Tag: cultural politics

I am delighted that we now have a publication date for this book, The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock, which I edited with Gina Arnold. May/June 2025. 32 chapters, from round the world; scroll for contents. Apologetic defence: it’s a very expensive scholarly edition, mainly for university libraries. From the blurb (was that originally ‘never gonna die(t)’, not ‘never gonna die’?):

No Future. Punk is Dead. That is what was sung and said. Yet as we approach 50 years of punk rock, it still endures, and sometime thrives. From ‘White riot’ to Pussy Riot, Never Mind the Bollocks to Nevermind, DIY to never gonna die, punk rock has marked or stained—it marks or stains—our musical and cultural history and practice. Here key established writers as well as emerging scholars from around the world offer critical views on punk practice and legacy, in a timely re-evaluation of its significance as music, culture, politics, nostalgia, heritage.

The handbook looks at pre- and proto-punk forms, the ‘high years’ of c. 1976-84, the international spread of the music and style, punk media from films to fanzines, as well as a thread that may run through its entire history-the inspiring politics of DIY (Do It Yourself). Crossing and blurring disciplinary boundaries, it presents methodological innovations to offer new ways of understanding punk’s significance.

The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock also identifies and explores some of punk’s core contradictions: its anti-war messages alongside its (often gendered) violence, its anti-racism alongside its dominant whiteness, its energy and attitudinality as a youth culture for an aging demographic, its intermittent but persistent flirtations with populism and nationalism.

Contents

1. Enjoy It, Destroy It” 40 Years of Punk Rock Scholarship
   Lucy Wright
2. The Punk Worlds of Liverpool and Manchester, 1975-1980
   Nick Crossley
3. Riot Grrrl: Nostalgia and Historiography
   Elizabeth K. Keenan
4. Punk as Folk: Continuities and Tensions in the UK and Beyond
   Pete Dale
5. “This Is Radio Clash”: First-Generation Punk as Radical Media Ecology and Communicational Noise
   Michael Goddard
6. Art School Manifestos, Classical Music, and Industrial Abjection: Tracing the Artistic, Political, and Musical Antecedents of Punk
   Mike Dines
7. Danger, Anger, and Noise: The Women Punks of the Late 1970s and Their Music
   Helen Reddington
8. “We’re Just a Minor Threat” Minor Threat and the Intersectionality of Sound
   Shayna Maskell
9. “Let’s Talk about Sex”: The Ear as Reproductive Organ
   Jessica A. Schwartz
10. Queer and Feminist Punk in the UK
    Kirsty Lohman
11. Queer Punk, Trans Forms: Transgender Rock and Rage in a Necropolitical Age
    Curran Nault
12. Guilty of Not Being White: On the Visibility and Othering of Black Punk
    Marcus Clayton
13. Punk and Aging
    Andy Bennett
14. Identity? How 1970s Punk Women Live It Now
    Lucy O’Brien
15. “I Don’t Care about London”: Punk in Britain’s Provinces, circa 1976-1984
    Matthew Worley
16. Punk in Russia: From the “Declassed Elements” to the Class Struggle
    Ivan Gololobov
17. The “New Flowers” of Bulgarian Punk: Cultural Translation, Local Subcultural Scenes, and Heritage
    Asya Draganova
18. Iberian Punk, Cultural Metamorphoses, and Artistic Differences in the Post-Salazar and Post-Franco Eras
    Paula Guerra
19. Punk in Belfast, Northern Ireland: Critical Perspectives on the Troubles and Post-conflict “Peace”
    Jim Donaghey
20. From Punk to Poser: T-Shirts, Authenticity, Postmodernism, and the Fashion Cycle
    Monica Sklar and Mary Kate Donahue
21. Kicks in Style: A Punk Design Aesthetic
    Russ Bestley
22. The Art of Slouching: Posture in Punk
    Mary Fogarty
23. World’s End: Punk Films from London and New York, 1977-1984
    Benjamin Halligan
24. Sound Recordists, Workplaces, Technologies, and the Aesthetics of Punk
    Samantha Bennett
25. Punk Zines
    Kevin C. Dunn
26. “Caught in a Culture Crossover!” Rock Against Racism and Alien Kulture
    Joe O’Connell
27. Rethinking the Cultural Politics of Punk: Antinuclear and Antiwar (Post-)Punk Popular Music in 1980s Britain
    George McKay
28. You Ain’t No Punk, You Punk: On Semiotic Doxa, Postmodern Authenticity, Ontological Agency, and the Goddamn Alt-Right
    Daniel S. Traber
29. Touch Me I’m Rich: From Grunge to Alternative Nation
    Ryan Moore
30. Pussy Riot: Punk on Trial
    Judith A. Peraino
31. Death in Vegas: Punk Rock and Nostalgia
    Gina Arnold
32. “Don’t Be Afraid to Pogo!”: A Queer Chicana Recovery of the Pogo and the Story of How Punk Became White
    Marlén Ríos-Hernández