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Hold Fast: Technologies of Distinction in the Australian Hardcore Music Scene

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Hold Fast: Technologies of Distinction in the Australian Hardcore Music Scene Hold Fast: Technologies of Distinction in the Australian Hardcore Music Scene Author Driver, Christopher Published 2018-12 Thesis Type Thesis (PhD Doctorate) School School of Hum, Lang & Soc Sc DOI https://doi.org/10.25904/1912/957 Copyright Statement The author owns the copyright in this thesis, unless stated otherwise. Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/385865 Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au Hold Fast: Technologies of Distinction in the Australian Hardcore Music Scene by Christopher Driver B/Comms, MA, BA (Hons) School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science Griffith University This thesis is submitted in fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2018 1 Abstract Having emerged in the discourse of suburban American iterations of punK in the late 1970s, hardcore music has become an important cultural resource for groups around the world. The subsequent spread of the original musical tropes and development of multiple trajectories of musical and stylistic innovation have resulted in a complex and multifaceted constellation of ideas, practices and objects that now constitute the hardcore music scene. Despite its growth, scholarly discourse in the field continues to operate almost exclusively in response to what has come to be called the ‘subcultures’ framework (Clarke et al 1976). The focus has been placed on the question of whether such forms can be conceptualised in terms of coherent and subversive ideologies, effectively setting the parameters of the debate in ways that have marginalised considerations of the musical experiences of participation, and which have limited sociological attempts to comprehend the significance of hardcore music as a social force. While this research maintains an empirical focus on the Australian hardcore music scene, it also aims to address more fundamental questions about the relationship between music, identity, and culture. Central to these aims is a turn away from a focus on what DeNora has called ‘propositional “Knowledge”’ (2000, p.84). That is, towards an analytical perspective that extends ‘well beyond the usual concern with the meanings of art objects’ (ibid. emphasis added) and pays attention to how the reflexive appropriation of musical materials is constitutive and regulative of agency (ibid. p.83) at the level of the body; how music organises the body and defines its potentialities. ‘By moving away from discourses of the body and moving towards a focus on body- culture interaction, on temporal body practices,’ argues DeNora, ‘a grounded theory of the body’s cultural constitution has the capacity to move well beyond semiotic readings of bodily meanings’ (DeNora 2000, p.76, emphasis added). Researching the ‘body-culture interactions’ that comprise the dominant modes of participation in the hardcore scene means a focus on exploring the action capacities of bodies. This research aims to illuminate 2 these processes through an emphasis on participants’ own discourse and to mediate interview testimony with ethnographic detail. Thus, the mixed methods approach comprises a combination of fieldworK and semi-structured one-to-one interviews with ‘hardcore Kids’ who self-identify and who are identified by others as members of the hardcore scene. Rather than living out cultural trajectories that are predetermined by structural factors such as class, hardcore Kids become involved with the scene for many reasons. Identities are forged not through the activation of class-based Knowledges or the expression of discursive style-based literacies, but in the acquisition of sKill, which is both honed and perceived in the experience of place. Key to the development of the embodied competencies that constitute subjects as of the hardcore scene is the provision of environments that afford them opportunities to perceive and act in specific ways, thus facilitating distinctive trajectories of growth and development. Participants do not enjoy equal access to these resources. Yet, all participants are responsible - and held accountable - for their various roles in the production of distinctive hardcore contexts; they are simultaneously implicated in the coming-together of the places in which they are ‘entangled’ (Ingold 2008). For the distinctive character of the scene is produced in the action of those bodies that are reflexively reconfigured and reconstituted in and through its production. DeNora asKs the following about the listening body: ‘if its physical properties are “made” through interchange with materials that lie outside it, then should we not be able to observe this process and to document the mechanisms of this maKing?’ (2000, p.76). This study investigates the significance of hardcore music in the lives of participants by documenting the processes through which some of them come to constitute themselves as selves. Following DeNora’s notion of music as a ‘technology of self’, it finds that hardcore kids’ collective consumption of hardcore music works as an aesthetic resource that is reflexively appropriated in a corporeal process of becoming. Identities of the self and of the collective are emergent in this activity, which is mediated by the body in-process. 3 Statement of Originality This worK has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my Knowledge, the thesis contains no material previously written or published by another person, except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. Christopher Driver Ethical Clearance The research for this thesis was authorised by the Griffith University Ethics Committee under protocol number HUM/23/10/HREC. 4 Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... 2 Statement of Originality ............................................................................................................ 4 Ethical Clearance ....................................................................................................................... 4 Contents .................................................................................................................................... 5 AcKnowledgements ................................................................................................................... 7 Chapter One: Introduction ...................................................................................... 8 A Thesis about Hardcore ........................................................................................................... 8 Coming Clean: An Insider-Researcher Perspective ................................................................. 10 Structure: Outline of Chapters ................................................................................................ 16 Chapter Two: Hardcore and The Academy ............................................................. 20 On Hardcore (or PunK after 1980) ........................................................................................... 20 Hardcore PunK? The ‘Counterculture’ Discourse .................................................................... 30 Hardcore and Straightedge ..................................................................................................... 34 Hardcore and Hegemonic Masculinities .................................................................................. 40 Hardcore and Queer Identities ................................................................................................ 43 Australian Hardcore ................................................................................................................ 46 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 48 Chapter Three: Youth Culture and Subculture ....................................................... 50 Subculture? ............................................................................................................................. 50 Subculture and Youth Culture Studies .................................................................................... 55 Criticisms of Subcultural Theory .............................................................................................. 66 Post-subcultural Theory .......................................................................................................... 72 Criticisms of Post-Subcultural Theory ..................................................................................... 81 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 88 Chapter Four: Music and Culture ........................................................................... 91 Music and the Social ................................................................................................................ 91 Popular Music, Mass Culture, and the Academy ..................................................................... 94 Popular Music, Youth Culture, and Subcultural Studies ........................................................ 100 Popular Music, Aesthetic Reflexivity, and Prosthetic Technologies ...................................... 113 BacK to the Music: Popular Music in Action .......................................................................... 119 Chapter Five: Methodology .................................................................................
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