‘I Could’ve Been Raskolnikov’: Punk reads Dostoevsky

If humankind truly is 'born a rebel', as his Grand Inquisitor declares, perhaps no author's body of literature is more appropriate to read in the context of punk and postpunk than Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose Notes from Underground alone has been appropriated countless times by those who consider themselves members of this specific popular music subculture, Pussy Riot aside. Beyond Notes, however, much of Dostoevsky's thought seems to have found a home in punk culture, the intellectual predilections of which are well-documented. With assistance from M. M. Bakhtin and psychoanalysis, then, this article explores a trio of scenarios in detail to show how and to what effect Dostoevsky has emerged in punk historically: first, as an attempt to grapple with punks' shame in Being; second, as a touchstone for the often crippling 'intensified consciousness' this shame produces; finally, and following The Brothers Karamazov, as a way of approaching the killing of all manner of master signifiers or 'fathers' who generate, even in absence, this shame and paralysis.