Date of Award
2024
Document Type
Thesis
Publisher
Edith Cowan University
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
School
School of Arts and Humanities
First Supervisor
Paul Arthur
Second Supervisor
Debbie Rodan
Abstract
This research explores song lyrics, interview statements and social media posts produced by Black, Taíno and Puerto-Rican American rapper Nitty Scott, between January 2016 and December 2018. It positions Nitty Scott as an important Indigenous decolonial artist who – via these ‘cultural productions’ – constructed an archive of decolonial commentary that, in my reading, aimed to reconstruct Black and Taíno-Puerto-Rican-American women’s identities and connections to place, in relation to colonial histories.
Decolonial theorists such as Walter D. Mignolo have explored how colonised artists such as Chicana poet and theorist Gloria Anzaldúa have critiqued colonial systems of knowledge and representation, and reconstruct accounts of identity, place, knowledge, and history in American settler-colonial contexts. Similarly, a range of hip-hop studies scholarship has addressed ways in which colonised Black and Indigenous ‘conscious’ rap artists reconstruct their identities and attachments to place in ongoing settler-colonial contexts, and in relation to colonial histories. However, despite Nitty Scott’s articulation of an extensive and multilayered archive of decolonial commentary aimed towards the healing of colonial wounds, her works have not yet been addressed in the decolonial, nor hip-hop studies, fields. This research aims to address this gap in the literature.
This study’s multi-method approach, framed by a decolonising methodology and decolonial theoretical framework, brings together perspectives, analytical approaches, and concepts from critical Indigenous studies, Black and Native American feminist theory, colonial discourse analysis, and Puerto Rican critical race and historical studies. This approach – an original intervention in the decolonial and hip-hop studies scholarship – finds that Scott writes into multiple scholarly traditions. In addition, this study finds that Scott’s cultural productions during this period articulate a sophisticated Anzaldúan ‘mestiza-way’ critical approach toward her representations of Black and Taíno-Puerto-Rican-American women’s identities, and attachments to places. However, it also explores the ideological instability and colonial origins of certain symbols, myths and metaphors Scott presents in her writing, pondering their problems and productive possibilities, in relation to Black and Native-American feminist theories, in particular.
DOI
10.25958/mdbp-ev51
Access Note
Access to this thesis is embargoed until 2 November 2026
Recommended Citation
Orchard, F. C. (2024). Representations of Afro-Taíno Puerto Rican American women’s identities and connections to place: The cultural productions of Nitty Scott 2016-2018. Edith Cowan University. https://doi.org/10.25958/mdbp-ev51