There was the first medalist of the refugee team, Cameroonian boxer Cindy Ngamba; the selfie of the South and North Korean table tennis players, united on the podium; and the Australian Rachel Gunn, who distinguished herself with a performance of break dance which did not earn her any points but rather a flood of jeers. It is very likely that she consciously provoked this fiasco to put herself forward in the many media outlets that reported on it.
The whole world now knows that this person is a professor in cultural studies at Macquarie University in Sydney. It was through her that I myself discovered the existence of the Global Hip Hop Studies Journal, an academic journal that turns an object of study into an academic discipline, alongside the Metal Music Journal, Punk and Post-Punk, and the mysterious Dance, Movement and Spiritualities.
What's the point of Hip Hop studies, and not studies on this musical style in musicology or contemporary cultural history? We find an element of response in the collective article " Funk What You Heard, Hip Hop Is a Field of Study » appeared in the Journal of Hip Hop Studies in 2022. According to its authors, the Hip Hop Studies must exist as an independent academic discipline because sociologists, historians, etc. denigrate this object of study, which would be a manifestation of white supremacy.
This is a hypothesis, of course. However, it is also possible that the "gatekeepers" in question are simply confused by the methodology used by these researchers. Indeed, Professor Rachel Gunn claims to be an "auto-ethnographer". With this method, the data studied is your own experience, based on your memories. In her article "“Don’t Worry, it’s Just a Girl!” »: negotiating and challenging gendered assumptions in Sydney's breakdancing scene ", she explores her "own experience as one of the few female break dancers in Sydney." Dana Horton, one of the editors of the Journal of Hip Hop Studies, as for elle publié « Don't You Fuck with My Energy: The Occult and Intersectional Spirituality in Hip Hop Culture ", story ofand his own spiritual journey. Homophobia: An Autoethnographic Story ", in another discipline, is the first-person narrative of Shamla Mc Larin who describes her background and then recounts that she arrêtee ofêvery homophobic after comforting a heartbroken lesbian friend.
The day after her Olympic fiasco, Rachel Gunn posted on Instagram in her Olympic outfit with this slogan: " Don't be afraid to be different, go out there and represent yourself, you never know where that's gonna take you "An Olympic athlete who only represents herselfême and which promotes research about oneselfême: Rachel Gunn has broken a record for egocentricity in both of her disciplines. Welcome to the Olympics of academic debacle!
