Dialectic of Punk Rock

"Do you remember Hullabaloo,
Upbeat, Shinding and Ed Sullivan too?
Do you remember rock 'n' roll radio?
Do you remember rock 'n' roll radio?"

—The Ramones, "Rock 'n' Roll Radio"

It was the end of the seventies—1980, specifically—and the Ramones were already on their fifth studio album, The End of the Century, when they sang the lyrics to "Rock 'n' Roll Radio," asking their listeners to think back only a few years to the now antiquated rock 'n' roll musical genre. By that time punk had—through the course of five years, give or take a couple—entrenched itself in the musical collections of thousands and become the authoritative anti-authoritarian voice of a subculture. The specifics of this development are of little consequence to the genre itself. Whether or not the Ramones or the Sex Pistols started the whole thing, whether Devo is “punk” or “protopunk” and whether anyone on the Vans Warped Tour falls into the genre are some of the many questions that plague any discussion of punk rock. Regardless of the inclusion or exclusion of certain bands into the "punk" category, the genre exists and represents a particular genealogy of musical form at a time when it was rapidly changing from jazz to blues to rock to disco to punk to ... whatever. Through the strong critical opposition to punk rock, some claiming that it’s just bad music, and its defense, we also gain an insight into how individuals understand music.

To examine a genealogy of punk rock is to open ones' self up to the imminent criticism of academics, musicologists, historians and music snobs alike. Instead of putting forth a narrativizing attempt at history, therefore, we are striving to analyze the "potential" for genealogy within music, specifically within the genre of punk rock. In this treatise, we will examine Nietzsche's understanding of ressentiment, in which we will articulate how the glorification of labor, poverty, and the working/lower classes (a characteristic it shares with its folk rock predecessors) actually illustrates the rise of “stupid undergrounds”; we will undertake an analysis of Adorno and Horkheimer's Culture Industry, applying it to contemporary music and art and demonstrate that even though punk pretends to be outside the system, it is actually still part of (and always has been) the culture industry; we will look to few, scattered comments on music to explain what the effects of the culture industry and ressentiment had on the punk rockers; and we will view punk rock's experiential understanding through the lens of Husserl's natural standpoint and his clarification of sign and expression, showing punk as a disruption to Husserl's phenomenological view of the world and emphasizing its ability to recreate genealogy. Finally, through Foucault's response to Nietzsche's Genealogy, we will articulate the violence Foucault sees as comprising interpretation of the world, and show that, regardless of the possibility for punk rock to articulate, negate, reinforce or produce a genealogy, the efforts to create or interpret such are in fact themselves imperative in the construction of the world around us.

1. The Will to Power Chords: Nietzsche's Genealogy in Punk Rock

In his rendering of Nietzsche’s historical method, Foucault emphatically rejected the notion of genealogy as a search for origins on the grounds that such a project “assumes the existence of immobile forms that precde the external world of accident and succession” (242). But even Foucault’s reccommendations for “effective history” do not quite address the fact that any genealogy, effective or not, must already assume (if only on a purely linguistic level) some fundamental unity and singularity in what it takes to be its object. This results in a somewhat paradoxical formulation, particularly when dealing with something as characteristically unstable as musical genres and cultural movements. On the one hand, the problematic nature of attempts at definition is the very focus of this inquiry; on the other, some articulated definition is required to even begin such an undertaking.

A solution manifests itself in two methods, or perhaps one method with two stages. The first is to focus on the term itself and take as the object of study everything to which it has been applied throughout its history of usage, including the disagreements over whether its use is appropriate in a given context. But on its own, this approach runs the risk of reifying mass consciousness in a rather circular manner. The simultaneous step that must be taken in the other direction is to identify a common thread within the varying accounts and historical phenomena in which the term rears its head and to determine at what point, if any, this thread begins to unravel. Thus it must be admitted from the outset that we do not dispute, as may be and has been done, the existence of punk as a distinct cultural and historical phenomenon, albeit not a well-defined or unified one. We may begin with Beverley’s characterization of punk as “loud, aggressive, eclectic, anarchic, amateur, self-consciously anti-commercial and anti-hippie at the same time.” The last portion is particularly important, as it seems to address the ever-present question of whether any form of cultural rebellion taking place after the sixties can claim an independent, non-derivative existence. Our intent is to show that, at least in the case of punk and its attendant subculture, the answer is yes, but only in the sense that the positive project of the sixties is replaced by a perpetual process of negation and rejection.

Accordingly, Nietzsche provides us a way of explaining negation via his notion of ressentiment – a process in which oppressed or marginalized subjects react to their feelings of frustration and inferiority by transforming these very feelings into the pillars of a new value system where the source of said frustration is placed at the negative end of the scale, resulting in a valuation which is then used to justify the very feelings that in fact created it:

The question then becomes whether or not punk, and by extension the entire counterculture associated with it, parallels Nietzsche’s conception of slave morality in its assigning of value. Does it merely perpetuate the existing categories, perhaps only slightly rearranging their placement? Does it, through ressentiment, invert them and create a new value system based on the old? Or does it in some way offer a radical critique of value itself, as Nietzsche does? To the extent that neither the counterculture nor the mainstream against which it sets itself are monolithic, the task will be to elucidate the particular ways in which all three processes have taken and are taking place.

The most obvious manifestation of the first process – that of affirmation and perpetuation – occurs at the economic level. By the very act of producing music that will be commodified and sold as a cultural product, one validates the existing economic order as something amenable to art, thus encouraging its totalizing tendency. Thus, the initial encounter between artist and audience, before the latter can hear whatever revolutionary message there is to hear, will virtually always occur in the context of an exchange value, whether it be buying the album or paying for admission to the show. The more subtle way in which this economic fact contributes to and is exploited by mainstream capitalist culture has of course been analyzed and dissected by Adorno and many others – the relation of this process to punk rock in particular is discussed at length in the following section. But for now it is enough to note that nearly all music, no matter its content or cultural strata, emerges into the modern world with a price tag already attached. Thus, the artist’s choice to create art in such circumstances remains a subtle affirmation of the circumstances themselves. The fact that this is ‘unavoidable’ makes it no less an affirmation: firstly, one can always refuse to create, and secondly, ‘unavoidability’ often takes on the guise of naturally justified necessity, as evidenced by today’s oft-repeated mantra that “artists must be compensated for their work.” To make this the basis for a critique of punk, as some do, would be infantile; it is only noted here as an example of the inherent limitations of cultural rebellion.

When affirmation occurs explicitly on the cultural or moral level, it is usually by accident, and occurs precisely when punk tries to rise above ressentiment to a positive articulation of its ideals. The problem lies precisely in the fact that after the absorption and normalization of sixties rhetoric the supposed enemies of punk delineated by shorthand constructions such as “oppression” or “capitalist culture” now yield such a tangled morass of contradictions that they are almost inevitably bound to include whatever statement of this sort can be made. Thus, except in the case of the most ardent and explicitly political bands like Propagandhi, much of modern punk’s rebelliousness is easily appropriated under the aegis of clichéd American individualism (“be yourself,” “follow your heart,” and the like). An amusingly direct example can be found in Anti-Flag’s defense of television icon Mr. Rogers from a somewhat bizarre attack by the somewhat bizarre reverend Fred Phelps:

If this is really “what punk is all about,” then many of us have been grossly misinformed, and it would seem that the opposition in which punk supposedly stands to mainstream culture is all based on a misunderstanding. Perhaps some sort of reconciliation in the form of a Sex Pistols children’s special is in order. But besides showing how harmless and consumer-friendly the current incarnation of punk has become, this example demonstrates how difficult it is to positively articulate a position that is truly countercultural in its entirety and how any attempt to do so runs the risk of collapsing onto itself.

Thus, punk as rebellion seems to survive only when specifically targeted against elements of the dominant culture, in the process of negation rather than affirmative declaration. It is in these instances that one finds ressentiment at work most clearly as the articulation of value on the basis of rejection:

But what is it that punk rejects? The broadest and most common targets of its angst – organized religion, authoritarian government, fascism, racism, sexism, etc. – are too obvious to discuss at great length. And even these run into the same problem of affirmation outlined above – much of the cultural mainstream would agree, at least in principle, that the latter four are bad, and even many religious people critique the ecclesiastical establishment in favor of inner ‘spirituality’ (which punk bands seldom explicitly target). Nor are these themes unique to punk, being found in everything from 60’s protest songs to 70’s progressive rock.

Much of these difficulties can be traced to a problem that is far from unique to punk, in the sense that it emerged from the very soil it sought to destroy. Despite its critique of capitalism and its cultivation of a working-class image, it was well-known that much of punk’s early origins lay in middle-class artistic and intellectual circles. Thus, Garry Bushell writes:

Not only did this sort of critique raise the specter that had haunted Marxism – the question of whether intellectuals can speak for the proletariat – but it also threatened to hurl punk back into that other middle-class ‘rebellion’ of the hippie era. It was as much in response to this perceived infiltration as to any aspect of the culture at large that a new form of ressentiment arose within the punk movement almost at its inception, most obviously in street punk, Oi!, and some hardcore subgenres.

This ressentiment often manifested itself in a vulgar type of populism that often crossed the line from lamenting the plight of the working class to glorifying their lifestyle and social situation as being more authentic and desirable. As Brown writes:

It is important to note that this ressentiment went beyond mere style, reaching the socio-economic level at a point where poverty and hardship themselves became valuable. Having internalized their low economic standing as an integral part of their identity by conceiving the lifestyle resulting from it as a matter of preference rather than necessity, as in Cock Sparrer’s “Don’t Blame Us”:

Thus, the implication of these forms of punk was that they made no pretension of wanting to change the current state of affairs. Even bands like Blood for Blood, who describe the situation of the lower classes is described in bleaker terms, often display a sense of possessive pride in their poverty and disdain for those who are not subject to it:

In either case, the lower class presents an image of reveling in one’s own hopelessness, while nevertheless being quite painfully aware of it. As we will see, this contradictory existence already mirrors the trajectory of punk as a whole.

One will of course recognize the insidious nature of this attitude in the advantage brought to the ruling classes by a working class that has neither the hope nor the desire to escape their situation brings. In attempting to associate itself with “the tower blocks,” punk ran afoul of the problem described by Marcuse, who noted that the attempt to bridge the gap between revolutionary art and the working class “presupposes that the men and women administered by monopoly capitalism unlearn the language, concepts, and images of this administration” (37). This, of course, rarely occurs; instead this particular form of ressentiment results in a false consciousness that rests neither on the lower classes’ presumption of upward mobility nor on an ignorance of their own plight. But it has the potential to take on an even more openly malevolent form and it did so when, in an attempt to further solidify working-class consciousness, many bands aligned their class consciousness with other stable forms of identity such as traditional masculinity, nationalism, and, in some cases, racial superiority to create the seemingly contradictory phenomenon of right-wing punk. Thus, the implicit affirmation of the traditional order already at play in the concept of working-class pride crossed the line into an open hostility to the perceived agents of change such as immigrants. However, in keeping with punk’s defining characteristic of rebellion, this affirmation was itself presented as a rebellion against the perceived victory and dominance of 60’s liberalism and multiculturalism. The trope of “the Government” as the quintessential focus of punk resentment was maintained by recasting it as an accomplice to this progress rather than its enemy, and the downtrodden status of the working class was projected onto the white race as a whole by bands like Skrewdriver:

It is important to keep in mind that though this form of ressentiment appeared to be targeted at fellow members of the lower classes, its original target was still the middle class, with the focus shifted from its economic situation and lifestyle to its perceived core values of liberal multiculturalism. In precisely the fashion that Nietzsche outlined, bands like The Business seemed to arrive at right-wing nationalism mainly through opposing the stereotypical image of the educated middle-class left-wing youths who made up much of the original punk movement:

Thus, in the ressentiment of right-wing punk, Communism, middle-class liberalism, immigrants, and government were all combined into a single enemy, whose presentation as a pervasive and institutional force enabled the envisioning of white working-class identity as a form of rebellion rather than a defense of traditional authority.

Interestingly, the attack on bourgeois liberalism found its counterpart in the more politically conscious strata of left-wing punk, which blasted it as cowardly, hypocritical, and ineffectual. One of the most explicit examples of this attitude can be found in the song “Baby, I’m an Anarchist!” by Against Me!:

A more famous example – the Dead Kennedys’ “Holiday in Cambodia” – takes aim at the attempt by white middle-class liberals to identify with ethnic cultures and the lower classes, critiquing both their patronizing assumptions of familiarity and their ignorance of more immediate matters:

One thing that these criticisms of liberalism had in common with those leveled by the right-wing punks is that they highlighted the incommensurability of middle-class existence with both the interests of the lower classes and any meaningful social change. Unlike the skinheads, however, they were not as explicit in substituting a more ‘authentic’ identity – the first example is largely tongue-in-cheek while the second appears cynical in regard to any possible significance of cultural rebellion in the face of large-scale global turmoil. Furthermore, as opposed to the previous examples, the ‘you’ here is used with a greater sense of proximity, with the awareness that it may refer to the bands’ own listeners (or at least potential ones) rather than some externalized enemy. Being that the Dead Kennedys song was released in 1980, it took punk less than half a decade to reach the point of self-critique and to realize its own problematic nature rooted in the incommensurability of mass entertainment with anti-capitalist resistance.

It could rightly be argued that the more intellectual strata of the early punk scene had already exhibited at its inception this awareness of the inability of escaping capitalism and of punk as yet another cultural commodity; hence David Byrne’s famous declaration that “We are living at the speed of advertising. We demand to be entertained all the time, we get bored very quickly” (qtd. in Beverley). But if punk did not see itself as a form of direct cultural resistance, it still maintained the status of a movement taking place largely outside of mainstream culture, even if it had little to define itself by other than this very self-awareness. Though the first wave of bands described as punk had little in common musically, its members were often loosely connected through the local club and art scenes. This would soon change, however: as the idea of punk caught on, its musical scope, ironically, became far narrower. As Beverley writes:

In other words, punk was transformed from a movement into a genre defined by a specific style and sound so that consumers completely divorced from the original scene would know exactly what they were purchasing. The common definition of punk as fast, stripped-down, three-chord rock has more to do with this genrefication than the sound of early punk bands, many of whom, such as Television and The Talking Heads, did not at all fit this description. But it provided a new standard by which to measure authenticity without having to wade through the ideological confusion. This formal definition of punk was justified on the grounds that structural and technical simplicity reduced the barriers to entry for would-be musicians and dissolve the barrier between performer and audience. Thus, in a reversal of Marcuse’s definition of authentic art as “content having become form” (8), form became content.

This is not to say that content was merely eclipsed by form – as a type of mass entertainment, punk could hardly be unique in that regard. But the extreme stylization brought about by punk’s commodification, the dissolution of its unified ‘scenes’, and its never-ending splintering into subgenres (each demanding more narrow and exclusive stylistic definition than the last) gave to it a preoccupation with its own form matched perhaps only by that of hip-hop, another ‘underground’ cultural form struggling with its commodity status and absorption by the mainstream. But whereas mainstream hip-hop usually accepted this state of things uncritically and even happily, punk maintained its characteristic sneering tone and sense of irony, now turned fully upon itself. Observe the blatant self-referencing mockery in the last line:

Thus, punk could be said to be the point in the development of rock music where it reached its own equivalent of what Greenberg had described as Modernism: “the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself” (28). But how does one identify a critique where there often seems to be nothing more than slightly detached self-observation? The song “Sceneboy” by contemporary postpunk band Aerodrone illustrates the problem nicely:

While this may seem like a simple denunciation of consumerism and stylistic conformity, the song’s context renders such a reading impossible. All the band members cultivate the described look down to every last detail and upon the song’s online release, asked fans to submit ‘scene’ pictures of themselves to be used on the site (which they happily did).

One may be tempted to see this as an example of detournement, but that would be a stretch. Neither the artists nor the fans are exaggerating or parodying the style being commented on; rather, they were already its most typical representatives. Nor is the target being placed into a new context; in short, nothing is changed. All that occurs is punk’s parading of its own commodification. As Mann writes:

For Mann, this attitude embodies the ‘stupid’, the negation of critical distance “through proximity, through what would appear to be the most uncritical embrace.” But appearances can be deceiving, for within the self-analysis and the choice to express it to an audience there are already at least two levels of critical distance. The critical task that is accomplished is precisely a pre-emption of any outside criticism, for by setting itself up as a subject observing its own commodification, punk renders itself as being above it all; as Nietzsche wrote in Beyond Good and Evil, “A person who despises himself still respects himself as a despiser” (60). The fact that punk continues to perpetuate that which it despises about itself is not due to a lack of critical knowledge, but an overabundance of it – the awareness that authenticity is a myth and that its own inauthenticity is at least no worse than any other (and because one is aware of it and perhaps able to control the form of its manifestation to some extent, maybe even marginally better). Of course, this awareness itself is soon ossified into form; it becomes a cliché, a trope to be mechanically repeated while the original feeling of dissonance and despite fades into nothingness. But one is already aware of this.

Thus punk frees itself from the trap of ressentiment only by turning said ressentiment upon itself, negating not any particular values, but the very ideas of value and authenticity. The fact that the last thirty years have failed to produce anything more experimental than, say, Throbbing Gristle, or that the current frenzy dubbed “indie rock” is intentionally indistinguishable from early punk and postpunk suggests an end to the trajectory, something that, according to Mann, “turns out, in the very midst of an innovative frenzy, to be stupid repetition, an autonomous, automatic repetition that drains cultural forms of every meaning, even that of parody.” Amidst its almost immediate (some would say immanent) recuperation and commodification – the realization of Nietzsche’s declaration that artists “do not stand nearly independently enough in the world and against the world for their changing valuations to deserve attention in themselves!” (102) – punk accomplishes one final act of subversion by committing revolutionary suicide. To be sure, this leaves it in a permanent state of living death, but it is also a state of awareness. And just as for Nietzsche, “man would rather will nothingness than not will” (163), the repeated expression of this awareness is all that punk needs to go on existing.

2. A raw wail from bottom of the guts: Punk Rock and the (Counter) Culture Industry

When Adorno and Horkheimer first published Dialectic of Enlightenment in 1947, including their scathing attack on the all encompassing Culture Industry and its supreme power over society at large, they never imagined mp3s and iTunes, cell phone video cameras and YouTube, the ability to rent (simultaneously if desired) avant-garde French cinema, season 4 of the Sopranos, and the latest Will Farrell movie from Netflix. That the forced choice of the Culture Industry could offer so infinitely many possibilities of the “same thing” would have been nigh on inconceivable. But it is roughly right between the burgeoning postwar youth culture of “jitterbugs” and the dreaded, if ubiquitous, “jazz” that was destroying music in particular and art in general and the cornucopia of postmodern possibility, nestled uncomfortably in 1974-78, that punk rock first reared its ugly, safety pin adorned, mohawked head.

Punk rock began as a termed applied to a wide range of musical styles. John Holmstrom noted that: “‘Creem used it to describe this early seventies music; Bomp would use it to describe the garage bands of the sixties; a magazine like the Aquarian would use it to describe what was going on at CBGBs. The word was being used to describe Springsteen, Patti Smith, and the Bay City Rollers’”(Savage, 131). But as the term came to be codified, it began to describe exclusively a certain type of loud, fast, angry back to basics rock and roll. “[Art’s] essence cannot be deduced from its origin as if the first work were a foundation on which everything that followed were constructed and would collapse if shaken. The belief that the first artworks are the highest and purest is warmed-over romanticism”(Aesthetic Theory, 2). No more can punk’s essence be reduced to any one moment (“origin” being a problematic enough notion in itself), but as a progression and a beginning of sorts the scenes developing in New York and England, and few bands making themselves heard in Cleveland and elsewhere from the mid 70s on, were what came to be known as punk rock. Though it had been used as a widespread term, punk rock finally settled on these scenes, this music, and the music that it would spawn. As it came into being, so too, it came into contact with the Culture Industry.

The Culture Industry for Adorno and Horkheimer was a vast monolithic behemoth that controlled the masses through capital and deception. “Every detail is so stamped with sameness that nothing can appear which is not marked at birth, or does not meet with approval at first sight”(Horkheimer and Adorno, 128). From what movies were made and where they were shown to what music played on the radio to how workers spent their free time and why, everything was coercively controlled from the top down: “[t]he whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture industry”(Horkheimer and Adorno, 126). As far as they were concerned there was no way for the average citizen to escape:

Everyone is provided for, there is something for everyone, there is a style of jazz or a type of popular sound film such that everyone might find what they enjoy and be nominally satisfied. The Culture Industry asserted its control not through a winnowing down of options, but through creating a multiplicity of apparent options that, in actuality, were just more options of the same thing. The options appeared endless and boundless, but were really all part of the same structure. Adorno and Horkheimer’s Culture Industry, being as that it is all-encompassing and allows none to escape its grasp, is inherently coercive. “The man with leisure has to accept what the culture manufacturers offer him”(Horkheimer and Adorno, 124). There were two options, accept what the Culture Industry offered or go without, entirely without. Indeed, the Culture Industry was, in their minds, a detriment to personal freedom and the force behind the retardation of society and society’s ability to think for itself. And everything was a part of it.

Yet the Culture Industry, less of a single and single-minded entity than Adorno and Horkheimer would have you believe, did provide for its own critique. “Whenever Orson Welles offends against the tricks of the trade, he is forgiven because his departures from the norm are regarded as calculated mutations which serve all the more strongly to confirm the validity of the system”(Horkheimer and Adorno, 129). As an exemplar of the system, Orson Welles was allowed to break from convention, to violate the rules, because it was known that he would do so and as such his deviation was allowed. He was an exception that proved the rule of the system. His violation of the rules did not place him outside the system; it did not set him apart from the Culture Industry or limit his effect on society because he was not functioning in the same manner as other producers of the endless same. Indeed, Orson Welles serves as an example of the ruthless unity of the Culture Industry – in working in opposition to the norm, he was still within the system, just working on the other end of it. Getting out of the Culture Industry entirely would mean working outside of it – not in polar opposition. His breaking of the rules of convention only served to cement his position within the discourse of the Culture Industry – and, as such, is a model of how punk rock would come to relate to the Culture Industry as well. “All are free to dance and enjoy themselves, just as they have been free, since the historical neutralization of religion, to join any of the innumerable sects”(Horkheimer and Adorno, 166). The Culture Industry provides for more choice and movement that Adorno would have you think and that choice and movement within the Culture Industry only expanded in the years since the publication of Dialectic of Enlightenment. Just as all are free to join the innumerable sects of The Church, and later the innumerable sects of any or no church, so too one has the ability to choose one’s sect of the Culture Industry. Here is where punk rock and the Culture Industry intersect. Built within the established discourse of rock/rock and roll/rock’n’roll music, the dominant form of the era, punk rock would later define itself in opposition to the system, the industry that ignored it. In effect, punk rock set itself up as an exemplar of the Counterculture Industry – that aspect of the ruthless unity of the Culture Industry as a whole that ensures that everyone is provided for under the vast umbrella of the system. “Anyone who resists can only survive by fitting in. Once his particular brand of deviation from the norm has been noted by the industry, he belongs to it as does the land-reformer to capitalism”(Horkheimer and Adorno, 132). Denied by later bands in the movement who felt they were and must be defined wholly in opposition (as if that would not still make them beholden to the discourse they were opposing), punk rock was always a part of the Culture Industry. Their particular deviation was established, accepted, and co-opted all within in the established norms of the music industry of the time.

Punk rock, despite claims and poses to the contrary, was not a musical from wholly divorced from context, without antecedent or lineage. Though the claim was often made as part of a posture and became the hard line position as the movement progressed, the progenitors of the movement clearly acknowledged influences and made far more of an effort to sound like them than to become something wholly new and apart.

Punk rock came from the Culture Industry and, even in its actualization, remained a part of the Culture Industry. Lester Bangs takes it one step further and states that: “[m]odern music begins with the Velvets, and the implications and influence of what they did seem to go on forever”(Heylin, 3). Indeed, the Velvet Underground provided an excellent framework for the punks coming up roughly a decade behind. “The Velvets were an entirely underground phenomenon during their actual existence … They had nothing in common with either of the two ‘rock’ sounds to dominate the period when they were at their creative peak: Folk-Rock (1965-6), largely a phenomenon of New York and Los Angeles, and its wandering son, the San Francisco Sound (1966-7)”(Heylin, 3). So too would the majority of punk rock bands be sidelined to obscurity during their day, especially in America, as the profit minded businessmen passed over them in favor of more accessible “new wave” bands and music you could dance to, like disco. It is not their underground status, though, that makes the Velvet Underground such an influential band. It was commented by Brian Eno that, though the Velvet Underground did not reach a wide audience, everyone it did reach went out and started a band of their own. That was just the effect that their music had. It made you want to play. “If the Velvets can be considered to have fathered art-rock, then Detroit’s two chief rock exponents, the MC5 and the Stooges, represented a more primitive tradition – rock & roll as the people’s music, requiring nothing more than commitment from its participants”(Heylin, 32). The MC5 and the Stooges were are return to roots rock, a return the edge and energy of Chuck Berry and a turn away from the folk, psychedelic, prog rock, and singer songwriter forms that had since developed away from the true rock geist plus feedback, distortion and Iggy Pop’s downward spiral of ever escalating on stage antics. Indeed, aside from the Stooges and the MC5, “consider the music of the time – then called ‘Rock’ in a bid for respectability. What a pompous, middle-class facsimile of the anarchy that was fifties Rock’n’Roll! The music industry was now in control and conning everyone: how could that industry’s ‘Rock’ retain any trace of Rock’n’Roll’s original teenage revolt?”(Savage, 9). And so over against the norm, the Stooges and the MC5 placed themselves as a return to the original spirit and youthful rebellious thrust that was the original impetus of rock and roll – not a new or unique tendency, let alone one that was outside the Culture Industry.

Following in their large and chaotic footsteps, the Modern Lovers, the “first significant band to fully embrace the Velvets’ – and to a lesser extent the Stooges’ – approach to rock music emerged in the early months of 1971 from Boston, where the Tea Party had played host to remarkable shows by both bands in recent years”(Heylin, 44). Continuing the discourse and method set down by the Velvet Underground and Stooges the Modern Lovers sought to reorient music away from the less than staggering products that had the official endorsement of the music (and thus Culture) industry.

The opening in the Culture/music Industry was widening for bands that sought to return to the roots and essence of rock and roll, the Modern Lovers helped in that effort, allowing for internal strife and bad luck to divert them from the promise of influence and possible success. The New York Dolls came closer to that ever elusive “success” releasing both The New York Dolls (1973) and Too Much Too Soon (1974) with Mercury (a “major”), but still failed to have a wide spread and lasting impact in anything other than their influence on later bands. Though the New York Dolls would be cited as influence for many and various punk bands to come, both musically and for their confrontational look and attitude, the Dolls were already finding their place in the rock and roll lineage:

The New York Dolls play loud and aggressive rock and roll music in high heels and make- up. “Theirs was a simple drive – to play good ol’ rock & roll in an era of prog-rock and FM mush. The Dolls were reactionaries, in sound if not in image”(Heylin, 74). Though they did not achieve widespread commercial success, the New York Dolls set the stage for burgeoning New York punk scene that was developing around them.

All these bands, the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, MC5, the Modern Lovers, the New York Dolls, were direct antecedents to the bands and the countercultural movement that would become punk.

Directly influence by the outsiders of rock and roll, those rebels who would return rock to its roots rather than the ever growing complexities of bands like Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Genesis, and Jethro Tull as well as the softening of rock’s edge by singer songwriters, folk musicians, and bands like the Eagles, the new wave of bands (some who would become “new wave” bands once their sound changed enough to be “marketable”) that would become punk rock took up the challenge as well as the burden of being outside and against the mainstream. Richard Myers and Tom Miller (soon to be Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine), aspiring poets at the time:

Their first effort was to form the Neon Boys with drummer and friend Billy Ficca, a project that led to recordings but was put on hold due to the lack of a second guitarist. Adding Richard Lloyd, influences including: “Elmore James, Buddy Guy, Magic Sam, John Lee Hooker”(Heylin, 116) gave birth to Television in 1974. Patti Smith, also a poet in New York, began her rise to rock stardom in a less than conventional fashion. Beginning as what were ostensibly poetry readings with Lenny Kaye playing his guitar in the background, the Patti Smith Group would go on to record several albums, her debut Horses universally considered a rock and roll staple. “Smith and Kaye’s vision of a revitalized rock & roll was, like the Dolls and Television, essentially reactionary … Smith and Kaye were very much children of the Sixties. It was to the experimentation and inventiveness they associated with that era that they wanted to return rock & roll”(Heylin, 129). Also in 1974, four guys from Queens picked up guitars, adopted the same last name and became the Ramones.

Playing loud, fast, and a straight 4/4 beat counted out by Joey before the beginning of every song was the Ramones link to the past, the “excitement and fun and spirit, raw energy and raw emotion and guts and attitude”(Heylin, 166) of rock and roll. “What emerged by early 1975 was a reduction ad absurdum of the story of pop music so far: the Beatles, the Girl Groups, the Beach Boys, the Stooges, Herman’s Hermits, pulped down into songs so brief that the reflected the fragmented attention timespan of the first TV generation”(Savage, 90-1). Though playing less original material and less high minded “art,” Blondie began their rock career in the same punk vein as the rest of the CBGBs scene:

Blondie, like Television, Patti Smith, and the Ramones, stepped boldly into the rock and roll tradition to revive it from what was seen as an overly complex, fatuous, and indulgent sidelining of the original spirit that got Chuck Berry singing “Hail, Hail Rock’n’Roll.” It was in this return to the roots of rock and roll milieu that they interacted with the Culture Industry, representing not the mainstream but as a countercultural trend that ensured something for everyone.

“The Sex Pistols began as a hype, a group of four disparate teenagers thrown together to sell trousers, but they quickly became a prism through which the present and a future could be clearly seen”(Savage, 142-3). Malcolm McLaren, impresario/svengali extraordinaire brought the Sex Pistols together from a group of potential young malcontents that hung around his store (called, at the time, “Sex”) after a brief stint trying to resuscitate the New York Dolls and, failing that, becoming inspired about the possibilities this new music that was developing in New York. Slightly lagging behind the New York scene, England was soon to pass by the elder statesmen of punk and achieve the success, popularity, and status that their American counterparts sorely desired but largely missed. Though influenced by all of the predecessors that influenced the burgeoning New York scene, closer to home the pub rock scene was English punk rock’s most direct link to their rock and roll lineage. “By autumn 1975, the impact of Dr Feelgood had opened up the pub circuit to a new generation of more intense groups: the Stranglers, Eddie and the Hot Rods, and Joe Strummer’s 101’ers”(Savage, 125). Though a far cry from what punk rock would grow into, pub rock bands set the stage for a genre that would define itself against the mainstream offerings of the Culture Industry. “The Sex Pistols existed ‘for English rock to finally get to grips with the seventies’. In order to do so, that meant taking on the burden of pop theory and self-consciousness that had developed in England during the 1970s. They were ‘so tuned into the present’ that they had to take on the past”(Savage, 162). In order to go forward as a band, especially a self-aware, image conscious, constructed band, the Sex Pistols had to firmly place themselves within the discourse of rock and roll. They were not an entity unto themselves, they were part of the Culture Industry and highly attuned to that fact. In order to function best in that position, the awareness was key and they had to act accordingly. “None of the Sex Pistols was an intellectual (neither was McLaren for that matter), but they didn’t have to be: they were already immersed in this media/youth-culture discourse and in the history of pop itself”(Savage, 165). Malcolm McLaren, Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Glen Matlock, and Sid Vicious were all part of the developing unnamed scene of youth counterculture before they were associated with the Sex Pistols, McLaren, especially, as he was fairly instrumental in, if not creating it, articulating it. “Despite the fact that the Sex Pistols were later presented as a radical break with all of pop’s past, Glam’s cadences are always lurking in the rhythm section of guitar and drums, whether in Jones’s stolen Mud riffs or Cook walloping his kit like his hero, Paul Thompson of Roxy Music”(Savage, 77). Though the image that came to be English punk and the Sex Pistols in particular was one of existing in a cultural vacuum, of being wholly without precedent and wholly unrelated to anything that the Culture Industry had put out before or would put out after, they never left the system, never lost the traces of influence. McLaren noted that: “‘Cook and Jones were going for the tradition of mutated, irresponsible hardcore raw power: Iggy Pop, New York Dolls, MC5, the Faces. Rotten wanted it like the sixties – Captain Beefheart, all weird’”(Savage, 121). Whatever influences cited, acknowledged, or denied, the Sex Pistols and everyone that heard them and formed a punk band of their own (the Clash, the Damned, and many many more) was obviously always a part of the Culture Industry. There was never a break in the continuum: they were always within the discourse, and though they did position themselves, as punk rock as a genre did, in opposition to the mainstream trends of the Culture Industry, and positioned themselves as the Counterculture Industry, there was no doubt that they represented the ruthless unity of the system.

With the backlash of the hippie generation, economic slumps, and the general malaise of life in the suburbs finally setting in, there was an ever growing section of the population in the seventies that was disaffected and dissatisfied with the norm. Punk rock and the Counterculture Industry was there to ensure that they too were presented with their little slice of the ever same. “During 1976 and 1977, Punk brought together suburban stylists, Bowie victims, teenage runaways, hardened sixties radicals, gay men and women, artists, disco dollies, criminals, drug addicts, prostitutes of all persuasions, football hooligans, intellectuals, big bead obsessives, outcasts from every class”(Savage, xiv). The Culture Industry governs the whole of life in industrialized world, but as the promise of the post-war dream slowly faded, the Counterculture Industry rose in prominence to keep them within the system. “The central problems thus remain for those who want to question the basis of society: how do you avoid becoming part of what you’re protesting against? If everything exists in the media and you reject it, how do you exist?”(Savage, xvi). In short, you exist in the Counterculture Industry. Protesting the system naturally makes one beholden to the discourse of the system and thus brought in as the internal critique, the ruthless unity. There is no other way. “‘Punk, like Warhol, embraced everything cultured people, and hippies, detested: plastic, junk-food, B-movies, advertising, making money – although no one ever did’”(Savage, 133). Punk was enmeshed in the system, snared not only in discourse and method, but its whole notion of image and fashion that went on to spawn Mohawks, facial piercings, and carefully torn clothing throughout the suburbs and a HotTopic in every mall. From its inception as small outsider movement, there was always the drive and indication that it would become the distinct and recognizable Counterculture Industry of today.

Criticizing the state of contemporary music in 1938, Adorno wrote in “On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening”: “one need not even ask about capacity for musical performance. Even mechanical control of the instrument is no longer really expected. To legitimate the fame of its owner, a voice need only be especially voluminous or especially high”(The Culture Industry, 37). His oddly prescient comment prefigured the Ramones and the Sex Pistols by decades where lack of skill and the ability to scream and wail would become points of pride. Though Adorno and Horkheimer would not have recognized the ever diversifying leviathan that their Culture Industry became nor would they likely have enjoyed the musical qualities of punk rock (“Adorno, it is clear, was deaf to the magic spell of popular music”(Miklitsch, 49)), their Culture Industry constitutes punk none the less. Understood as the coercive power of capital and production brought to the unsuspecting masses, culture and the Culture Industry has proven to be less insidious if no less present. Still offering the masses only forced choice, the forced choices that punk rock and every other reflection of the Counterculture Industry that has developed to provide for the ruthless unity of an increasingly differentiated populace are a long way from the bleak and dreary future that Adorno and Horkheimer saw as developing through the Culture Industry. Perhaps the Culture Industry offers more to the public than just mass deception.

3. Understanding and Gesture in Low Society: Wittgenstein’s Theories on Music as an Excuse for Punk Rock

As seen above, the power maneuvers that allowed punk rock to come into being are varied. The ressentiment of the working class and other marginalized groups play a large part in the rise of a rough and chaotic musical genre that (at least on the surface) appeared to spring from less dignified roots than most musical genres. Oddly enough, the culture industry fueled this ressentiment in order to keep its “ruthless unity” intact, even in the face of an allegedly “counter”-culture movement. But, we are still left, as posed above, with the question of whether or not the Culture Industry does offer more to the public than just mass deception. What are the actual effects of these maneuvers were and how were they played out among the actual performers and listeners of punk rock—in essence how do we describe punk rock? Setting aside the causes and origins and instead taking up Wittgenstein’s focus on use, it is possible to show what punk rock meant to its constituents and how the music and performance of the genre allowed individuals to connect with each other in ways that previous iterations of rock’n’roll did not allow. As Wittgenstein pointed out in the Blue Book, “it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything, or to explain anything. Philosophy really is ‘purely descriptive’ (BB 18). Through Wittgensteins’s work, we can see the effects of the power maneuvers outlined above.

Wittgenstein’s writings on music are sparse: a couple passages in Zettel, a paragraph or two in Philosophical Investigations, a mention in Culture and Value and a couple brief passes in Lectures and Conversations. Though few and far between, they are still important ideas that can give an insight into why punk became so popular. Wittgenstein’s comments on music usually have to be drawn out of examples where he compares language to music. The comments are not so much about music, but about the musical qualities of language that then have to be reconciled with Wittgenstein’s other thoughts and applied to music. As R.A. Sharpe points out, Wittgenstein “thought that understanding music could provide an analogy with the way we understand sentences; he often compares understanding music with understanding language” (Sharpe 138). Sharpe, and almost all other commentators on Wittgenstein and music, point to a passage in the Philosophical Investigations that specifically states that, “Understanding a sentence is much more akin to understanding a theme in music than one may think” (PI 527). The exact nature of this statement is complicated and will re-emerge in later discussions of the music and dance of punk.

An important point to make at the outset is that Wittgenstein is most assuredly not talking about rock music in his discussions of music, let alone punk. His tastes in music were “rather narrow and conservative” and “largely Austrian” in taste, specifically mentioning “Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, Bruckner, Mozart, Beethoven and a minor composer called Labor” (Sharpe 137). This is not to say that he did not know the current trends in music, as he did have “a sense of the development of a musical language towards an increasing toleration of dissonance and unprepared modulations” (Sharpe 138). Even knowing about the trends, however, Wittgenstein still sided with Adorno, disliking jazz, thinking that it was less “like the developments of the classical style after Mozart” and “more like the sort of technical advances found in motor manufacture” (Sharpe 138). There is little question, then, that Wittgenstein would probably have not considered punk music. However, nearly all of his thoughts about music make themselves known in the great spectacle of punk rock; perhaps he just didn’t understand the new direction of music.

There are two main parts of punk that Wittgenstein’s theories on music apply to: the music and the show. The former, for our current purposes, will consist of anything that could be called “punk,” but primarily focus on some of the initial bands like the Sex Pistols. Because of the great importance on performing and on live events, the “show” will be anything that occurs during the course of a typical punk concert, anything from unplanned, intra-band fights on stage to ambivalence to performers insulting the audience members and vice-versa (Strongman 16-21).

With regards to the music, Wittgenstein focuses on how listeners and performers understand the music and the nature of that understanding. His take on the “language of music” is rather unique. In the Brown Book, Wittgenstein asserts that when attempting to find out what a tune says, we rationalize that “’This tune says something’...And yet I know that it doesn’t say anything such that I might express in words or pictures what it says” (BB 166). From this quote, it would appear that Wittgenstein believes that music has a language of its own, different from “words” and “pictures.” But, as Oswald Hanfling points out, this is most definitely not the case:

Hanfling continues after this passage to give an account of various instances where Wittgenstein clarifies what he means with the passage from the Brown Book and then states exactly what Wittgenstein means when he says that music and language are similar:

So, then, Hanfling leads us to believe that when we hear music we are performing what he calls “hearing-as-if” rather than “hearing-as”—we hear a particular meaning in the music, but it is not because the meaning is actually inscribed in the music but simple because that is what we believe it to mean.

This concept is linked to Wittgenstein’s concept of understanding in music. How a listener understands a particular piece is, as Hanfling has shown above, not because there is an inherent meaning in the piece, but because the listener is able to understand the piece as if there is a meaning. Graham McFee further details the idea of understanding when we writes:

Thus, we understand (or don’t understand) music concurrently with hearing it and must hear it to understand it. This point seems rather obvious, but underscores the importance of the act of listening to music, especially in a genre such as punk that bases itself so heavily around music. How could anyone purport to understand the individuals that made up the punk scene without first understanding the music that provided the basis for so much of the fashion, attitude and general way of life?

Indeed, as Daniel Putman states, “[w]e learn through the composer’s work a way to experience either a particular named visual situation (as La Mer) or simply, in pure instrumental music, dispositions toward life itself” (Putman 62). Through punk music, we learn to experience the whole “visual situation” that is the punk scene at large—not just the music, but the attitude, the fashion and the general life disposition. The concept of understanding with regards to the music is incredibly important if anyone were to claim to understand the punk culture at all.

Wittgenstein recognizes this fact (albeit more to a generalized concept of understanding life in general rather than punk music which, as stated above, he would probably hate). Graham McFee elucidates this:

Appreciating music—ostensibly through understanding—then would be a way of understanding a particular way of life through certain “key works” that are expressive for a particular generation (McFee 113). These key works, punk music for example, create a rallying point for members of a particular generation to gather around and, in expressing their understanding of the music in a social context, become closer to each other.

Where Adorno and Nietzsche provide insight into how the punk movement came about and, to a certain extent, the spread of its popularity, they are unable to account for the actual feelings of the individuals involved and the way in which the punks understood the music as an expression of their generation. Punk—and its propagation of a “stupid underground”—may be a part of particular power structures at play, but it still represents how a particular sector of the population understood the “life of mankind.” It involved “pre-Carter” American youth, the arts-school crowd and a London contingent that were all drawn together by a particular understanding of life that they could express socially in the music of punk (Strongman 28).

If understanding music is a manifestation of the “life” of a particular generation and expressing understanding in a social context draws the members of a generation together, the question becomes, “How does an individual come to understand and appreciate music, both individually and in a social context?” Wittgenstein posits that part of it comes from the similarities that music has to language, which come not from “a resemblance between the sounds of music and language, but by certain feelings of expectation that are common to music and language” (Hanfling 152). Both music and language contain “sequences of phenomena that are related in appropriate ways to what went before, and this arouses expectations as to what may come next, and feelings of tension or disappointment if suitable continuations are delayed or withheld” (Hanfling 152). In one sense, punk disrupts the “suitable conditions” laid out through its predecessors in the realm of rock, but in another it is simple and accessible, i.e. easy to understand. The cacophonous sounds of the Sex Pistols were far from the catchy tunes of disco or the accepted music of the seventies. It was hardly a “suitable continuation” of the previous music and, as a result, often met with violence from those who didn’t understand the music, but was still for many easy to understand.

Perhaps one of the best examples of the latter was the Clash’s performance at Guildford Civic Hall on their White Riot tour. A large crowd of about 100 people had amassed at the venue, armed with rotten fruit, to jeer the Clash. Strongman illustrates the event:

This event shows the radical difference between people that do understand a particular music and people that don’t. Before hearing the music (a point where the listeners assumed understanding without hearing the music), they disliked it. As shown through the almost immediate change in the attitude of the listeners, the experience of understanding is unavoidable with the actual hearing. Even though they attempted to listen to the music without having the experience of the music (i.e. continuing to dislike it based on pre-decided beliefs), they could not help but be caught up in the music; some of them remained ambivalent (not understanding, but still having the experience of understanding) and others actually understanding and beginning to dance.

This last event—the listeners dancing to the music—points towards how Wittgenstein believes that people display understanding with regards to music. He posits:

In the case of punk, the “beating time” present in classical music becomes “moshing” and “dancing” and the talking about the music becomes living the punk style of life. When the concert-goers at the White Riot tour put down their rotten veggies in favor of dancing, they were illustrating an understanding of the music in a way that is central to punk rock.

The quickness with which these particular concert-goers picked up an understanding of punk rock is partially a result of its simplicity and definitely shows their understanding in Wittgensteinian terms. Wittgenstein points out that understanding in music is knowing how it progresses, why “just this...pattern of variation in loudness and tempo” makes sense in a particular song (PI 527). Understanding music, then, rests in the listener’s “recognizing the rightness of what follow – that it is an appropriate continuation. And there are various ways of producing such continuations; juxtapositions and abrupt transitions, as well as smooth and seamless ones” (McFee 115).

In the above case, “London’s Burning,” the introduction to the song provides an “abrupt transition” from silence to music, but the remainder of the song is simple and predictable, easily understood: typical of most punk rock. The first few bars of the song set the steady staccato eighth note pattern that continues throughout the song, creating a solid expectation of how it will progress. The drum beat changes the typical rock beat slightly, placing the snare hit on the up-beat instead of the down-beat, again creating a different feel than most rock songs, but still a predictable and accessible one.

It is little wonder, then, that the White Riot attendees were able to slip so quickly from disdain to enjoyment in a matter of seconds. Experiencing the music, they understood. Other punk songs had similar characteristics that allowed them to be understood in similar manners. The songs are generally short (The Clash had to choose a five-minute long track to get one of their albums past the 30 minute mark), quick and predictable. The Ramones, for example, primarily used a standard 4/4 beat with a steady stream of eighth notes played extremely fast (Strongman 203). The Sex Pistols, Dead Boys and New York Dolls had a similar sound. In each case, the music is extremely understandable to anyone who listens and experiences.

For those that were unable to begin gesturing appropriately, it is not that they did not understand the music so much as they understood negatively. On this point, Hanfling says:

There is no moral judgment here, the fact is simply that some people enjoy particular music and others don’t. Regardless, hearing the music entails an understanding of some sort. When we say that someone doesn’t understand, we mean that they understand negatively. [this is a really good point.]

As mentioned above, Wittgenstein claims that “[a]ppreciating music is a manifestation of the life of mankind.” As such, it allows an individual to experience a particular emotion that is intertwined with the music and, when that emotion is experienced in a social setting, come closer to connecting with other individuals. Putman paraphrases Wittgenstein’s illustration of pain from the Philosophical Investigations to approach this subject:

So, then, what is the disposition that punk music conveys? The typical answer is something along the lines of “urban alienation” and “working-class” which, though derived mostly from the lyrics, could just as easily be derived from the angry, abrasive nature of most punk songs (Strongman 142-3). An exact disposition is impossible to nail down for all punk songs, however, because of the uniqueness of each band.

One of the important nuances of Putman’s assertion is that the song is an “artifact” that is a “vehicle,” which is much different than the expression of a particular emotion. The song itself carries the reminder of the human dispositions and is not a result of any particular “internal state” of the player (Sharpe 141). This is to say that the player could very well play the piece of music without feeling the dispositions it points to. In the same manner, the listener can show understanding through gestures, but these gestures do not necessarily mean that a certain internal state exists and the fact that a piece is sad or exuberant “does not carry the implication that the composer was sad or exuberant; it is a feature of the music itself” (Sharpe 142, 146). Someone can show (either through composition, performance or through gesturing) understanding of a disposition and music without having a certain internal state. Thus, the dispositions like “urban alienation” do not have to come from the composer, but can be found in the music itself. This music in turn reminds its listeners of that disposition and, through a collective understanding (shown through dance, etc.), they can connect with each other by feeling that they are experiencing the same disposition as the other individuals around them.

As has been hinted at, most commentators draw a strong line between performer and listener. Such a designation makes sense since in classical concerts, etiquette is extremely important: stay in your seats, be quiet and only clap when you’re supposed to (don’t make the mistake of showing appreciation in between movements, you’ll get more than a few sideways looks of scorn). McFee draws the clearest line between the two stating, “For music or dance, of course (and Wittgenstein does not deny this), performing with understanding and listening with understanding are hugely different, especially in the competencies required of the typical performer – the listener need not have most of these” (McFee 117). Additionally, “Since Wittgenstein was typically interested in the connection to understanding, he focuses (for music) either on listening with understanding or playing with understanding” (McFee 117). This differentiation makes sense at the outset. After all, one can’t simultaneously play the part of listener and performer, can they?

Unlike many musical genres, punk rock has an inordinate amount of intersection in both the competencies of the performers and listeners, but also a very fine, almost non-existent line differentiating performer/listener during the shows. To the latter point, which is prevalent in punk, but hardly unique, many of the listeners in any given audience, especially in the early days, played in punk bands themselves. Shows at the 100 Club punk venue in 1976, for example, would draw “fewer than 65 people,” but most of those people would be members (and future members) of groups like “Public Image Limited, The Damned, Adam and the Ants, The Buzzcocks, Chelsea, Generation X, The Billy Idol Band, 999 and The Clash” (Strongman 25). This would mean that, sometimes, the musical competencies of the listeners might actually be greater than the competencies of the performers. Granted, everyone would be understanding the music, whether through listening or performing, and even though they would be understanding with a greater degree of competency with regards to performance, the listeners would still be understanding as listeners and not as performers.

The remarkable aspect of punk rock to blur the dividing line between performer/listener comes in the form of the gesture. The idea of gesturing—or in the case of punk music, dancing/moshing—figures in heavily to the idea of understanding, as mentioned above, but it also figures heavily into the punk tradition in which the crowd is expected to respond to music through the dance, as opposed to the more traditional passive listening. The gesture comes as a way of showing understanding the music and the general disposition shown therein. Understanding necessitates the desire to talk about the music, but it also has a remainder, that which cannot be expressed in words and “a gesture may be all that one can do to express this understanding to oneself...when one cannot describe the experience and we find this inability frustrating” (McFee 116; Sharpe 144).

From this idea of gesture, Wittgenstein moves on to the idea of the dance as a gesture that is more than just “considering the evidence that one understands,” but is “a way of explaining the work, or of teaching it to someone” (McFee 114). It would follow, then, that the haphazard dancing occurring at punk shows could be seen as the listener’s constant explaining of the work, “teaching the work” back to the performers.

This listener/performer designation is partially based on the assumption that there is a single performer, for “many performers in both dance and music cannot plausibly confront the work as a whole, since each can only pay attention to his/her own contribution. And each contributes only one element of the work as a whole” (McFee 118-9). This is to say that the performers are both performing a part of the music, but still experiencing the music as a whole as listeners. They are performers and spectators.

In punk rock, the divide further breaks down through the behavior of the listener and the performer. They do not, at a punk show, need to “behave differently to manifest [their] understanding” of the music (McFee 118). Just as the audience picks fights, dances and jeers, the performers are expected to do the same (Strongman 16, 200). The performers (both performing their part and showing their understanding of the music as a whole) dance in the same manner as the audience; the listener and performer merge into one. This merging is compounded by the fact that many punk venues didn’t even have a proper stage (see insert pictures in Strongman). The band played on the same level as the audience and, as the dancing/gesturing increased, became one with the audience.

Conversely, the listeners often became performers. Many punk rock songs, like the Adicts’ “Viva la Revolution” or almost any Oi! song that contains the standard “oi! oi! oi!” verse, have a chorus that is repeated by the audience. Singing along is encouraged; the singer often times even goes so far as to occasionally give up control of the microphone to the crowd. Some punk rock sets have ended with the band, audience members and the entire road crew on stage singing a song. A collective understanding is shown both through performers/listeners gesturing similarly as well as performing together.

Punk rock then becomes an illustration of Wittgenstein’s concept of understanding music as shown through gesturing and performance, but it also shows how music can bring people together. Though no one at a punk show can know for sure what another’s exact understanding of the music is (as Wittgenstein admits), they can feel a connection through similar expressions of that understanding. Divisions like performer and listener that existed in previous forms of music no longer exist. Hearing the music of punk rock and having the experience of understanding brings everyone at the shows together. No one is excluded, save those that choose to understand negatively.

4. I Against I

The Bracketing of Punk Rock

In treating the idea of the potential for a genealogy and individual experience in punk rock, it may be beneficial to examine Husserl’s treatise of the theory of natural standpoint. Husserl explains his idea of bracketing, detailing his understand of the natural world and the ability to step back from it, bracketing it off and therefore examining that which makes life a livable experience. In bracketing off experiences, the phenomenologist can examine the world as it is lived, can examine what makes up daily experiences(Husserl, I91). By applying Husserl’s phenomenological texts to the experience of punk rock, we can see that choosing to participate in an identifiable culture offers up a third understanding of reality, somewhere between natural standpoint and the arithmetical world in which we can choose to participate. Because punk rock appears to disrupt Husserl’s two avenues of understanding, it appears more effective to regard punk rock as an indicative expression, one which Husserl explains is continually referential, even as it is removed from cultural conversation; in viewing punk rock as such, we can see how it continues to implicate outside of bracketing.

Husserl begins his articulation of the natural standpoint with a striking statement couched in seemingly benign terminology and prose: “In this way,” he says, “when consciously awake, I find myself at all times, and without my ever being able to change this, set in relation to a world which, through its constant changes, remains one and ever the same. It is continually “present” for me, and I myself am a member of it" (Husserl, I 92).

Husserl emphasizes this “present”-ness to an extensive degree to highlight the inalterability of and relentlessness of every day experiences. If we choose to participate in a subculture, is the “present”-ness that much more vivid because it is a choice? In other words, by taking on the identity of punk rock, is that in reaction to, or a recreation of, the world that is continually “present”? Does this become more palatable an idea when you add the weight of a history to the identity of punk rock, complete with mythology, ethos and family tree?

If every day experiences are something in which we participate “at all times,” this would seem distinct from those experiences we take on upon ourselves; the experience of attending a punk rock show, for example, would seem like it would be less present because it’s a choice. Having said that, that experience is no less inexorable or relentless for it being a choice; while we have the choice to either attend a show or not attend a show, either decision will comprise our world. Our participation may be more present for having been chosen, but it is does not make the rest of the world less present as a result. The act of choosing to listen to an album does not bracket us (and I use the word intentionally) away from the rest of the world; it merely alters and is subsumed into that world in which we are continually present. As Husserl continues, “It is then to this world, the world I which I find myself and which is also my world-about-me…”(Husserl, I 93) If the “world-about-me” is more present for being chosen, are the characteristics of it increasingly magnified to different degrees, or exponentially effective at a flat rate? Is it possible to delineate the implications of the world-about-me and the world that I’ve chosen to take on, the history of the identity group with which I’m associating myself? In discussing the arithmetical world—generally understood to be the scientific world, in the comparison of the scientific world with the world that I can feel, think about, point to, Husserl states that this “world is there for me only when and so long as I occupy the arithmetical standpoint. But the natural world, the world in the ordinary sense of the word, is constantly there for me, so long as I live naturally and look in its direction” (Husserl, I 94). In making this distinction, Husserl simultaneously places the natural world in a position of superiority—always there, as opposed to only there when occupied—and offers us a binary against which to compare contemporary experiences. Could identity, in our contemporary sense of the word, be the post-modern equivalent of the mathematical world or scientific standpoint? That doesn’t seem logical, but it does seem a new kind of layer to add over top of the natural standpoint.

Husserl distinguishes between the natural world and the arithmetical world. In doing so, he seems to attribute all other experiences, all non-scientific ones, to the natural world. It seem that the willful insistence of the post-modern experience, the frenetic pace of choice-making and identity-projection—allow for a disruption of the distinction Husserl presents.

It is this disruptability to which Derrida points in his reactions to Husserl’s phenomenology, and indeed in which most contentions with Husserl’s ideas can be found. As clarified by Garver, one important feature of the ideas represented by signs—both Husserl’s use of signs and de Saussure’s—is their timelessness, their existence outside spatiotemporal understanding that gives them their power (Garver, 70). If signs are timeless, however, how can they have significance for meaning and power within the time-sensitive or transient events of every day life? This could at least explain the frustration of trying to force an understanding of punk rock experiential existence—not to mention the genealogy that may be inherent therein—into Husserl’s phenomenology.

In viewing punk rock through the suspension of natural standpoint Husserl articulates (Husserl, I 97-8), his understandings are complicated further. Is it possible to view music, particularly punk rock, without judgment or emotion? For punk rock, which was so specifically and intentionally reactionary and recalcitrant (Savage, 27), it seems unable to exist without the judgments—in favor or against—it works to inspire. What would a phenomenological examination of punk rock look like? There, a teenager rebelling against accepted norms with a Mohawk and torn clothing; there, loud music seeming to inspire dancing and energy. But punk rock loses the majority of its significance in its removal from its context; it loses its impetus, its purported purpose, and becomes nothing but a series of experiences with no notable theme. When Sid Vicious talks about how "above all else, looks is wot matters...Even durin me most fucked-up periods I was ever ponderin me image, thumbin through all the flash an glossy mags for the latest a la mode" (Dalton, 21), the statement lacks significance from a phenomenological perspective; it is one thing said to someone, who will react in a certain way, and which Sid will deliver with a goofy, slightly maniacal grin. It is only in the world-about-us, the world in which punk rock bears certain significance, in which we can understand the extrapolations of the statement: that this man making this statement is simultaneously serious--style is imperative to participation in punk rock, to a declaration of understanding in the Wittgensteinian sense--and deadly satirical, as we can ascertain in hind sight; this is the man whose drug addictions will inspire him to carve "I'm a mess" in his chest and whose lifestyle will survive him, although he will not survive his lifestyle (Dalton, 195-203).

Because punk rock trips up Husserl's bracketing experience, it may be more beneficial to view Husserl’s understanding of expressions in order to more fully understand the ramifications of undertaking a participation in punk rock culture. In his Logical Investigations, Husserl makes a distinction between expressions used in communication and expressions in uncommunicated, interior mental life. As Husserl divides how we view communication, we can divide music’s existence into two pieces—the playing and the listening. Although we generally understand Ferdinand de Saussure’s sign to be inherently split, simultaneously comprised of two separate parts and unseparate-able, Husserl clarifies a sign as different from an expression in his efforts to delineate its meaning. He states that “Every sign is a sign for something, but not every sign has ‘meaning’, a ‘sense’ that the sign ‘expresses’…To mean is not a particular way of being a sign in the sense of indicating something…Expressions function meaningfully in even isolated mental life, where they no longer serve to indicate anything” (Husserl, LR 269). In doing so, Husserl opens up a new version of a sign, what he calls an expression, which can function meaningfully, in other words, still convey meaning, even in isolated mental life—outside of the natural standpoint of the world, and outside of the bracketing. If we return to the frustration earlier of punk rock’s inability to make sense when bracketed off, it becomes understandable; punk rock appears to exist as an expression, which can still have meaning even in the isolation of inner thoughts, as opposed to a sign, which will signal or indicate something within the natural world but cease to do so once removed from it.

In continuing to express this distinction between sign and expression, Husserl points to the latter’s indicative ability, stating that “to mean is not a particular way of being a sign in the sense of indicating something.” That is to say, a sign can have meaning without indicating something. According to Husserl, a sign can have meaning, but requires a narrower definition because an expression can function meaningfully even in isolated life—unlike a sign. He further states that “a thing is only properly an indication if and where it in fact serves to indicate something to some thinking being.” This clarification seems to imply an indication can only take place if there’s someone there to understand the thing as being indicated. This is why punk rock appears to deny the potential for bracketing; if punk rock is an indication, it needs to have some sentient being there to understand it. It cannot speak to the phenomenologist, who has limited himself in his attempts to understand. The placement of punk rock within the realm of expression facilitates its splitting; all music, including punk rock, seems to be split into the indication and the indicating, the indication and the thinking being which understands what is being indicated. This facet of punk rock begs the question hinted at by its inability to fit into the confines of bracketing and bracketed: can punk rock exist without the ostensible reaction it inspires? This understanding of punk rock as split between the sending and the receiving, the conveying of and the understanding of, falls in line, too, with Husserl’s points about motivational unity. Here it will be helpful to undertake a close reading of an entire paragraph in order to elucidate his points.

In picking this apart, we can make further clarify our understanding of punk rock as expression, as indication. Husserl states that “These distinctions,” by which he means the distinctions between the action which produces the marking and the indication itself, or its relationships to the object it stands for, “and others like them do not deprive the concept of indication of its essential unity.” In this way, like the sign being comprised of a signifier and a signified but no less unified for its comprisal, Husserl’s indicative expressions are no less such for being broken down into the action of indicating and the indication itself. He continues, “A thing is only properly an indication if and where it in fact serves to indicate something to some thinking thing,” which is to say that someone has to interpret an indication as a sign for it to be a sign; there is no sign where there is no thinking being. As explained above, this comes across as unbracketable; if an expression can only function with a being to understand it, the phenomenologist cannot do so in undertaking a bracketing, for in doing so she removes herself from the world in which she exists as a thinking being..

In a way, Husserl creates a space in which to have this unbracketable conversation with the next line. He says “If we wish to seize the pervasively common element here present, we must refer back to such cases of “live” functioning.” To have this conversation, in other words, we need to be talking about instances in which some thinking being is being indicated to, or “live.” In such situations, he continues, “we discover as a common circumstance the fact that certain objects or states of affairs of whose reality someone has actual knowledge indicate to him the reality of certain other objects or states of affairs, in the sense that his belief in the reality of the one is experienced (thought not at all evidently) as motivating a belief or surmise in the reality of other.” What this means is that in all instances in which a thinking being “reads” the indications of a sign, actual knowledge indicates non-experienced objects. In other words, the experience or knowledge itself is a sign indicating other states of affairs, etc. In addition, the belief in the experienced experience motivates a belief in the other, unexperienced experience. Husserl sees this motivation, or motivational unity, as endemic to understanding of indication: “This relation of "motivation" represents a descriptive unity among our acts of judgment in which indicating and indicated states of affairs become constituted for the thinker,” which is to say that this relationship—wherein belief in an experience motivates us to believe in non-experienced experiences—is experienced as the same thing. He continues, saying that “[t]his descriptive unity is not to be conceived as a mere form-quality founded upon our acts of judgment, for it is in their unity,” the unity of what is indicated and what we then indicate, or our belief in knowledge we have which motivates us to have belief in the reality of other knowledge which we don’t have, “that the essence of indication lies.” Combining these two aspects of indication—which is still just one aspect of signs—isn’t just something our brain does but is actually what comprises indication.

Such a reading of indication would seem to show punk rock as simultaneously able to point to—indicate—and be indicated itself. This makes sense in a reading of a punk genealogy; punk rock can point to its own history and genealogy without actually referencing it, can be pointed to, as each moment supercedes the last, as part of its own history. Punk rock as indication can only exist for a sentient being, comprises a motivational unity which facilitates our belief in its history and in other, subsidiary forms—and it can exist in solitary life.

In carrying this idea further—in examining punk rock as an expression that can have an indicative meaning in solitary life—it becomes worth noting the role punk rock can play in one’s interior mental life, as opposed to expressions based on interactions. Husserl explains, “expressions also play a great part in the uncommunicated, interior mental life…Expressions continue to have meanings as they had before, and the same meanings as in dialogue” (Husserl, LI 278). If we apply this idea to punk rock as an expression which can indicate its own genealogy, it appears that punk rock can formulate its own genealogy, different for each person to identify with the genre. For the indication to still be meaningful in my mental life, it has to be mine; I have to know what it means as much as I know what I mean by it. Expressions have the same meaning in interior life as they do in exterior life, which implies that they have the same relationship to interior and exterior life as do signs and other facets of language: you say horse and you see a Shetland pony while I see the shores of Chincoteague, but we still know we’re talking about a horse. Concurrently, in indicating a history of punk rock, you may be of the opinion that Iggy Pop’s Stooges informed everything (Heylin, 32(, even though I pin it all on Malcolm McLaren (Savage, 48 and others), but we still understand the larger referent.

Notions of a genealogy within punk rock are troubled and clarified by applying Husserl’s ideas of bracketing and his distinction between signs and expressions. In terming punk rock the latter, we can open punk rock up to a new, less structured understanding of what genealogy within punk rock might entail. As with variants in understanding of signs, which still point to similar (if not the same) understanding of the signified, so, too, does punk rock’s implications for its own history shift depending on the sentient being intercepting the implication, without shifting the implication, or genealogy, itself.

Foucault.

In his “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” Michel Foucault refutes Nietzsche’s notions of genealogy in a way that sheds light on the conversation taking place about the potential for genealogy in punk rock, or in any musical form (Foucault,241). Foucault begins the conversation by stating that “genealogy, consequently, requires patience and a knowledge of details and it depends on a vast accumulation of source material" (Foucault, 242). The act of putting together a genealogy requires facts. It is predicated on the patience of the gatherer and requires a bracketing, a willingness to remove oneself from the experiences in order to delineate an order and attempt at cohesion. What disrupts this understanding is the absence of an origin, the dissolution of an comprehension of a beginning: what is found at the moment of historical origin, Foucault tell us, is not the inviolable identity of their origin; it is the dissension of other things. It is disparity” (Foucault, 243). As with Lacan’s difference, Foucault’s disparity highlights the distinction between ideas as opposed to the ideas themselves. As grammatical language (parole) places emphasis—and indeed any semblance of definition—on the distinctions between ideas, so too disparity highlights the tension between events in a genealogy, deconstructing efforts to find meaning inherent in the events themselves. Foucault calls into question the idea of origin itself, declaring the “historical beginning of things” less an identifiable identity and more a distance, a change; the important thing about the beginning of something is not the beginning itself but the shift from what it was to what it is becoming—not, note, what it will be. For punk rock, then, and the potential for genealogy in punk rock, it is not the genesis of the genre—placed variously with the Sex Pistols, Malcolm McLaren, the MC5, among myriad moments—but the shifting toward a new genre that merits the name “beginning.” While this disrupts the attempt to find an origin of punk rock, calling into question the potential to delineate a genealogy without an origin, it does not necessarily negate the attempt to articulate a movement, that shifting towards a new genre, which could then define what it cannot necessarily force into the confines of genealogy.

In articulating the absence of origin, Foucault highlights one of the fallacies of the idea of origin. Origin, he tells us, “always precedes the Fall” (Foucault, 243). What merits examination in the origins—for lack of a better word—of punk rock is the moment when the origin very intentionally becomes the Fall. Punk rock’s (heavily debated and infinitely debatable) purpose is that fall, the act of falling itself; punk rock acted as an effort to be non-genre, non-subculture, and worked to force the violent dissolution of itself from previous definitions of music and musical culture. Its adherence to dissonance, which can be seen in early Velvet Underground records (Bockris and Malanga, 21), its rejection of craft and musical ability, among other facets, served to reappropriate the Fall itself into its origins. In doing so, punk rock acknowledges its absent-origin and refuses to point to a beginning. This may be part of the difficulty in finding an endpoint, a conclusion in the narration of punk rock: the 60s had their Woodstock (and indeed, in being determined the 60s, had their 1969); rock and roll fell with the nascent grunge movement, if not before; grunge’s icon, Kurt Cobain, shot himself and ended its relevance. Punk rock continues to reincarnate itself, and for every aging hipster who declares it dead, a teenager puts glue in her Mohawk and resuscitates it.

This continual renewal also seems to point to a potential genealogy in punk rock, one which dismisses origins and continually dismantles itself. Foucault articulates that “genealogy does not pretend to go back in time to restore an unbroken continuity that operates beyond the dispersion of forgotten things; its duty is not to demonstrate that the past actively exists in the present, that it continues secretly to animate the present, having imposed a predetermined form to all its vicissitudes” (Foucault, 244). Any effort to create a coherent genealogy of punk rock would need to do exactly that which Foucault denies; it would work to go back in time to restore continuity and practices an essential effacement of non-linear events or facts. Inherent with that effort is the genealogist herself, who imposes her linear attempts on the events that already exist. Any shifting of fortune, any changes in make-up of actors or facets of existence—anytime punk rock changes tempo or sound, and every shifting of listeners who ascribe to its aesthetics or reinterpret its credo—must then be folded back into the understanding of what punk rock entails. The teleological lens too easily overshadows the attempts at an objective historical reading of any text, as genealogies necessarily feel the need to tell a story. Having said that, punk rock’s constant renewal offers up a new form of genealogy; that of genealogy as present-animator, in which every one of Husserl’s bracketed moments—indicative or otherwise—can be seen as simultaneously encapsulating all of the history of punk rock and being only a moment within that history as it emerges.

Foucault also treats the idea of Enstehung, which he translates as emergence. He warns “[t]hese developmen the potential for an end point, in addition to an origin. The emergence of events which appear—again, teleologically—as proof of causality or at least end result are not themselves an end point. These events, which appear to prove out even simple narrative efforts—punk rock rejects the idea of performance and the relationship between audience and artist, as evidenced by Johnny Rotten’s snarled “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated”(Dalton, 152)—are actually themselves mere episodes, as opposed to closure.

These episodes, especially within punk rock, are themselves a point of rupture, inherently violent and inchoate, showing punk-rock-as-genealogy as an anchor in the larger conversation of how history is not a series of moments but in fact a series of violences exhibiting the differences. Foucault emphasizes this by saying that “[h]umanity does not gradually progress from combat to combat until it arrives at universal reciprocity, where the rule of law finally replaces warfare; humanity installs each of its violences in a system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to domination” (Foucault, 246). He continues:

If interpretation is in itself violence, and if the story of history—no, the rendering of history into attempts at genealogy and interpretation—is the story of a series of violent disparities, then the act of interpreting becomes a component of the violent story of humanity. While it is impossible to view interpretation as that slow exposure, interpretation’s status as violence necessarily opens it up to genealogists, historians, punk rockers and academics. Further: if history is comprised as a series of violences, violences are required for history; as such, interpretation-as-violence can be viewed as necessary to further the disparities between moments, the disparities which comprise a history of humanity. While it is impossible, then, to delineate a genealogy of punk rock, punk rock’s rejection of domination and attempt at rejecting its own history is itself a rupture of the process of genealogy, furthering the distance between itself and its own history, and thus cementing its space within history.