Related Papers
The Politics of Lyrics in German Punk
Peter Brandes
Philosophy Now
Philosophy at 33 1/3rpm: Themes of Classic Rock Music
1994 •
Stuart Hanscomb
A review of James Harris' Philosophy at 33 1/3 RPM
2013 •
Jayna Brown
Proceedings of the Punk Scholars Network First International Postgraduate Conference
Guy Mankowski, Laura Way, Mike Dines
‘Post-punk’ has been defined in a variety of ways. Some commentators view it primarily as a reaction to punk, with distinct musical features. Others debate whether its organizing principle can even be found in a stylistic unity. Ryan Moore has described how punk responded to a ‘condition of postmodernity.’ In his view, post-modernism represented an ‘exhaustion of totalizing metanarratives.’ Within this context punk used bricolage to ‘turn signs and spectacles against themselves, as a means of waging war on society.’ For the purposes of this piece post-punk is considered a response to punk’s response to postmodernism. This article addresses how manifestos came to be used in post-punk. Using as a starting point Julia Downes’ description of musical manifestos in riot grrl as a ‘key way to define…ideological, aesthetic and political goals.’ A series of chronological case studies investigate the key components and aesthetics of the post-punk manifesto, which include the use of lists, itemisation and direct, second-person address.
MA Thesis
NOT QUITE "NO FUTURE": THE PERSISTENCE OF PUNK
2011 •
Kevin Partridge
This thesis examines the lives of nine women who were part of the creation of the punk scene in Vancouver, BC and have continued to identify as punks as they get older. By conducting in-depth interviews that cover specific aspects of their life histories, I gather information on how these women’s participation in punk influenced their choices and goals and how they, in turn, influenced the punk scene. Using theoretical concepts from the works of bell hooks and Pierre Bourdieu, I argue that the women were able to exercise a great deal of creative agency despite the many restrictions to which they were subject because of their gender, class, style and life circ*mstances. They were able to turn limitations into opportunities that enriched their own lives and the community around them in a way that shows how a marginal cultural movement may contribute to greater social change.
Punk Poetry and the Dissident Ethos. A Discourse Corpus-Based Analysis of British Punk Songs (1976-1981)
2022 •
Miguel Alonso Cambrón
Resumo A investigación da que da conta este traballo supón un achegamento preliminar ao aspecto poético e literario do fenómeno social e cultural coñecido como Punk no contexto do Reino Unido entre os anos 1976 e 1981. O obxecto desta investigación foi a caracterización do ethos que subxace á poética Punk en termos de estilo a partir dunha primeira análise dos seus elementos en común, reiteracións e estratexias estilísticas en forma de temas, motivos e símbolos. Para o exame seriado creouse unha mostra en forma de corpus de letras de cancións do contexto espacio-temporal definido. A análise efectuada centrouse nos aspectos literarios e sociolingüísticos e no seu contraste con información etnográfica extraída de diversas fontes, académicas e xornalísticas. A metodoloxía empregada ten a intención de establecer un diálogo entre a análise estilística propia da Lingüística e dos Estudos Literarios, e a análise dos estilos “subculturais” propia de Ciencias Sociais como a Socioloxía ou a Antropoloxía Social e Cultural. Os resultados preséntanse a partir da reflexión sobre os elementos comúns e reiterados do corpus e acompáñanse dunhas conclusións nas que se suxire un posterior achegamento holístico en favor da comprensión global do fenómeno social facendo visibles os procesos de hom*oxeneización e protocolización ao que foi sometido tras a súa hibridación ou apropiación por parte das dinámicas da industria musical. Palabras chave: Punk, Análise estilística, Estudos culturais, Sociolinguistics, Investigación baseada en Corpus Abstract The piece of research reported in this work means a preliminary approach to the poetic and literary aspects of the social phenomenon known as Punk in the context of the United Kingdom between 1976 and 1981. The object of this investigation has been the characterization of the ethos underlying Punk poetics in terms of style through an initial analysis of its common elements, recurrences and stylistic strategies in the form of themes, motifs and symbols. For the serial examination a sample in the form of corpus of song lyrics related to the defined space-time context was created. The implemented analysis has focused in literary and sociolinguistic aspects and in its contrast with ethnographic information extracted from diverse academic and journalistic sources. The employed methodology intends to establish a dialogue between the stylistic analysis of Linguistics and Literary Studies, and the analysis of the "subcultural" styles of Social Sciences such as Sociology or Social and Cultural Anthropology. The results are presented through the reflection on the common and reiterated elements found in the corpus. These are accompanied by some conclusions that suggest a subsequent holistic approach in favour of the global understanding of the social phenomenon, making visible the processes of hom*ogenization and protocolization to which it was subjected after its hybridization or appropriation by the dynamics of the music industry. Keywords: Punk, Stylistics, Cultural Studies, Sociolinguistics, Corpus-based Research
Punk Music: Political Formation in the life
Pedro Mendonça
This paper presents the final results of the research developed during my Master’s degree in Musicology at the Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal. It aims to understand how punk music could influence the political training of individuals who later become members of anarchist or libertarian organizations that intend to transform the social reality. The main theoretical framework used is Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of production of subjectivity. This work has an ethnographic framework based on a case study in Casa Viva, a libertarian social space in Oporto, Portugal, which is the setting of many cultural activities, including punk concerts. The fieldwork has two main aims and techniques: a) the participant observation in punk concerts, where methods such as field notes and audiovisual recordings are used in order to understand the social relations and the performative places where punk music is created; b) the dialogical methodology of knowledge building, proposed by Samuel Araújo and the group Musicultura, which I participated in 2006 and 2007 as a junior researcher. The latter aims to organize a group of discussion in Casa Viva, through which I intend to open the floor for promote the building of the collective knowledge.
Embodying "Double Break" in Musical Structure: Punk Rock and the Waning of the Sense of Historical Time
2023 •
Sangheon Lee
The emergence of punk rock and its evolution draw a parallel with the height of “the era of nihilism”, another name for post-modernism, and the beginning of “the era of melancholy” where we live now (Iwauchi Shotaro 2019). While the “nihilist” not only observes and experiences losing higher values, meaning, and meta-narrative, but also annihilates and negates them, the “melancholist”, who cannot even come up with a ‘great’ meaning or goal itself that has already collapsed, takes on a different sense of existence: “It’s not that I want to do something, but neither is it that I don’t want to do anything.” On the other hand, in the late 70’s, Christopher Lasch observed a new individualism of people “living for the moment” and “losing the sense of historical continuity”, due to disillusion with what had been presented in the political and social turmoil of the ‘60s and the economic crisis of the ‘70s, which I call “double break”, i.e., with the past and with the future. The music of the early American punk and hardcore embodies, I believe, such a consciousness that pervaded the whole society into the very short length of musical time with its unique vertical and horizontal structure, which is illustrated in this paper with some examples and their graphic presentations. Finally, if there is a recurring but hidden theme in the musical evolution of punk rock, would it be its allusion to the possibility that one can live beyond traditional, historical, and teleological time?
The Punk Discourse: From Subculture To Lifestyle
Snežana Mocović
As a visible entity punk was galvanized into being under its own name in New York and London in the middle seventies during the Cold War. On the one hand it is seen as a manifestation of postmodernism, on the other hand it is about an underground youth culture that expressed its revolutionary attitude mainly through music (the punk rock genre) and an outrageous, collage-like clothing style rebelling against conformity, authority, the establishment, class hierarchy and celebrating the collapse of traditional forms of meaning. However, Birmingham scholars argued that culture industries destroyed the authenticity of the subculture without adequately considering either the ideological underpinnings of the subcultures in question (i.e. punk), nor the concept of authentic identity. Hence, this paper attempts to unmask these ideological underpinnings and their authenticity in relation to punk, its signifying practices and intractably subversive features that can also be linked to its predecessor counterculture movements. This will shed new light on punk as a complex historical and cultural phenomenon and on the evolution and refashioning of the " anarchic " discourse. Besides tracing the punk ideology and aesthetics back to the movers and shakers of the art and literary world of the 20 th century (Dada, Situationists, Beat movement, Andy Warhol), I will also consider how the original punk movement, short-lived and nihilistic, marked the beginning of a phase of ideological struggle within popular music itself. Its broad cultural influence started with the postpunk (1979-1984) trying to built an authentic alternative culture with its own independent infrastructure of labels, distribution and records stores and releasing small magazines and fanzines taking on the role of an alternative media. This do-it-yourself concept i.e. punk ethos proliferated like a virus with the global expansion of electronic music nevertheless finding always new ways to remain detached from the dominant culture. In conclusion, the paper discusses that the punk´s appeal doesn´t lie in Hebdige´s semiotic flux but rather the punk´s formal stability with its clear ideological and formal elements. Perhaps only fragmented, these ideological and formal elements of punk resonate unchanged in current alternative lifestyles permeating the music, theory and art either produced or consumed. These discourses form part of the unconstrained self-expression of punk and it´s oppositional point of view in the world.
The Punk Rock Revolution: A Look into the Growth, Divergence, and Ubiquity of Punk
Baylen S McCarthy
An analysis on the factors that allowed for the emergence of the punk subculture and music genre
