Free Speech & Fine Art: Notes on Kneecap
“KRS-One come to start some hysteria / Illegal business controls America” — Boogie Down Productions, ‘Illegal Business’ (1988)
“Fight the power! / We’ve got to fight the powers that be” — Public Enemy, ‘Fight the Power’ (1990)
“I’m guardin’ my feelings, I know that you feel it / You sabotage my community, makin’ a killin’” — Kendrick Lamar, ‘The Blacker the Berry’ (2015)
“C-E-A-R-T-A, you say it needs more Tiocfaidh ár Lá’s” — Kneecap, ‘Fine Art’ (2024).
Note: the phrase ‘Tiocfaidh ár Lá’ translates from Irish (Gaeilge) to ‘Our day will come’. For more, see the Diary of Bobby Sands.
(All translations are my own)
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The lyrics above highlight the power of art, notably rap, to amplify silenced voices, challenge societal norms, and push the boundaries of liberty. While the ancient Greek philosopher Plato dismissed such a concept, contemporary artists like Kneecap vividly illustrate dissenting artwork’s urgent significance in our present moment.
In The Republic, Plato argues that art should be eliminated due to its subversive potential. Since art influences society's ‘gnosis’ (γνῶσις), i.e., its collective ‘knowledge’ or ‘awareness,’ Plato believes that artistic expressions of individuality that do not conform with the prevailing epistemic plane of authority threaten the stability of any established order. The West Belfast political punk rap trio Kneecap, however, demonstrates why Plato is mistaken in dismissing art’s value for the truth while still being correct about its capacity to disrupt the status quo. Kneecap’s artistic expression, much more than merely subversive or polemical, has spontaneously emerged as one of the many counters to the sorrowful fact that ‘every forty days, an Indigenous language dies’ (a tragic reality of the ethnocidal pressures of global capitalism highlighted at the end of the group’s biographic film released earlier this year, Kneecap (2024) — the first Irish language film to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival).
Kneecap, for example, gained traction in 2017 during Northern Ireland’s Irish language movement, which culminated in thousands marching in the streets of West Belfast in support of the Irish Language Act. Protesters were demanding a law to officially recognize, protect, and promote the use of the Irish language in Northern Ireland. Although the fluent population has dwindled, the Irish language (like any language) is significant because it is a vital part of Ireland’s cultural heritage and identity, including the six traditional Irish counties that are now circumscribed in the North of the island by the borders of the U.K. The Irish language represents a historical connection to the country's past, and speaking it in locales like Belfast is an act of cultural revival, as well as an expression of autonomy and sovereignty. In 2022, the U.K. Parliament enacted the ‘Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Act’ to officially recognize and protect the Irish language. Such a conciliatory measure does not live up to the rap trio’s own aspiration to ‘Get Your Brits Out.’ Yet the law is evidence that the group, a megaphone for the Irish people, has captured the eyes and ears of the powers that be.
In The Republic, Plato criticizes artists — those who create representations of reality — calling them ‘imitators’ whose primary purpose is neither to create something new nor to imbue the world with meaning but strictly to entertain or deceive the masses. He argues that these imitators are ‘a long way off the truth’ because they only ‘lightly touch on a small part’ of reality, presenting mere expressive fabrications rather than developing a genuine or objective understanding of reality itself. At one point, Plato offers the example of a painter who depicts a cobbler or carpenter at work. Though the painter knows nothing of these artisans’ respective crafts, ‘he may deceive children or simple persons, when he shows them his picture of a carpenter from a distance, and they will fancy that they are looking at a real carpenter’ (Republic, p. 461). Plato’s critique extends particularly to poetry and, by extension, to contemporary artistic forms such as hip-hop. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Plato saw poetry as closer to ‘the greatest danger’ than any other phenomenon he discusses. He goes so far as to claim that ‘all poetry is an outrage’ (Republic, p. 113). Ultimately, he argues that ‘the imitator has no knowledge worth mentioning of what he imitates’ (Republic, p. 465).
Plato’s observations about the disruptive potential of art are not without merit. He understood that art could challenge, unsettle, provoke, and thus threaten the durability of long-standing regimes. However, Plato was fundamentally mistaken in elevating art’s function to deceive and, in turn, dismissing and obscuring art’s role in documenting, preserving, and shedding light on the truth. On the other side of the coin, then, one observes a shortcoming of Plato’s argument in that he does not reason on the role of art in a repressive context or, in other words, on the role of art in emancipation, liberation, and positive social transformation. His critique also fails to account for the intrinsic value of art as a vehicle for human freedom, expression, and individuality in precisely these contexts where certain types of regimes (such as settler-states) thrive off the exploitation of occupied peoples.
An active process, rap as an art form distinguishes between the phenomena of ‘liberation’ or ‘emancipation’ as prerequisites for, but not tantamount to, ‘freedom’ or ‘living free’ as a state of being (see Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution or Neil Roberts’ Freedom as Marronage). In my case, it is this fact that compels me to write.
As it concerns art’s connection to the truth as opposed to deception, Kneecap’s intentional artistic use of the Irish language (Gaeilge) in their rap flow is not just a stylistic choice, and it surely isn’t intended to deceive. Instead, it is a radical act of linguistic and cultural reclamation, an assertion of autonomy and sovereignty. To quote a line from the rap trio’s eponymous film (that won the 2024 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award), ‘Every word of Irish spoken is a bullet fired for Irish freedom.’ To speak in broad theoretical terms, their music resists both the death and erasure of a colonized Indigenous people’s language and the subsequent homogenizing forces of neoliberal globalization, positioning itself as a conscious form of political speech.
That is to say, conscious rap operates not as a deceptive imitation but as a powerful tool for dissent, as a vehicle for political expression under circumstances of duress. Rather than ‘fine’ art – defined generally as the lofty and inaccessible standards of ‘true beauty’ ascribed to the aesthetics of so-called ‘high culture’ – Kneecap’s lyrics are expressions of what Marx would refer to as class consciousness (see Lukács), with rapper Móglaí Bap asserting in tracks like ‘I’m Flush’ that ‘he’s a working-class fella.’ The lyrics often refer to members of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) — a conservative, loyalist, and British nationalist political party in Northern Ireland that holds (as of writing this piece) five seats in the U.K.’s House of Commons and controls twenty-five seats (27.8%) of the Northern Ireland Assembly (Tionól Thuaisceart Éireann). The national conservative DUP has often come into conflict with Irish republican and democratic socialist political party Sinn Féin, which now holds seven abstentionist seats in the House of Commons and twenty-seven seats (30%) in the Assembly. Following the 2023 Northern Ireland local elections, the DUP retained 122 (26.4%) council seats, while Sinn Féin gained thirty-nine council seats, now holding 144 (31.2%) of the locally elected offices.
Hip-hop is historically known for its artists’ audacity to push the boundaries of free speech — such as when the U.S. Supreme Court cited Eminem’s lyrics while in session or YG's release of ‘FDT’. This activity challenges Plato’s argument by demonstrating that art can indeed produce a profound, emancipatory understanding of the world rather than merely ‘imitating’ or creating false representations of it. Accordingly, to develop this challenge to Plato’s logic, I primarily invoke the thought of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci on the relation between culture and hegemony. Gramsci, along with György Lukács and Walter Benjamin, was the original ‘cultural Marxist’. To understand what this term — cultural Marxism — actually means, please consider the following on classical Marxist thought (which does not consider the Frankfurt School linked above).
Marx’s concept of revolution is rooted in his theory of historical materialism, which posits that the economic base of a society—the social relations and means of production—fundamentally shapes its superstructure, which includes matters of culture, politics, ideology, and so on. The output of the economic base sustains the affairs of society’s superstructure, and the values and norms descending from the superstructure (i.e., ideals), in turn, shape the material realities concerning the relations and means of production (e.g., labor relations affect labor laws, labor laws affect labor relations, and that tug-of-war relation continues over time). The back-and-forth nature of this sort of dialogic exchange, wherein the economic base alters and shapes the superstructure and vice versa, is known as a dialectic (derived, at first, from the Socratic dialogue and then further developed by the German Idealist philosopher Hegel in the early nineteenth century). To further simplify this concept, conjure the image of yin and yang (for dialectical thought traces its origins to Taoist inquiry. For further reading, see the writings of ancient Chinese philosophers and ‘founders’ of Taoism Laozi, Zhuangzi, and the Liezi).
In Marxism, when we mention dialectics, we are usually talking about dialectical materialism (linking to U.S. Marxist economist Dr. Richard D. Wolff’s explanation of these terms posted on his YouTube channel). This philosophical proposition posits that changes in society’s economic base (its material) ultimately drive transformations in the political and ideological superstructure (its ideals). It is chiefly for this reason that classical Marxism is critiqued for its straw man of economic determinism. According to Marx, significant social change or revolution occurs when the existing economic base becomes incompatible with the superstructure, leading to a conflict between the ruling class and the oppressed class. This conflict drives the revolutionary process, ultimately resulting in a transformation of both the economic base and the superstructure.
Revolution is a historical fact, Marx observed, as the forces of European commercialism and mercantilism succeeded in overthrowing the fetters of the aristocratic feudal order, paving the way for industrial capitalism and free enterprise. From this vantage, he reasoned that the growing urban proletariat would develop a class consciousness akin to that of the bourgeoisie. This collective awareness would drive society to acknowledge and address the demands of the workers, who supply the technical knowledge, skill, and labor power necessary for the production and reproduction of (social) life.
In dialectical materialism, culture is seen as a crucial component of the superstructure since ‘culture,’ broadly defined, contains representations of reality that encapsulate and proliferate certain collective values and ideals. Culture reflects and reinforces the economic base, but it can also influence and challenge it. Classical Marxists, however, recalling the critique of their economic determinism, relegated the role of culture to a secondary status, placing the material aspects of society above the abstract dimensions of ideals when it comes to social transformation. Scholars like Gramsci, Lukács, and Benjamin, however, rejected Marxism’s myopic economic determinism, expanding this understanding of ‘superstructure’ by emphasizing the role of culture in maintaining or contesting hegemony. In other words, Gramsci and his contemporaries in later permutations of the Marxist camp argue that culture is not just a static reflection of economic conditions. It is an active and malleable force that can either liberate or repress, loosen or reinforce the binds of oppression.
To be succinct, this word hegemony refers to ‘established norms’ — the eminence of certain customs, etiquette, and habits of thought that are the result of the social, economic, and political dominance of a ruling class or group over others. The point of hegemony is that this dominance is achieved not just through force or coercion, but by shaping cultural norms, values, beliefs, and ideologies, or what Gramsci refers to as ‘common sense’ (senso comune) so that their power appears natural and accepted by society. This cultural and ideological control ensures the consent and compliance of subordinate classes, making the existing social, economic, and political order seem inevitable and unchangeable.
Gramsci introduced the concept of cultural hegemony, arguing that the ruling class maintains dominance not just through economic and political control but also by shaping cultural norms and ideologies that make their power appear natural and consensual. It follows from Gramscian thought that culture is a battleground for ideological struggle, where organic intellectuals from subaltern classes can challenge and redefine hegemonic narratives. Indeed, past scholarly work has described some rappers in the United States as Black organic intellectuals. One could certainly make the argument that mainstream rappers like Kendrick Lamar would fall into this category, with his 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly offering insights into the existential dimensions of poverty, struggle, outrage, and success and his later album DAMN. awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2018. Scholars like UConn’s Jeff Dudas, author of Raised Right (2017), however, point out the converse — the so-called ‘culture war’ is depicted as a war precisely because such challenges to existing norms are found on both the emancipatory (i.e., intending to expand civil liberties, personal freedoms, and public interests) and reactionary (intending to restrict them) sides of the spectrum. (For an example of ‘reactionary art,’ one may refer to the link between Futurism and fascism in Italy).
As it concerns the other two foundational ‘cultural Marxists’ named above, Lukács focused on how class consciousness and cultural forms are intertwined, suggesting that cultural expressions can both reflect and influence class struggles. For him, the development of an aesthetics of class consciousness is crucial for the working class to recognize its role in revolutionary change. Walter Benjamin, on the other hand, explored how culture and art can serve as vehicles for activating revolutionary potential: ‘art will tackle the most difficult and most important [tasks] where it is able to mobilize the masses.’ He argued that art has the power to challenge dominant ideologies and reveal hidden truths, contributing to the process of social transformation (see, for example, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’).
Together, these later scholars in the Marxist tradition emphasized that culture is not a passive reflection of economic conditions but an active, dialectical force that can either reinforce or subvert existing power structures. Consequently, this perspective enriches our understanding of art’s role in societal change, revealing an emancipatory potential that is overlooked by Plato’s concern for hierarchy, order, and stratified rule. On the other hand, as Dudas notes, art may very well be used as a means of deception; however, it would appear that the art of the subaltern has the central tendency to unearth rather than obfuscate truth. These theoretical insights on the latent revolutionary politics of art and culture highlight how artists like Kneecap use these creative forms to challenge hegemonic systems and articulate alternative visions of freedom, justice, and sovereignty.
Kneecap’s music exemplifies how conscious rap has the power to unmask and critique the subtle mechanisms of hegemony, particularly in the context of British colonization. (As a quick note, this blog post considers Kneecap’s music to belong to this ‘conscious’ or ‘political’ rap subgenre as opposed to mainstream forms of trap or drill music and the like. To discuss the group in this broader context of the hip-hop genre would more egregiously expose this piece to critiques for its deliberate avoidance of the genre’s glorified hedonism or depictions of violence and despair. These are certainly critical issues, but I have neither enough space nor knowledge at this time to do such questions justice. For example, Kneecap itself extols drug use on some tracks like ‘I’m Flush’ or ‘3CAG’, but it also critically considers ‘A Better Way to Live’ outside of the routine cycle of MDMA crashes, cocaine binges, hangovers, and all other such consequences in party- or pub-induced deals with the Devil). By incorporating elements of Irish language and political commentary into their lyrics, Kneecap challenges the intergenerational hegemonic narratives imposed by colonial and imperial powers. It brings to light the realities of continued colonial influence. Their work reveals the often-overlooked injustices and cultural suppression associated with British rule over the ‘North of Ireland,’ and they have employed their rising stardom to expose and resist these entrenched systems of power, both as they affect the occupied people of Ireland and elsewhere on the globe (e.g., in Palestine).
In their latest album, titled Fine Art, Kneecap responds to criticism directed at the group’s polemical political expression, notably the flak hurled the trio’s way after they unveiled a public mural of a burning police car. The self-titled track, ‘Fine Art,’ features a recording of a male news reporter saying, ‘On the Nolan show today a mural of a burning police car and chants of “get the Brits out.” This is Ireland 2022. Rappers Kneecap say the mural was unveiled as just a piece of FINE ART.’ Here is an example of how Kneecap’s dissent extends beyond the current state of U.K.-Irish relations, touching emancipatory resistance movements around the world, such as the ‘Stop Cop City’ movement in the United States.
The insightful remark here is that Kneecap’s artistic rebellion underscores a crucial aspect of art’s role in society: its ability to question and disrupt dominant ideologies as it concomitantly fosters a space to elevate and amplify marginalized voices. By engaging with both issues of sovereignty and social justice through their music, Kneecap illustrates how art is a powerful tool for social critique, resistance, and transformation.
To paraphrase the words (as I remember them) of UConn’s Head of Philosophy, Lewis Gordon — art is our way of putting meaning into an otherwise meaningless world. As a result, art provides a profound medium for dynamically engaging with the nuance and complexities of human existence. Art, therefore, has an incredible potency to serve as a means of understanding, conveying experience, and revealing underlying and potentially overlooked truths that are far too intricate to be captured in conventional forms of discourse. Honest art does not obscure objective reality but illustrates alternative explanations. As such, Kneecap’s artistic creativity not only challenges hegemonic narratives but also expands the boundaries of artistic expression and political activism, demonstrating that art can be a method of cogent exposition. The group illustrates, from a Gramscian point of view, the power of art for the subaltern and oppressed. In these cases, art does not ‘lightly touch’ the truth, to recycle Plato’s words. On the contrary, artwork is a valid medium of philosophy and an expressive means of discourse for organic intellectuals to shape politics and society indirectly through the influence they exercise on culture.
‘Art itself,’ writes Gramsci, ‘is a philosophical category, a “distinct” moment of the spirit’ (Prison Notebooks, p. 845).
Therefore, Kneecap’s approach to music – considered as a social and cultural product – concretely illustrates the concept of Gramsci’s organic intellectuals (pp. 131-162). According to Gramsci, organic intellectuals (as opposed to ‘traditional’ ones locked away in the ‘ivory tower’) are individuals who emerge from the working class or other such subaltern groups and actively engage in shaping and articulating their class’s worldview, culture, and politics to overcome oppressive hegemonic cultural norms. Organic intellectuals create social products and serve a social function that is representative of the class from which they emerge. In other words, organic intellectuals are those who attest to the extant alterity shrouded by hegemony. For example, the group hit the Irish airwaves with tracks like C.E.A.R.T.A. (‘cearta’ meaning ‘rights’). Unlike traditional intellectuals, who may operate within established social and political institutions, organic intellectuals like Kneecap are generally precluded from accessing customary domains of power. Their knowledge is therefore deeply embedded in the lived experiences of their communities, and their work is intentionally tailored for the resistance of dominant cultural and ideological hegemony from within.
Artistic representations of revolutionary thought are intrinsically linked to the agency and needs of the ‘subaltern mass.’ In Gramsci’s words, the view espoused by Plato arises only when the ruling class does not ‘expect that the subaltern will become directive and responsible.’ As Kneecap demonstrates, ‘however, some part of even a subaltern mass is always directive and responsible.’ What Plato fails to realize of the subaltern therefore is that their artwork, as a form of ‘the philosophy of the whole,’ emerges as ‘a necessity of real life’ (Prison Notebooks, p. 647). It is within this dynamic tension that the subaltern’s creative expression becomes a powerful catalyst for change that, in turn, challenges the boundaries of established hegemony and redefines the contours of societal consciousness. The a priori assumption that change can only result from deception is demonstrably false; a fortiori, one observes a clear link between art, dissent, and truth. In this sense, the rebellious West Belfast trio may be seen as contemporary organic intellectuals who channel their creative powers into their art to critique and deconstruct the dominant narratives of British colonialism and imperialism. Their music serves not only as a form of artistic expression but also as a means of advancing a political agenda and fostering class consciousness. Through their rebellious and politically charged lyrics, Kneecap actively participates in the superstructural struggle against hegemonic forces, embodying Gramsci’s vision of art as a tool for ideological and cultural resistance.
To conclude this defense of Kneecap’s free speech, provocative art, and political expression, I cite Bolivian feminist historian, sociologist, and subaltern scholar Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, who writes in Sociologia de la imagen (Sociology of the Image), that the art of the colonized ‘[es] el taypi o zona de contacto que nos permite vivir al mismo tiempo adentro y afuera de la máquina capitalista, utilizar y al mismo tiempo demoler la razón instrumental que ha nacido de sus entrañas’ (p. 207) (it is the taypi or contact zone that allows us to live simultaneously inside and outside the capitalist machine, to use and at the same time demolish the instrumental reason that has been born from its entrails). Art, in other words, facilitates ‘la recuperación de la conciencia y el renacimiento… en el proceso de retorno a la comunidad’ (p. 79) (‘the recovery of consciousness and the rebirth… in the process of returning to the community’). Cusicanqui’s notion of ‘rebirth’ connects to Indigenous scholar Glen Coulthard’s call for a ‘resurgence’ and ‘interjection’ (see his Red Skin, White Masks) of Indigenous ways of knowing (epistemologies) and being (ontologies) into the prevailing hegemonic order as expressions of resistance and assertions of sovereignty against the pressures of ethnocidal erasure and colonial coercion.
By embracing and showcasing the Irish language and political themes, Kneecap not only challenges the dominant narratives of British colonialism but also embodies Gramsci’s concept of the organic intellectual—those who rise from the subaltern to actively reshape cultural and ideological landscapes not through deception but through expositions of the truth of their conditions. Through their provocative speech and politically charged art, Kneecap demonstrates that artistic rebellion can serve as a crucial battleground for ideological resistance and societal transformation (a conclusion all the more powerful in light of developments in artificial intelligence and the ulterior effort to further reduce innate human creativity to synthetic processes). As Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui eloquently puts it, art operates as a ‘contact zone’ that navigates and disrupts the capitalist machine (la máquina capitalista), facilitating a bottom-up ‘recovery of consciousness’ and a ‘rebirth’ (la recuperación de la conciencia y el renacimiento) — a renovatio ab imis — of epistemologies and ontologies threatened with extinction by (as it concerns this essay specifically) Anglophone capital. Thus, Kneecap’s work reaffirms the profound capacity of art to both reflect and forge new paths in the ongoing struggle for justice, liberation, and resurgence.
