The afterlife of punk: Evental sites of punk 771 | Intellect Skip to content
1981
  1. Home
  2. A-Z Publications
  3. Punk & Post-Punk
  4. Volume 12, Issue 2
  5. Article
Volume 12, Issue 2
  • ISSN: 2044-1983
  • E-ISSN: 2044-3706

Abstract

Building on the argument of my previous article ‘Autonomy and agency: The event of punk 77’, this article defends the continuing political relevance of punk. Rejecting the dominant story that punk was a utopian, short-lived revolution, over before it had a chance to effect any social change, I argue that punk survives through people who, radicalized by its vision of cultural agency, motivate revolutionary ‘ways of being’ committed to realizing and transmitting that vision to others. The subjects of 77 are heir to a revolutionary tradition, choosing to ‘keep’ punk ‘alive’ through fidelity to its inaugural event; a fidelity that involves renewed acknowledgement of the ‘subversive’ dimension of the event’s original ‘epochal rupture’. Two case studies are offered in support of this argument. An account of the eruption of a punk scene in the provincial town of Drogheda in Ireland in the early 1980s is followed by discussion of the specific way punk engaged young women, a case study based on interviews with Gina Birch, founding member of first-generation all-female punk band the Raincoats. I conclude by recasting the legacy of punk as a tradition of revolutionary inheritance.

© 2023 Intellect Ltd
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/punk_00158_1
2023-09-18
2024-04-19
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Badgley, William E. (2017), Here to Be Heard: The Story of the Slits, UK: Jennifer Shagawat & Starcleaner Records, Headgear Films and Moviehouse Entertainment.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Badiou, Alain (1999), Manifesto for Philosophy (trans. N. Madarasz), Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Badiou, Alain (2005), Being and Event (trans. O. Feltham), London and New York: Continuum.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Badiou, Alain (2002), Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (trans. P. Hallward), London: Verso.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Barros D’Sa, Lisa and Leyburn, Glenn (2013), Good Vibrations, London: The Works.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Benjamin, Walter (1973), Illuminations, London: Fontana.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Bernhard Jackson, Emily (2021), ‘Do us all a favour: The aspirations of punk’s successors’, Times Literary Supplement, 24 September, pp. 22–23.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Birch, Gina (2021), Zoom interview with the author, 28 October.
  9. Birch, Gina (2022), e-mail correspondence with the author, 15 May.
  10. Birch, Gina and Reddington, Helen (2018), Stories from the She Punks: Music with a Different Agenda, UK: Independent.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Borenstein, Eliot (2021), Pussy Riot: Speaking Punk to Power, London: Bloomsbury.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Butt, Gavin, Eshun, Kodwo and Fisher, Mark (eds) (2016), Post-Punk Then and Now, London: Repeater, pp. 166–96.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Campbell, Dermott (2020), ‘In It for the Kicks’, Vive le Rock, 76, pp. 78–83.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Cashell, K. C. (2022), ‘Autonomy and agency: The event of punk’, Punk & Post-Punk, article first, https://doi.org/10.1386/punk_00159_1. Accessed 30 August 2022.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Chick, Stevie (2014), ‘The Raincoats: Fairytale in the supermarket’, Mojo, 246, May, p. 73.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Critchley, Simon (2017), ‘Rummaging in the ashes’, in S. Cabut and A. Gallix (eds), Punk Is Dead: Modernity Killed Every Night, London: Zero Books, pp. 28–40.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. da Silva, Ana (2017), ‘The Raincoats’, The Guardian, 6 February, http://www.theraincoats.net/pdf/Guardian-1979_AP_final.pdf. Accessed 10 September 2021.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. da Silva, Ana (2021), ‘The Raincoats, punk and the Accordion Boy’, Luso Life, http://www.lusolife.ca/raincoats-and-the-accordion-boy/. Accessed 10 September 2021.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Davis, John T. ([1979] 2022), Shellshock Rock, DVD, UK: Cherry Red and Hollywood Films Production.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Fisher, Mark (2018), k-punk, London: Repeater.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Gartside, Green (2016), ‘The weakest link in every chain, I always want to find it’, in G. Butt, K. Eshun and M. Fisher (eds), Post-Punk Then and Now, London: Repeater, pp. 166–96.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Habermas, Jürgen (2000), ‘Benjamin: Consciousness-raising or rescuing critique’, in W. Schirmacher (ed.), German 20th Century Philosophy, New York: Continuum, pp. 198–227.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Haddon, Mimi (2019), ‘Not playing properly: Amateurism as a generic choice in three post-punk case studies: The Slits, Lora Logic, and the Raincoats’, Women and Music, 23:1, pp. 159–83.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Hopps, Gavin (2008), Morrissey: The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart, London: Continuum.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Home, Stuart (1991), The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents from Lettrisme to Class War, Stirling and Chico, CA: A. K. Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Needs, Kris (2018), ‘Atypical girls’, Vive le Rock, 52, pp. 78–83.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Needs, Kris (2021), ‘When two sevens clashed’, Vive le Rock, 82, pp. 38–49.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Needs, Kris and Porter, Dick (2017), ‘1977: Young, loud and snotty,’ Vive le Rock, 42, pp. 44–63.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. Nolan, Seamus (2016), Subvert All Power, Dublin: Upstate Theatre and the Irish Arts Council.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. O’Meara, Caroline (2003), ‘The Raincoats: Breaking down punk rock’s masculinities’, Popular Music, 22:3, pp. 299–313.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. O’Toole, Fintan (2022), ‘Scenes of the crime’, The New York Review of Books, 69:3, pp. 29–31.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Pelly, Jenn (2017), The Raincoats, London and New York: Bloomsbury.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Porter, Dick (2019), ‘The outside of everything’, Vive le Rock, 64, pp. 42–55.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Reddington, Helen (2004), ‘The forgotten revolution of female punk musicians in the 1970s’, Peace Review, 16:4, pp. 439–44.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Reddington, Helen (2007), The Lost Women of Rock Music, Surrey: Ashgate.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Reddington, Helen (2016), ‘Political pioneers of punk (just don’t mention the f-word!)’, in M. Dines and M. Worley (eds), The Aesthetics of Our Anger: Anarcho-Punk, Politics and Music, London: Minor Compositions, pp. 91–116.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Reddington, Helen (2021), She’s at the Controls: Sound Engineering, Production and Gender Ventriloquism in the 21st Century, Sheffield: Equinox.
     [Google Scholar]
  38. Reynolds, Simon (2009), Totally Wired: Post-Punk Interviews and Overviews, London: Faber & Faber.
     [Google Scholar]
  39. Richter, Gerhard (2016), Inheriting Walter Benjamin, London and New York: Bloomsbury.
     [Google Scholar]
  40. Sabin, Roger (ed.) (1999), ‘Introduction’, in Punk Rock: So What?, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 1–14.
     [Google Scholar]
  41. Shrayne, Jennifer (2011), Blixa Bargeld and Einstürzende Neubauten: German Experimental Music, Surrey: Ashgate.
     [Google Scholar]
  42. Shrayne, Jennifer (2013), ‘Stairwells of abjection and screaming bodies: Einstürzende Neubauten’s artaudian noise music’, in M. Goddard, B. Halligan and N. Spelman (eds), Resonances: Noise and Contemporary Music, London: Bloomsbury, pp. 95–106.
     [Google Scholar]
  43. Tallis Milligan, Rowan (2016), ‘The politics of the crowbar: Squatting in London, 1968–1977’, Anarchist Studies, 24:2, pp. 8–31.
     [Google Scholar]
  44. Turner, Jenny (2019), ‘Not no longer but not yet’, LRB, 9 May, pp. 3–6.
     [Google Scholar]
  45. Varvatos, John and Pop, Iggy (2019), PUNK, UK: Sky TV.
     [Google Scholar]
  46. Worley, Matthew (2017), ‘Afterword: The cultural impact of punk – An interview with Jon Savage’, in Subcultures Network (ed.), Fight Back, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 304–16.
     [Google Scholar]
  47. Žižek, Slavoj (1999), The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology, London: Verso.
     [Google Scholar]
  48. Žižek, Slavoj and Tolokonnikova, Nadezhda (2014), Comradely Greetings: The Prison Letters of Nadya and Slavoj, London and New York: Verso.
     [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.1386/punk_00158_1
Loading
  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): Drogheda punk scene; feminist punk discourse; Gina Birch; Punk 77; radical autonomy; she-punk; the Raincoats; the Slits

Most Cited Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error