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The contagious sound of Congo-Zaire's distinctive popular dance music has made it a kind of 'musica franca' of sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the music's influence outside of its country of origin, virtually no research has been done to explore the history, production and meaning of the musical style. In addition to being a privileged feature of Congo-Kinshasa's cultural landscape, this 'musique moderne' also constitutes a valuable source of information of the way that 'modernity' is ordered and understood in an African context. 'Modernity', I want to argue, is driven by 'tradition', and 'audition' pulls 'modernity' back into its sphere of utility, resulting in a never-ending, forever-changing, cultural and political spiral. 'Modernism', on the other hand, as a stance or 'way of being' in the world, is used as a means of gaining mastery over the paradoxes and pleasures of 'modernity's' condition. Findings are based on fourteen months of intensive fieldwork (1995--1996) in Brazzaville (Peoples' Republic of Congo) and Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo). I conducted research on three basic units of study relative to Congolese popular dance music: the music industry, the musical style and the audience. By comparing information from these three domains of knowledge, I have attempted to show not only how music in Kinshasa is performed, but how it is produced and understood. The 'modern' idiom through which music expresses itself is interesting in itself, but it also highlights the importance of culture and history to the study of popular culture and politics.

Currently, in the fields of multi-ethnic literary and cultural studies in American, many critics and theoreticians concentrate on exposing forces of social and economic oppression against ethnic minorities and practices of cultural hegemony by the dominant culture. In the process, they often read characters in multi-ethnic American literatures as agents of resistance and counter-discourse. While it is valuable to recognize the subversive potential in these writings, it is equally important to expose their distinct, individual attributes. Accordingly, this dissertation explores the neglected double nature and "bi-cultural" presence of the subject in a branch of contemporary American literature that I designate as "emergent." Through its "re-accentuation" (Bakhtin) of sign systems, writers of emergent fiction strive not to simply reintonate already established cultural paradigms from either recent or ancient homelands but, instead, to engage an active and ongoing cultural exchange in the context of America as (new) homeland. Presenting the individual and social subject as hybrid, emergent writers examine its dynamic involvement in both private and public spheres. My close readings of this literature focus on the representation of self-other interrelationships. / I introduce and situate my analysis with a theoretical overview of the subject in cross-cultural or "liminal" zones (Bhabha). I also consider the significance of "dialogism" (Bakhtin) in the multi-ethnic, often female, subject's experience of "estrangement" (Felski). My choice of both established and lesser-known of new writers, born (or raised) in the United States but of diverse ethnic backgrounds, includes Cristina Garcia (Hispanic), Louise Erdrich (Native), Julia Shigekuni (Japanese), Sandra Cisneros (Chicana), Askold Melnyczuk (Ukrainian), Charlotte Sherman (African), and Amy Tan (Chinese). Situating the individual and social subject at various crossroads---both physical and psychological---emergent writers examine the changing nature of self identity and social expression. Through their "border pedagogy" (Giroux), they traverse axiologic discourses and socio-cultural boundaries and attend to ensuing dialectical tensions between inner and outer worlds, and among peoples, cultures, and social hierarchies.