NARRATIVE IDENTIFICATIONS AMONG ANARCHO-PUNKS IN PHILADELPHIA A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Edward A. Avery-Natale May 2012 Examining Committee Members: Pablo Vila, Advisory Chair, Sociology Shanyang Zhao, Sociology Lewis Gordon, Philosophy Thomas Wright External Member, Communications I Abstract This dissertation uses in depth interviews and participant observation in order to understand an important contemporary subculture: anarcho-punks. The research was done in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania between the years of 2006 and 2012. The overarching theme that connects the different chapters of the dissertation together is a focus on the ways in which the identification narratives of participants are ethical in nature, meaning that the narrators are working to maintain an ethical sense of self in their narration. In addition, I show the identitarian consequences of the ways in which the hyphenation of the anarcho-punk identification works to both separate and join the two different identifications “anarchist” and “punk.” I also show the ways in which identifications are narratively structured. This is done throughout the ten chapters of the dissertation. Each of the substantive chapters focuses on the different narratives used by the participants to understand a particular theme that is important to developing an understanding of the subculture overall. II Acknowledgments First, I would like to thank Dr. Pablo Vila for his constant support and advice during the process of creating this dissertation and throughout my time at Temple University. Second, I would like to thank my wife, Kerrie Avery-Natale, for her emotional (and financial) support throughout this process. I would also like to thank Colin Smith for introducing me to punk rock when I was 15 years old; without that event, this dissertation would never have come to be. Finally, I want to express my deepest gratitude to the West Philly punk scene, without which I would not be the person I am today and this dissertation could never have been made. III TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………….……………………………………...II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………...……………………III CHAPTER 1. A PERSONAL INTRODUCTION: “PUNK ROCK SAVED MY LIFE”………...…...1 2. METHODS…………..……………………………………………………….………...8 My Methodological Approach and Qualitative Validity………………………...14 Contemporary Qualitative Approaches to Writing………………………………16 Interview Structures……………………………………………………………...19 3. THEORY…………………………………...…………………………………………22 Narrativity………………………………………………………………………..24 Discourse Theory and Narrativity………………………………………..27 Hyphenated Selves……………………………………………………………….35 Ethics……………………………………………………………………………..44 Post-Subcultural Theories………………………………………………………..59 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….62 4. IT’S NOT YOUR TYPICAL REBELLION......………………………………………63 Love and Rage…………………………………………………………………...68 5. NARRATIVES OF ENTRANCE INTO ANARCHO-PUNK IN PHILADELPHIA...93 This is what I always was……………………………………………………….94 Affirming “Bad Behavior”……………………………………………………...100 This is what I became…………………………………………………………..105 Embracing Punk and Anarcho-Punk Stigma…………………………………...113 IV 6. PHYSICAL AND SARTORIAL PRESENTATIONS OF RESISTANCE AND IDENTIFICATION..........................................................................................................115 Throwing Up a Flag…………………………………………………………….118 The Double-Mirror of Anarcho-Punk Style…………………………………….126 Do Clothing and Tattoos Really Matter?.............................................................133 Consuming Towards “The Good”……………………………………………...140 Conclusion: Becoming the Antagonistic Other………………………………...148 7. THE ETHICS OF CARE AND NOTIONS OF PRAGMATIC POLITICAL SUPPORT........................................................................................................................151 Utopian Imagining……………………………………………………………...154 Looking For and Living As Utopia……………………………………………..164 The Ethics of Care……………………………………………………………...179 As Long as there are Taxes……………………………………………………..184 8. NARRATIVES OF RACE AND WHITENESS IN PUNK…………………............190 Explaining Whiteness…………………………………………………………..204 Suburbia………………………………………………………………...205 Punk is a Microcosm of the Larger Society………………….…………210 “They” already have a Radical Subculture……………………………..213 Denying Punk’s Whiteness……………………………………………………..219 Should It Change?................................................................................................224 Fears of Tokenizing and the Impossibility of Change………………….225 “It’s OK for Punk to be White”………………………………………...229 The Colorblind Racism of Punk and Anarcho-Punk…………………………...235 Abstract Liberalism……………………………………………………..235 V Naturalization…………………………………………………………...238 Cultural Racism………………………………………………………...240 The Minimization of Racism…………………………………………...244 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...248 9. THE DYNAMICS OF GENDER AND THE PLACE OF WOMEN IN THE SCENE………………………………………………………………………..………...250 Is Punk Male Dominated?....................................................................................256 Yes, it is Male Dominated…………………………………...…………257 Punk is not Male Dominated: Sexism at a Distance……………………268 Explanations for Male Dominance……………………………………………..277 Punk as a Microcosm…………………………………………………...278 Other Lived Experiences………………………………………………………..292 Feminism……………………………………………………………….293 But is it Sexy?..........................................................................................298 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...303 10. PHILADELPHIA PUNK: SUBCULTURE OR COUNTER CULTURE?...............305 Times when we have done Wrong……………………………………………...314 How we can do Better…………………………………………………...……...322 REFERENCES CITED………………………………………………………………....329 VI CHAPTER 1 A PERSONAL INTRODUCTION: “PUNK ROCK SAVED MY LIFE” At 14 years old, I began listening to a band called Rage Against The Machine. At the time, Rage was a popular band, combining hard rock and rap with political messages, and their music was frequently played on rock and roll radio stations I listened to in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Ultimately, it was Rage Against The Machine that introduced me to politics through their music. At the age of 15, I ordered a “Free Mumia” t-shirt from the band’s website (I still own the shirt). At the time I placed the order, I had no idea that the shirt was actually from a benefit concert that Rage Against The Machine had played to raise money for Mumia Abu Jamal’s defense. Because it had been from a benefit concert, on the back was listed other bands that had played the benefit. One of these bands was Bad Religion. This was the late 90s and Napster, the early music-downloading program, had only been around for a short time, but was gaining in popularity. One Saturday night after receiving my Free Mumia t-shirt in the mail, I sat in front of my parent’s computer and used Napster to download music by this formerly unknown to me band, Bad Religion. I cannot emphasize enough that hearing Bad Religion for the first time completely changed my life. In retrospect, I know now that this was not the first time I had heard a punk rock band. In middle school I had fallen in love with Green Day and The Offspring, and at 13 I had discovered the band Refused via a late night broadcast of one of their music videos on MTV. However, at those times, no one had given this music a label for me and I did not have regular enough access to the Internet to find out that this 1 thing was called punk. While I knew that punk rock was something that existed, it was not until Bad Religion that the label “punk” appeared to me tied to a music that spoke to me in a way that almost nothing ever had before. The following Monday, I went to school and, while eating lunch in the cafeteria, spoke with Colin Smith, one of the only people I knew who was a “punk.”1 Unlike many American suburban high schools, Springfield High School did not have an active punk scene at the time, and as far as I knew there were only a couple punks in my school. Several of them were friends of mine, as without an active subcultural milieu in the school, all the “outcasts” (goths, punks, nerds, etc.) tended to cling together. I told Colin that I had heard a band called Bad Religion, that I knew they were punk, and that I wanted to hear more. The next day he showed up with something that, for many punks growing up before the omnipresence of music downloading, was central to the development of a punk rock identification: my first mix tape. Colin had titled it, “The Over-Covetted [sic] and Over-Zealous Mix Tape,” which I still own. Mix tapes were a way that music was shared among punks before we could download music so easily (even downloading those first few Bad Religion songs took hours in the days before high-speed Internet connections and torrents); mix-tapes would include various songs from mostly underground bands that the maker of the tape found to be important. I listened to that tape constantly and fell in love with bands like Operation Cliff Claven, Discount, Propagandhi, I Spy, SNFU, A//Political, Violent Society, The Dead Milkmen, and more. The 40 songs Colin 1 Colin, who I have remained friends with since this time, has given me permission to mention him by name in this introduction. 2 included were political, funny, angry, frustrated, depressed, happy. They were everything that I was looking for. From that moment on, I was a punk, and my life would never be the same. Where I