to Phoenix and then to Los Angeles. and Amiri Baraka Amiri Baraka (born October 7, 1934) is an American writer of poetry, drama, essays and music criticism. BiographyEarly lifeBaraka was born Everett LeRoi Jones in Newark, New Jersey. , African American gang dancersliterally "talk through the body" (1995:203). An optimisticreading sees them overcoming the Cartesian divide, melding mind and bodyinto one. hooks, however, would contend that writers and dancers alikeremain unable to challenge neocolonial interpretations that ultimatelyprioritize black bodies over black minds. No matter how effectively thestudy of gang culture staves off civilizing discourses in academia,those same discourses retain the power to define precisely because theyare rooted in the popular imagination--and in the society that hasultimate coercive power over gangs, gang members, and their expressiveforms. Just as the historical rise of urbanism placed writing in the handsof elites or specially trained scribes, so modern-day writers act outsociety's hierarchies of dominance and inequality through theinterpretive exclusion they create. Views of urban experience as bothsavage and urbane powerfully shape the interpretation of gang culturalforms. Gang members seek no legitimacy from mainstream society in theirwriting. The writing they create has its own legitimacy, which stemsfrom distinct methods of affiliation (segregated, segmented, opposed),and which bears similarity to other types of writing worldwide. Insteadof being linked to higher reason and the more "positive"aspects of civilization, writing in the hands of so-called gang"savages" connects persistently to struggles for survival andthe complexities of daily experience. In dance and other forms of embodied gang writing, the emphasis onorality in African American expression blends with the uniquemateriality of the written systems gang members have created. Dancersthat use writing to remember through movement, or to resurrect the deadthrough mimesis, powerfully demonstrate that the relationships betweenwriting and the body must be co-analyzed just as they are co-generated.In particular, the relationship between writing and the body is cementedby larger political economies and state-sanctioned violence. The studyof this peculiar nexus is critical among peoples subordinated by thestructural or symbolic violence The concept of symbolic violence was first introduced by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to account for forms of coercion which are effected without physical force, "... of dominant groups. Again, considerThomas Csordas: "Another inescapable transformation of the body inthe contemporary world is being wrought by the incredible proliferationof political violence of all types: ethnic violence, sexual violence,self-destructive violence, domestic violence, gang violence. As much asany of the transformations sketched above, this one has to do with thevery meaning of being human as being a body that can experience pain andself-alienation" (1994:3). Writing seems a powerful contrast tobodies that "can experience pain and self-alienation;" just asabstraction seems powerfully opposed to Csordas's emphasis onviolence. The embodiment of writing in the gang world negates both ofthese oppositions. The interrelationships between gang communicative media poignantlydemonstrate William Bright's (1996) thesis that "...thechoices people make when they put language into written form...are notpurely linguistic ones. They involve questions of social interaction;they are complex; they often involve controversy and sometimesconflict" (764). Gang writing can never be considered a purelyindigenous written system. It clearly stems from whatever cultural,linguistic, and orthographic resources gang members call into play.Anthropologist I.J. Gelb further writes that, "There are no puresystems of writing just as there are no pure races in anthropology andno pure languages in linguistics" (in DeFrancis 1989). Writing forgangs is a political creature that comments upon both internal andexternal elements of their system. To use Derrida's language, it isboth "inside" and "outside" gang culture, linked toexternal societal oppression that necessitates easy replication,permanence, and mobility, and to the internal hostilies that locatesafety in physical disassociation dis��as��so��ci��ate?tr.v. dis��as��so��ci��at��ed, dis��as��so��ci��at��ing, dis��as��so��ci��atesTo remove from association; dissociate.dis . Modern urban spaces and social formshave thus defined powerful new forms of literacy, where living skinsprove more durable than cured ones, and where walls and bodies becomethe libraries that house written texts. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I extend my thanks to Deidre Sklar, Carrie Noland, and particularlyto Sohini Ray for her inspiration and tireless work on this volume. REFERENCES Abrahams, Roger. 1970. Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro NarrativeFolklore from the Streets of Philadelphia. Chicago: Aldine PublishingCo. Adams, Karen L. and Anne Winter. 1997. "Gang Graffiti as aDiscourse Genre." Journal of Sociolinguistics 1(3):337-360. Baron, Naomi S. 1980. Speech, Writing, and Sign: A Functional Viewof Linguistic Representation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press Indiana University Press, also known as IU Press, is a publishing house at Indiana University that engages in academic publishing, specializing in the humanities and social sciences. It was founded in 1950. Its headquarters are located in Bloomington, Indiana. . Basso, Keith H. 1974. "The Ethnography of Writing." InRichard Bauman and Joel Sherzer, eds. Explorations in the Ethnography ofSpeaking, pp. 425-32. New York: Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press (known colloquially as CUP) is a publisher given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII in 1534, and one of the two privileged presses (the other being Oxford University Press). . Besnier, Niko. 2001. "Literacy." In Alessandro Duranti,ed. Key Terms in Language and Culture. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. Blanchard, Marc. 1994. "Post-Bourgeois Tattoo: Reflections onSkin Writing in Late Capitalist Societies." In Taylor, Lucien, ed.Visualizing Theory: Selected Essays Among the numerous literary works titled Selected Essays are the following: Selected Essays by Frederick Douglass Selected Essays by T.S. Eliot Selected Essays by William Troy ]ram V.A.R., 1990-7994. New York:Routledge. Bright, William. 1996. "Introduction: Sociolinguistics andScripts." In Peter T. Daniels and William Bright William Bright (born August 13, 1928, Oxnard, California; died October 15, 2006 (of a brain tumor), Louisville, Colorado) was an American linguist who specialized in Native American and South Asian languages and descriptive linguistics. , eds. TheWorld's Writing Systems. New York: Oxford University Press. Cintron, Ralph. 1997. Angels' Town: Chero Ways, Gang Life, andRhetorics of the Everyday. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press. Conquergood, Dwight. 1997. "Street Literacy." In J.Flood, S. B. Heath, and D. Lapp, eds. Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy through the Communicativeand Visual Arts. New York: Macmillan Library Reference. Csordas, Thomas, ed. 1994. Embodiment and Experience: TheExistential Ground of Culture and Self. London: Cambridge UniversityPress. Daniels, Peter T. and William Bright, eds. 1996. The World'sWriting Systems. New York: Oxford University Press. DeFrancis, John, ed. 1989. Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness ofWriting Systems. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press The University of Hawaiʻi Press is a university press that is part of the University of Hawaiʻi. . Derrida, Jacques. 1976. Of Grammatology gram��ma��tol��o��gy?n.The study and science of systems of graphic script.[Greek gramma, grammat-, letter; see grammar + -logy. . Translated by GayatriChakravorty Spivak Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born February 24 1942) is an Indian literary critic and theorist. She is best known for the article "Can the Subaltern Speak?", considered a founding text of postcolonialism, and for her translation of Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology. . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University,mainly at Baltimore, Md. Johns Hopkins in 1867 had a group of his associates incorporated as the trustees of a university and a hospital, endowing each with $3.5 million. Daniel C. Press. Feldman, Allen. 1991. Formations of Violence: The Narrative of theBody and Political Terror in Northern Ireland. Chicago: University ofChicago Press The University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, dozens of academic journals, including . Gaunt, Kyra D. 1998. "Dancin' in the Street to a BlackGirl's Beat: Music, Gender, and the 'Ins and Outs' ofDouble-Dutch." In Joe Austin and Michael Nevin Willard, eds.Generations of Youth: Youth Cultures and History in Twentieth-CenturyAmerica. New York: New York University Press New York University Press (or NYU Press), founded in 1916, is a university press that is part of New York University. External linkNew York University Press . Goody, Jack. 1977. The Domestication domesticationProcess of hereditary reorganization of wild animals and plants into forms more accommodating to the interests of people. In its strictest sense, it refers to the initial stage of human mastery of wild animals and plants. of the Savage Mind. New York:Cambridge University Press. --. 1986. The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society. NewYork: Cambridge University Press. Heath, Shirley Brice. 1982. "What No Bedtime Story Means:Narrative Skills at Home and School." Language in Society 11(1):49-76. hooks, bell. 1995. Art on my Mind: Visual Politics. New York: NewPress. --. 1994. Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations. New York:Routledge. Kelly, Robin D.G. 1998. Yo' Mama's Disfunktional!:Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America. New York: Beacon Press. Leder, Drew. 1990. The Absent Body. Chicago: University Of ChicagoPress. Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1967. Tristes Tropiques. Translated by JohnRussell. New York: Atheneum ath��e��nae��umalso ath��e��ne��um ?n.1. An institution, such as a literary club or scientific academy, for the promotion of learning.2. A place, such as a library, where printed materials are available for reading. Press. Lippi-Green, Rosina. 1997. English with an Accent: Language,Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States. New York: Routledge. Mitchell-Kernan, Claudia. 1972. "Signifying and Marking: TwoAfro-American Speech Acts." In John Gumperz and Dell Hymes, eds.Directions in Sociolinguistics, pp. 161179. New York: Holt, Rinehart& Winston. Morgan, Marcyliena. 2002. Language, Discourse, and Power in AfricanAmerican Culture African American culture or Black culture, in the United States, includes the various cultural traditions of African American communities. It is both part of, and distinct from American culture. The U.S. . New York: Cambridge University Press. Phillips, Susan A. 1999. Wallbangin: Graffiti and Gangs in L.A.Chicago: University of Chicago Press. --. 2001. "Photographic Mistakes on a Gangster Holiday."In Salas, Charles and Michael Roth, eds. Looking for Los Angeles:Architecture, Film, Photography, and the Urban Landscape. Los Angeles:Getty Research Institute. Ong, Walter. 1988. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of theWord. New York: Routledge. Ricoer, Paul. 1991. From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II.Translated by Kathleen Blarney Blarney,village, Co. Cork, SE Republic of Ireland. Those who kiss the Blarney Stone, placed in an almost inaccessible position near the top of the thick stone wall of the 15th-century castle, are supposed to gain marvelous powers of persuasion and cajolery. and John B. Thompson John B. Thompson may refer to: John Burton Thompson, American politician from Kentucky John Bruce "Jack" Thompson, American attorney and activist from Florida John B. Thompson, Cambridge sociologist . Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press Northwestern University Press is the university press of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, USA.It was founded in 1893, at first specializing in law. It is especially notable for its literature in translation publishing, especially by European writers. . Rose, Tricia. 1994. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture inContemporary America. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press Wesleyan University Press, founded (in present form) in 1959, is a university press that is part of Wesleyan University (Connecticut). External linkWesleyan University Press . Scott, James. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: HiddenTranscripts. New Haven: Yale University Press. Street, Brian. 1984. Literacy in Theory and Practice. New York:Cambridge University Press. White, Deborah Gray. 2000. Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defenseof Themselves: 1894-1994. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Susan A. Phillips Pitzer College ENDNOTES (1) See for example the work of Ralph Cintron (1997), DwightConquergood (1997), and Shirley Brice Heath (1982). (2) Each type of gang writing also bears some distinct elementsthat comprise its content, lexicon, punctuation, and grammar. Forexample, gang members' use of dots, quotation marks, diamonds andthe like to separate words (i.e. Flaco*Listo*Bullet) constitute primarygang grammatical devices, similar to commas or periods at the end ofstandard sentences. These work simultaneously as grammatical andaesthetic devices, lending both textual and visual balance tocompositions. Gang grammar also revolves around standards ofinitialling. While in standard literacies, for example, one would writethe name "38th Street," gang members instead write "38Street." Within established gang traditions, the inclusion of the"th" or any other such modifier (programming) modifier - An operation that alters the state of an object. Modifiers often have names that begin with "set" and corresponding selector functions whose names begin with "get". , such as an "st"after "1st," would be grammatically incorrect. Further,pictographic devices, such as the three dots (.'.), stand forparticular phrases--in this case, "mi vida Iota (language, specification) Iota - A specification language.["The Iota Programming System", R. Nakajima er al, Springer 1983]. ," or "mycrazy life." Gang members have also developed systems of hand signsformed into the shapes of gang initials, which communicate neighborhoodidentity across distances to friends and enemies alike. (3) Another indication of gang writing's representation ofgang orality comes from an early writing of the word Crip itself.According to several gang members I have spoken to, "CARIP" or"CA:RIP," both of which were versions of the word"Crip" sometimes written on walls, actually stemmed frompronunciations of the word that were common in the early 1970s, when theBloods/Crips system was in the process of developing. (4) Though most expressions of love are borrowed from the largersociety, there are ways of expressing love in a particularly gang-likemanner. For example, writing "Manny Manny may refer to:In nobility: Baron Manny, a title in the Peerage of England Walter de Manny, 1st Baron Manny (died 1372), soldier of fortune and founder of the Charterhouse People with the given name Manny: Manny (given name) + Sofia p/v c/s" duringthe 1970s harnessed powerful protective and loyalty devices establishedin gang writing proper. P/V stands for "por vida," "forlife" in Spanish; C/S for "con safos," literally meaning"with safety"--a protective device thought to reflect any badsentiments targeted at the message back onto the writer. Characteristicuses of initialling and slashes to separate letters identify this as acomposition written by a gang-oriented person. (5) It is important to distinguish between gang dances that includea written component and versions of the dance that do not includewriting that have been co-opted via gangster rap music videos and theinternet. Although it is increasingly difficult to separate out theinterplay between them, to date the presence or absence of gangsignifiers within the dance can act as a distinct demarcation. Thosedances that include gang signification are the sole topic of this paperunless cooption is explicitly referenced. (6) Clearly the exchange was not "fair" in a broadersocial sense. Social scientists have a long history of participating inand extending the gaze of cooption in urban neighborhoods. (7) Many other potential links deserve exploration in thedevelopment of gang dancing in Los Angeles beyond those examined in thispaper. These include both East Coast style break dancing and hip hopculture Hip hop is a subculture, which is said to have begun with the work of DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, and Afrika Bambaattaa.The four main aspects, or "elements", of hip hop culture are MCing (rapping), DJing, urban inspired art/tagging (graffiti), and in general, as well as the dance "stepping" performedin unison by African American fraternity members. These and perhapsothers expressive realms, will be fruitful arenas for further researchinto the origin, context, and development of gang dancing in LosAngeles.TABLE 1: Comparison of Expressive Genres for African American GangWriting PLACEMENT CONTEXT/USES SEMANTIC RANGESGRAFFITI built conflict, broad: environment affirmation membership lists, gang identification, memorials, love, enmity, alliance, sayingsTATTOO whole body prison, street broadest: gang identification, memorials, love, family, saying, imagesSIGNING hands, arms conflict, most limited: greeting, gang numbers/initials posing for picturesDANCE whole parties, limited: body/feet dances, clubs, gang identification, houses memorials, enemies, mimesis, daily life STABILITY DURABILITY SYNTAXGRAFFITI high high flexibleTATTOO high highest flexibleSIGNING high low rigidDANCE medium: low flexible varies between gangs