This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Raising pure hell a general theory of articulation, the syntax of structural overdetermination, and the sound of social movements Peterson II, Victor Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 04. Oct. 2021 RAISING PURE HELL a general theory of Articulation, the syntax of structural overdetermination, and the sound of social movements by Victor Peterson II dissertation presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy King’s College, London 2018 Acknowledgements Meaning is made, value taken. Much is owed to those who have made meaning full during the process of articulating these thoughts. I am grateful to my supervisor Paul Gilroy for his tireless assistance and guidance in completing this project. Thank you for taking a chance on me. A thank you to the faculty of the Arts Politics Department at New York University. To my Wednesday Group, our working sessions proved most useful. To my comrades in the Virginia Woolf building at King’s College—thank you for providing on that 6th floor the warmth required for a long stay in London. Thank you to my family, core and extended. Truthfully speaking, what is the difference between the two? Family is family and not another thing. Thank you to everyone whose voices, brilliance, and encouragement can be read in many a sentence of this dissertation. Finally, thank you to those sons of Philadelphia, Pure Hell, after whose music and ethos this thesis is named. Thank you for showing me that blackness is no one thing, that it can be any thing, and for imagining that subject as a resounding yes so many years ago. Dedicated to all Undead Youth, ever rising from the grave. To the memory of Louise “Gran” Marshall, Randy Martin, and Adam Jackson. To these and others we’ve lost and promises made, we did it. To Frenchie. To 13th and York, and to Philadelphia. Abstract What follows answers a call made by cultural theorist Stuart Hall from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies to formalize a “mechanism of articulation” for the study of race, ethnicity, and social movements. A mechanism is developed alongside a syntactic structure towards developing this general theory of Articulation. Articulation is formalized so as to be applied to the study of particular historical conditions without losing its analytic power to account for contemporary states of affairs. To do so, this thesis explores an encounter between youth and subcultural movements. The method developed is employed to provide an alternative approach and a historical basis to a particular mode of engaging with the field of Black Studies. Afro-pessimism, as set out by Orlando Patterson (1982) and through one of its most recent architects Frank B. Wilderson III (2009) supposes blackness as comprised of an absolute or universally total nihilism. The Pessimist forwards the impossibility of blackness' contravening its subordination. This line grounds a philosophical and political perspective forwarded by Jared Sexton (2011) and others in what Sexton calls "The Social Life of Social Death." I attend to problems raised by Afro-Pessimism—Black identity’s operation out of a cultural and, therefore, political death—which renders the formation of social movements to counter structural overdetermination and subordination impossible. In challenging Identity theory, we reveal the Pessimist’s position as internally contradictory. Taking as its case study Black subjectivity's articulation through punk—a musical and cultural form said to be devoid of an inner logic or mechanism for creating and expressing thought—the theory developed in this thesis secures a generative syntax for forms of Black expression. It provides an alternative method to the study of other subjects and movements as well as interrogates the political economy constituting various states of affairs as it pertains to Black study. This project firstly illustrates the syntax and assertability conditions of an articulatory mechanism. Next, it explores textual evidence relating Black literary expression's tie to music in order to demonstrate musical expression as a product of this mechanism for creating thought; thus, a capacity expressing subjectivity outside of identity constraints. Then, we situate our articulatory mechanism within a set of historical conditions in which the initial call for and our formulation of this formal treatment was in response. Finally, we explore the implications of the application of this formal articulatory mechanism to further Black studies and the analysis of social movements. The schema developed in this study represents an inquiry into how Black subjectivity articulates its agency in the world through punk. As a form of expression less ready and violent to the idea of being dispossessed of its agency or incorporated into a mainstream value system, punk modes of articulation lend themselves to the study of the formation of subjectivity outside of strict identification within a predetermined frame of reference. Black expressive capacity through punk is a prime subject to complicate an essentialized concept of “Black”-ness. Traditionally, the question of articulation and existence is formulated within the context of an entity whose very being questions the categories of that state of affairs. As a matter of syntax, negation cannot proceed modality. Syntactically, although we can express both, we understand "---may not . ." as valid but, "---not may . ." as unintelligible. Through this demonstration alone, the work of this thesis proves the negative existential predicated of blackness by the Pessimist as incorrect. 1 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................5 THE THEORY OF ARTICULATION.......................................................................... 18 THE SINGING BOOK .................................................................................................. 85 THE ELECTRIC CHURCH ....................................................................................... 119 REARTICULATION .................................................................................................. 184 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................... 233 APPENDIX I ............................................................................................................... 245 APPENDIX II: Articulation Mechanism Proof ........................................................... 259 APPENDIX III: Pied-Piping, Subject Continuity, and Rearticulation ........................ 264 APPENDIX IV: Calculating Overdetermination ......................................................... 273 2 “Music, as paradoxical as it might seem, is the result of thought. It is the result of thought perfected at its most empirical, i.e., as attitude, or stance.” - LeRoi Jones, Blues People “Punks are niggers” - Richard Hell of The Voidoids and Television to New Musical Express, 1977 3 Note regarding methodological approach: This thesis unfolds on two independent yet not mutually exclusive levels. There is the main text, which can be read on its own. The second level utilizes appendices that offer an outline of the arguments developed in each chapter, along with a qualification of the technical terms employed to illustrate the inner logic of our articulatory mechanism. Appendices act as a supplement to the text and are not necessary to reading the overall argument; however, they do provide the syntax and engine to the articulation process producing the method implemented throughout this project. 4 INTRODUCTION - Ludwig Wittgenstein. Culture and Value The passage above does not have a phonetic form but nonetheless exhibits a deep structure, a syntax and logical form, indicative of a capacity to create thought. The musical sequence above does not refer to any “physical” fact. These chords cannot be physically whistled. Just as the predicate “physically” is used above, the notation can only approximate the subject of the song. Wittgenstein meant to whistle this tune, “I destroy, I destroy, I destroy . .,” the articulation of which would mark the destruction of its own grammar. This project is on blackness—and punk. It is to propose