Tag Archives: punk

Since I posted my initial proposal, I’ve decided to back away from the creative option a little bit in order to stick to what I know: blogging. I had fantasies about concocting a hand coded and structured site to host my project, but based on time constraints and the amount of research and writing I’d like to be able to do to really get my ideas in order, it makes way more sense to let a machine handle the back-end. I still intend to get creative with the style and execution of the posts, and I hope that the more informal and flexible structure of a blog will reinforce the ideas I present in ways that a traditional academic essay couldn’t. Here are some of the topics I intend to address:

I. The Story So Far

• Issues raised by the original punk moment in the 70s
  • nihilistic/dystopian aesthetic
  • connection to avant-garde tradition
  • Punk and politics, esp. anarchism and upset in the social order
  • Impact on the music industry: seizing the means of production?
• “post-punk” era of the mid-late 80s
• late 80s/early 90s: cyberpunk! a new mutation of the punk aesthetic or faulty appropriation of the punk discourse?
  • as it pertains to the literary/artistic aesthetic, the “punk” in cyberpunk is hard to decipher
  • Critics addressing aesthetic links between punk and cyberpunk tend to misrepresent the history/ideology of punk
• the present: an (apparently) decentralized, semi-anarchic DIY media environment online presents the defining terms for contemporary music and subculture, aesthetically and economically

II. Case studies

I intend this to be a pretty significant part of my project, but as such I’m having a hard time nailing down the specifics. The media objects/events I address will vary greatly depending on how the overall gist of my argument takes shape. However, a lot of the examples I mentioned in my original proposal still stand as strong contenders.

III. Unifying Themes and Analysis

• The Society of the Spectacle
  • Ties between punk and the Situationist International, esp. Debord’s notion of “the spectacle”
    • Debord’s influence on postmodern theorists like Baudrillard
  • Cyberpunk ostensibly fills an emerging need for artistic response to the “postmodern condition”
• Noise
  • exploring the aesthetic possibilities of noise (in music and to some extent in subcultural “style”)
  • “culture jamming” and playful subversion/subversive play
• DIY ethos
  • decentralized media production challenging centralized authority
  • the risk of reinventing the wheel, resultant issues of ahistorcism/mystification

Apologies if the outline is somewhat obscure. Since a lot of this is building off research I did last semester, it might be helpful to check out my original project proposal for my Marxism and Cultural Studies term paper, and the subsequent revised proposal.