Subaltern voices and postcolonial schizophrenia: The political tensions of M.I.A.’s Kala

Abstract

ABSTRACT Banned from the U.S. during the “war on terror,” the British/Sri Lankan hip-hop artist M.I.A. responded by recording her 2007 album Kala in multiple locations throughout the global South, collating indigenous musical styles and unorthodox recording techniques. Via a critical/cultural analysis, this paper explores M.I.A.’s work on Kala as subaltern resistance mobilized by “differential movement,” particularly in its mode of production, which operated outside of, and in opposition to, institutional mechanisms designed to expunge or neutralize politically subversive art and artists. Yet M.I.A.’s musical sampling also surfaces conflicts between creative freedom and cultural appropriation, emblematizing “postcolonialist/postmodern schizophrenia” (Vályi, 2011. Remixing cultures: Bartók and Kodály in the age of indigenous cultural rights. In K. McLeod & R. Kuenzli (Eds.), Cutting across media: Appropriation art, interventionist collage, and copyright law (pp. 219–236). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.).