Deleuzean Reflections on a Black Metal Wolf

Rune Wolf - a black metal logo by Monkeyrumen (2011) 

deviantart.com

 

"The wolf is not fundamentally a characteristic or a certain number of characteristics; it is a wolfing." 

- Deleuze & Guattari

 

 

I. 

 

Yesterday, on a sunny spring afternoon, I went along to another meeting of the Subcultures Interest Group, this time held in a fifth floor room at the London College of Fashion, located, for those who don't know, on the East Bank of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford; directly opposite the London Stadium, which is where West Ham now play their football, having left Upton Park in 2016 (c'mon you Irons!). 

 

After discussing the graphic design of Dave King and the contents of the upcoming issue of SIG News, there were three short presentations by post-grad students, including one by Nael Ali, whose work on the figure of the goat within the genre of music known as war metal I briefly mentioned on Torpedo the Ark back in July 2024: click here.  

 

This time, however, there was nothing caprine about Ali's work. Instead, he spoke about the wolf as symbol within black metal; a topic which has special resonance for me as someone who has long been fascinated by the wolf within Norse mythology, folklore, and Nazi ideology [1]; as well as within the work of Deleuze and Guattari ...  

 

 

II.

 

As far as I'm aware, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari were never fans of black metal, but they did like wolves. Thus, in Mille Plateau (1980), for example, they tie their theory of multiplicities to the wolf pack and, later, illustrate their section on becoming-animal with a pair of Etruscan images of a wolf-man.  

 

Wishing to distance themselves from psychoanalysis, they insist that Freud, being myopic and hard of hearing, knew nothing about wolves, but only about domestic pets and puppy-dog's tails (how fair and how accurate that is, I don't know). 

 

Although we often speak of the lone wolf, D&G insist that you can never be such a thing; that individuals even of the most solitary or independent kind are always still part of the pack; i.e., one wolf among others. 

 

They write:

 

"In becoming-wolf, the important thing is [...] the position of the subject itself in relation to the pack or wolf-multiplicity: how the subject joins or does not join the pack [...] how it does or does not hold to the multiplicity." [2]

 

The key thing is: don't reduce the many to the one; don't flatten wolf packs and machinic assemblages and molecular multiplicities. And understand that becoming-wolf has nothing to do with representing oneself as such, or believing oneself to be a wolf; wolves are "intensities, speeds, temperatures, nondecomposable variable distances" [3]. 

 

In other words, becoming-wolf is all about shooting a line of flight or deterritorialization; not becoming hirsuite, growing large carniverous fangs, and howling at the moon like a lunatic. Sometimes, alas, I fear that our friends in the black metal community do not understand this; they seem readily seduced by medieval symbols, but to lack any knowledge of particles.        

 

Perhaps if you're the member of a black metal band then that doesn't matter too much. But if you're a doctoral research student, like Nael Ali, then you really should have an understanding of this and be able to refer to the reality of wolves within the libidinally material unconscious; they are not just imaginary or mythical in such a manner that allows us to extract from them structures of meaning or archetypal models, and lycanthropy is not simply a fantasy [4].  

 

I don't want to criticise the above too much - he is, I think, just starting his research into the topic of black metal wolves - but it's important, I think, that Ali recognise, for example, that becoming-wolf is not a game of correspondence between relations; "neither is it a resemblance, an imitation, or, at the limit, an identification" [5].

 

Finally, its interesting to note in closing just how black metalheads often think like theologians; in their Satanism, for example, and when it comes to the question of the werewolf. For like theologians, they seem to regard the idea of human beings becoming animal as profoundly immoral on the grounds that essential forms are inalienable. 

 

Notes

 

[1] This fascination can be traced all the way back to Pagan Magazine issue XI: 'Ragnarok: Twilight of the Gods and the Coming of the Wolf' (1986). 

      Later, in 2007, I as part of the Bodil Joensen Memorial Lectures at Treadwells, I gave a paper entitled 'In the Company of Wolves' which discussed lycanthropy and other forms of animal transformation with reference to the work of Angela Carter. 

     Finally, see also the post 'Operation Werewolf' published on TTA (6 Aug 2019), which dealt with the Nazi use of wolf mythology and symbolism: click here.

 

[2] Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (The Athlone Press, 1988), p. 29. 

 

[3] Ibid., p. 32.

 

[4] As Deleuze and Guattari write:

      "Becomings-animal are neither dreams nor phantasies. They are perfectly real.  But which reality is at issue here? For if becoming-animal does not consist in playing animal or imitating an animal, it is clear that a human does not 'really' become an animal [...] Becoming produces nothing other than itself. We fall into a false narrative if we say that you either imitate or you are. What is real is the becoming itself, the block of becoming, not the supposedly fixed terms through which that becoming passes."

      In other words: "The becoming-animal of the human being is real, even if the animal the human being becomes is not ..." See ATP, p. 238.  

 

[5] Ibid., p. 237. 

 

 

Surprise musical bonus; proto-black metal from 1933: click here.

 

On Subcultural Barbarism

Photo of Soo Catwoman by Ray Stevenson (1976)

The slogan is a paraphrase of a sentence written by Walter Benjamin [1] 

 

"Why do we fear and hate a possible reversion to barbarism? 

Because it would make people unhappier than they are? 

Oh no! The barbarians of every age were happier: let us not deceive ourselves!" - Nietzsche [2]

 

 

I. 

 

What constitutes a subculture?

 

I suppose, sociologically speaking, a subculture might be defined as a group of people who identify in terms of their shared tastes, values, interests, and practices whilst, at the same time, differentiating themselves to a greater or lesser degree from the dominant culture and its norms [3].

 

In other words, individuals form or join subcultures because they wish to develop an alternative lifestyle, but not necessarily one that calls for revolution or involves dropping out of society altogether. Such individuals may like to deviate from the straight and narrow, but they acknowledge the existence of a path and in as much as they offer resistance to cultural hegemony it's mostly of a symbolic nature.

 

 

II. 

 

In 1985, the French sociologist Michel Maffesoli transformed much of the thinking on subcultures by introducing the idea of neotribalism; a term that gained widespread currency after the publication of his book Le Temps des tribus three years later [4].

 

According to Maffesoli, the conventional approaches to understanding solidarity and society are no longer tenable. He contends that as modern mass culture and its institutions disintegrates, social existence is increasingly conducted through fragmented tribal groupings, informally organised around ideas, sounds, looks, and patterns of consumption.

 

He refers to punk rockers as an example of such a postmodern tribe and, interestingly, suggests that through generating chaos within wider culture they help revitalise the latter in a Dionysian manner [5]. 

 

Maffesoli, of course, is not without his critics and his work is often branded as controversial. However, I think we might relate his thinking on culture, modernity, and tribalism to Nietzsche's philosophy; in particular Nietzsche's longing for new barbarians who might prevent the ossification of culture ...    

 

III. 

 

Anyone who knows anything about Nietzsche knows that he loves Kultur - understood by him as the supreme way of stylising chaos in such a manner that man's highest form of agency (individual sovereignty) is made possible. 

 

In other words, culture is not that which simply allows us to be and does more than merely preserve old identities. Rather, it allows us to become singular, like stars, via a dynamic process of self-overcoming. 

 

Unfortunately, the powers which drive civilisation outweigh the forces of culture to such an extent that history appears to Nietzsche as the process via which the former take possession of the latter or divert them in its favour. 

 

Thus, there's not merely an abysmal antagonism between culture and civilisation [6]; the latter, in Nietzsche's view, co-opts and exploits the more spiritual qualities possessed by a people which have developed organically from within the conditions of their existence. 

 

This becoming-reactive of culture is, as Deleuze reminds us, the source of Nietzsche's greatest disappointment; things begin Greek and end up German as human vitality and creativity becomes overcoded by the coordinating power of the modern state. 

 

So ... what can be done to prevent this or to release the forces of culture once more? How do we free life wherever it is encased within a fixed form? In The Birth of Tragedy (1872), Nietzsche famously calls for a cultural revolution, only to quickly realise that this ain't gonna happen. 

 

And so Nietzsche changes tack and instead of pinning his hopes on an alliance between artists and philosophers to save the day, he invokes a breed of new barbarians who, via subcultural activity, cast off the horny covering of civilisation so that new growth becomes possible and who, when confronted with the ways in which the dominant social order breaks down, "make no attempt at recodification" [7]. 

 

Of course, the question that arises is where will these new barbarians come from. This was a question that troubled D. H. Lawrence as well as Nietzsche, for both recogised that despite the modern world being very full of people there were no longer "any great reservoirs of energetic barbaric life" [8] existing outside the gate.

 

And so, we will need our barbarians to come from within - although not from the depths, so much as from the heights. For Nietzsche's new barbarians are not merely iconoclasts driven by a will to destruction, rather, they're cynics and experimenters; "a species of conquering and ruling natures in search of material to mold" [9] who embody a "union of spiritual superiority with well-being and excess of strength" [10]. 

 

The question of culture and subcultural barbarism is badly conceived if considered only in terms of 'Anarchy in the UK' (and I say that as a sex pistol): what's required is what Adam Ant would term a wild nobility.

 

 

IV.

 

To believe in the ruins, doesn't mean that one wishes to stay forever among the ruins; a permanently established barbarism would simply be another oppressive system of philistine stupidity. Eventually, we have to start to build up new little habitats; cultivating new forms and new ideas upon discord and difference (i.e., stylising chaos).

One of the key roles of the Subcultures Interest Group [11] is to both document and inspire such activity by rediscovering something of the creative energy or potential that lies dormant in the past and projecting such into the future so that we might live yesterday tomorrow (as Malcolm would say) [12].

 

That's not easy: and it's not simply a question of revivalism; it's neither possible nor desirable to go back to an earlier time and mode of existence (despite what the writers of Life on Mars might encourage us to believe) [13]. 

 

It involves, rather, a few brave souls working with knowing mystery for "the resurrection of a new body, a new spirit, a new culture" [14] and accepting back into their lives "all that has hitherto been forbidden, despised, accursed" [15] ... (i.e., becoming-barbarian).    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This famous sentence from Benjamin's 'Thesis on the Philosophy of History' (1940) actually reads: "There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism." 

      This essay, composed of twenty numbered paragraphs, was first translated into English by Harry Zohn and included in the collection of essays by Benjamin entitled Illuminations, ed. Hanah Arendt (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968). 

      Alternatively, it can be found under the title 'On the Concept of History' in Vol. 4 of Benjamin's Selected Writings, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 389-400. See paragraph VII on p. 392. 

 

[2] Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press, 1982), V. 429, p. 184.

 

[3] Those whose opposition to or rejection of the mainstream is actually their defining characteristic are probably best described as countercultural militants rather than simply members of a subculture.

 

[4] Le Temps des tribus: le déclin de l'individualisme dans les sociétés de masse was translated into English by Don Smith as The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society, (SAGE Publications Ltd., 1995). 

[5] In other words, as a polemologist, Maffesoli is attracted to the idea of foundational violence and the vital need for conflict within society. See his 1982 work L’ombre de Dionysos: contribution à une sociologie de l'orgie, trans. into English by Cindy Linse and Mary Kristina Palmquist as The Shadow of Dionysus: A Contribution to the Sociology of the Orgy (State University of New York Press, 1993). 

      Readers might find a post published in February of this year on Sid Vicious of interest, as it explores the Dionysian aspects of the young Sex Pistols' tragic death: click here.  

 

[6] Nietzsche maintained a common opposition within German letters between Kultur and Zivilization, defining the latter in terms of scientific and material progress, whilst insisting the former was invested with a more spiritual quality (Geist). See, for example, note 121 in The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (Vintage Books, 1968), p. 75.

 

[7] Gilles Deleuze, 'Nomad Thought', in The New Nietzsche, ed. David B. Allison (The MIT Press, 1992), p. 143. 

 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 189.

 

[9] Nietzsche, The Will to Power ... IV 900, p. 479. 

 

[10] Ibid., IV 899, p. 478. 

      Nietzsche makes several remarks on barbarians and barbarism in his published work, not just in his Nachlass. See, for example, Beyond Good and Evil where he identifies barbarians as culture-founders; "their superiority lay, not in their physical strength, but primarily in their psychical - they were more complete human beings" (9. 257). Translation by R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1990), p. 192. 

[11] The Subcultures Interest Group (SIG) is a diverse and informal collective of academics and artists operating out of the University of the Arts London. Established in 2019, they regularly publish a paper - SIG News - which aims to open a window on to the work being undertaken by members of the Group. Click here for further information. For a review of  SIG News 3 on Torpedo the Ark (28 July 2024), click here for part one of the post and/or here for part two  

 

[12] See the post published on Torpedo the Ark dated 10 June 2024: click here.

 

[13] Life on Mars is a British TV series, first broadcast on BBC One (2006-07), devised and written by Matthew Graham, Tony Jordan and Ashley Pharoah, and starring John Simm as Detective Inspector Sam Tyler, who, following a car accident, wakes up to find himself in 1973. See the post published on 2 October 2024 in which I discuss this seductive (but ultimately fatal) fantasy: click here.   

 

[14] Henry Miller, The World of Lawrence: A Passionate Appreciation, ed. Evelyn J. Hinz and John J. Teunissen (John Calder (Publishers) Ltd., 1985), p. 217.  

 

[15] Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1988), p. 96.

 

 

With continued gratitude to Keith Ansell-Pearson whose work on Nietzsche helped shaped my own thinking 30 years ago.

 

 

Starving for Perfection: On the Thinspirational Figure of Karen Carpenter

 Young America at its very best ...

 Karen Carpenter (1950-1983)

 

"Wants to look like a star / but she takes it too far ..." [a]

 

I. 

 

Having recently attended a seminar organised by the Subcultures Interest Group (SIG) at the London College of Communication, where discussion focused on Paul Tornbohm's book on the Carpenters (Sonic Bond Publishing, 2023), I find myself intrigued by the tragic figure of Karen Carpenter. 

 

Not so much her distinctive vocal skills or ability as a drummer, but her will to self-perfection and self-annihilation physically manifested in the form of anorexia; an eating disorder typically found in young women and which, according to Baudrillard, might also be seen as a form of social repulsion; i.e., a means of rejecting a gluttonous and disgusting world of consumption via the ecstasy of emptiness [b]. 

 

George McKay, a professor in media studies at the University of East Anglia, has written on Carpenter, her condition, and its representation in a fascinating 2018 essay which more broadly explores the relation between the anorexic body and popular music, and it's his essay around which I shall centre (a brief) discussion here [c]. 

 

 

II.

 

Drawing on and seeking to develop the work of other commentators concerned with celebrity anorexia, McKay expresses a "critical interest in ways in which the practices and expectations of the music industry set a conformist template of corporeality, particularly for its female stars" [2]. 

 

There's undoubtedly some truth in this idea, though it's not a template that all female artists within the music industry have felt obliged to conform to; one thinks of Big Mama Thornton and Cass Elliot, for example, and I'm pretty sure that even those who set such a template don't expect performers to starve themselves to death; they usually look to protect their investment, even if, in some cases, an untimely death can lead to an increase in record sales [d].  

Whilst it's a little unfair to think of Carpenter as the face of anorexia - she was, after all, one of the great pop voices of the twentieth-century, much admired by her peers and influential on numerous later artists - it was nevertheless her death in 1983 from complications associated with a condition which she began to exhibit symptoms of in 1975 [e], that first brought anorexia into the public arena. 

 

Before then, it was little known outside of showbiz and medical circles and it's for her anorexia that many people remember Karen Carpenter today; particularly those - like me - who are more concerned with matters critical and clinical than (middle of the road) musical.       

 

As McKay notes, anorexia nervosa fascinates because whilst it may be viewed as "a mental health issue leading to or presenting in a diminished corporeality" [4], it can also be regarded as a phenomenon "originating at least in part in the socio-cultural" [4].

 

Its complexity (and ambiguity) doesn't stop there either: as Helen Malson and Jane Ussher have observed, the anorexic body may be "'discursively construed in a multiplicity of often conflicting ways'" [f]. For example, it may "signify both self-production (of idealised body or identity) and self-destruction (symbolically and physically)" [4]. 

 

That's why such a body is often discussed from a political and philosophical perpective; not least of all by feminist authors.

 

 

III.

 

Surprisingly, McKay found fewer than expected mentions or images of Carpenter within the online pro-ana community, where one might have thought she'd have been given special status. He suspects this is because "lyrically there is no obvious mention of eating disorders in the Carpenters' repertoire, not even in song titles" [18]. 

 

Alternatively, it could be because "the music's smoothness is not heard as containing identifiable sonic signifiers of suffering, pain or anger" [18]. In other words, even those who might otherwise acknowledge Karen Carpenter as one of their own find the Carpenters mind numbingly dull.  

Having said that, I think Karen's story is one that should resonate strongly with those who think of anorexia in quasi-religious terms as a spiritual-ascetic practice; those who speak of birds and angels and of the idea that one might take flight if only disciplined enough to achieve purity and perfection in a corrupt and fallen world weighed down by the spirit of gravity [g].

The fact that she died at such a relatively young age - though far too old to join the 27 Club [h] - must surely make Miss Carpenter a martyr-saint in the eyes of those who regard anorexia as a miraculous rather than a nervous condition [i]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Lines from the song 'Never Good Enough' (2006), by Canadian singer-songwriter Rachel Ferguson; a favourite tune with many in the pro-ana community (or subculture): click here. 

 

[b] Long time readers - or those who investigated some of the older posts on TTA - will know that I have previously written with reference to anorexia (at times from a vaguely pro-ana perspective) on several occasions: click here, for example, or here. 

 

[c] George McKay, 'Skinny blues: Karen Carpenter, anorexia nervosa and popular music', Popular Music, Volume 37, Issue 1, (Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 1-21. Page references to this essay will be given directly in the post. Click here to access the essay in the UEA digital repository.

 

[d] McKay notes that by exerting constant pressure to look a certain way and perform in a certain manner, the music industry does bear some responsibility for when its young female stars implode. However, it's worth noting that professional dancers and fashion models have much greater pressure exerted on them to be ultra-thin than pop performers; see David M. Garner and Paul E. Garfinkel, 'Socio-cultural factors in the development of anorexia nervosa', in Psychological Medicine, Vol. 10, Issue 4, (1980), pp. 647-656. Cited by McKay.

 

[e] Carpenter had begun dieting at an early age and weighed around 120 pounds in 1973, when the Carpenters were at the peak of their success. By the autumn of 1975, however, she was below the weight that is popularly branded as that of a weakling - i.e., under 98 pounds - and fans were shocked at her gaunt appearance. Carpenter refused to publicly acknowledge that she was suffering with an eating disorder, however, and dismissed concerns about her health and wellbeing. Some might suggest this indicates anosognosia, but McKay argues (2018, 2):

      "Her lack of public utterance on her anorexia, right up to her death, is understandable, given her lonely and vulnerable position as the global star first and most associated with it. However, it is also problematic, not least since it leaves key male figures [including her brother Richard ...] to shape and control her narrative [...]" 

 

[f] See Helen M. Malson and Jane M. Ussher, 'Beyond this mortal coil: femininity, death and discursive constructions of the anorexic body', in Mortality: Promoting the Interdisciplinary Study of Death and Dying, Vol. 2, Issue 1, (1997), pp. 43- 61. Quoted by McKay.     

 

[g] McKay writes (2018, 12): "Karen seemed to be striving for what she thought of as versions of perfection in voice and in body ..." and he reminds us of the following lyric: 'I know I ask perfection of a quite imperfect world' in the song 'I Need to Be in Love', released as a single from the album A Kind of Hush (A&M Records, 1976). 

 

[h] The 27 Club is made up of popular musicians and other artists who died at the age of 27 and includes, for example, Janis Joplin and Amy Winehouse. Karen Carpenter was 32 when she died on 4 February, 1983. 

 

[i] One day, I'll write a post on the holy concept of anorexia mirabilis; an eating disorder common amongst medieval nuns and religiously devoted young women keen to imitate the suffering (and experience the passion) of Christ.  

 

Musical bonus: The Carpenters, '(They Long to Be) Close to You', single release from the studio album Close to You (A&M Records, 1970): click here for the official video on YouTube courtesy of Warner Music Videos. 

 

Notes on SIG News Issue 3: From Bomber Jackets to the Joy of Punxploitation

It's all working well for him and it's all going smoothly for McQueen

 

NB: this post is a continuation from part one: click here. 

 

 

V. 

The MA-1 - or bomber jacket, as it is better known - was a popular fashion staple in the 1980s; particularly with skinheads, who loved both its utility and hypermasculinity (as did certain gay clones). 

 

However, as Ian Trowell reminds us, what imbued this garment with such great "subcultural crossover potential" [1] was the fact it evaded fixed meaning. This also helps explain its strange longevity.

 

That and the fact that what's good enough for Steve McQueen, is, as a rule, good enough for anyone (although, for the record, I never owned a bomber jacket and wouldn't have dreamed of wearing such). 

 

 

VI.

 

Mike Wyeld and Antony Price are both concerned with subcultural politics. 

 

The former asks whether punk or acid house, for example, has resulted in any long lasting political change. I think we all know the answer to this, even Wyeld, although he wants to keep the dream alive so can't quite bring himself to openly admit it hasn't.

 

Price, on the other hand, is adamant that rave continues to offer a form of "collective resistance to the oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism" [2]. 

 

Unfortunately, Jean Baudrillard has indicated how and why the very idea of resistance in a transpolitical era characterised by the techno-social immersion of the individual rather than their alienation, has become problematic and even a little passé. Speaking in an interview with François L'Yvonnet, Baudrillard says: 

 

"I'm a bit resistant to the idea of resistance, since it belongs to the world of critical, rebellious, subversive thought, and that is all rather outdated. If you have a conception of integral reality, of a reality that's absorbed all negativity, the idea of resisting it, of disputing its validity, of setting one value against another and countering one system with another, seems pious and illusory." [3]

 

Of course, that isn't to say that there cannot exist singular spaces which, at a particular moment, constitute themselves as alternative worlds with their own set of rules. And that's pretty much how Price describes nightclubs:

 

"At their best, nightclubs are places for experimentation, for inclusiveness and exclusiveness, a place to try out different personas, to challenge sexual identity and orientation through both individual and collective freedoms, a space to move outside of the confines of society." [4] 

The problem is, anyone who has actually been to a nightclub recognises that this is mostly bullshit. And even if nightclubs were (at their best) heterotopic wonderlands of transgression and otherness, they still wouldn't offer the kind of head-on socio-political resistance that Price imagines and advocates. 

 

 

VII.

According to Madeline Lucarelli, the practice of witchcraft has been transformed via the establishment of online communities. No longer concerned with the casting of spells and the harnessing of supernatural forces, witchcraft is now all about personal growth and spiritual freedom [5].  

 

Alas, if Lucarelli is to be believed, witchcraft has therefore become a depressingly tame affair; no sex, no scourging, no satanic ritual ... The Dionysian frenzy of the orgy and the blasphemous humour of the black mass appears to have given way to a New Age theology that upholds many of the same woke values that any good liberal might recognise. 

 

Wicca, I'm sorry to say, is now a humanism. And the witch, far from being a figure who inspires terror or offers resistance to hegemonic society, is now merely a Twilight-reading Barbie Goth hardly deserving of the name.

 

 

VIII.

 

Finally [6], we come to Russ Bestley's article on the joy of punxploitation and his deep fascination with Plastic Bertrand's international hit single 'Ça plane pour moi' (1977).

 

Whilst Bestley struggles to say what, exactly, first attracted him to this song, I think I understand (and to an extent share) his love of those songs which have all the energy of punk but which are not weighed down by the spirit of gravity; songs which privilege the joy and laughter of pop over the austere monarchy of rock [7].

Bestley recognises that fun is a vital element of popular culture, even if it is often valued negatively by those commentators whose language succumbs all too easily to moralising imperatives; i.e., the kind of people who are embarrassed by the crude and shallow entertainments enjoyed by the working-class and who will never accept the fact that 'Friggin' in the Riggin'' was a bigger selling-single than 'Holidays in the Sun'.

 

I agree with Bestley that 'Ça plane pour moi' amusingly manages to "embody so much of what 'punk' set out to achieve" [8]. So click the link above, roll around with your cat on the bed, and enjoy!

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Ian Trowell, 'Bomber Crew: Storying the Eighties Through the MA-1', SIG News 3 (1 September, 2024), p. 12.  

[2] Antony Price, 'Rave On', SIG News 3 (1 September, 2024), p. 30.

 

[3] Jean Baudrillard, Fragments, trans. Chris Turner (Routledge, 2004), p. 71.

 

[4] Antony Price, 'Rave On', SIG News 3 (1 September, 2024), p. 30.

 

[5] See Madeline Lucarelli, 'The Body, Broom and Sins of the Witch', SIG News 3 (1 September, 2024), p. 22.

 

[6] It should be noted that there are numerous other articles in SIG News 3 that I have not discussed. These include Rachel Brett's piece on fashion's relationship with the colour black (a dark history I have myself written on here); Isabella Chiara Vicco's piece on Jerry Rubin and his metamorphosis from yippie to yuppie; and Shijiao Kou's musicological analysis of 'Hong Kong Garden' (the debut single by Siouxsie and the Banshees). Oh, and there's also my piece on the revolt into red-trousered style.   

[7] The phrase 'spirit of gravity' is borrowed from Nietzsche (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) and the phrase 'austere monarchy' is borrowed from Foucault (The History of Sexuality 1). I have written on rockism contra poptimism and in defence of fun elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark: click here and here.

[8] Russ Bestley, 'Ça Plane Pour Moi': The Joy of Punxploitation', SIG News 3 (1 September, 2024), p. 27.  

 

 

Notes on SIG News Issue 3: From Girlypop to Reconceptualising the Skateboard Graphic

SIG News Issue 3

(September 1st, 2024)

 

 

I.

 

For those who don't know, SIG is an acronym for the Subcultures Interest Group; an informal collective operating out of the University of the Arts London (UAL) concerned with what we might briefly describe as the politics of style.

 

They have conveniently published a ten-point manifesto, which, amongst other things, declares the group's resistance to temporal colonisation, that is to say, the imposition of a perpetual present in which it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine a future (or remember a past) that is radically different.

 

Via a number of disruptive techniques, including the reversal of old ideas and subcultural practices into the future, members of SIG attempt to live yesterday tomorrow and loosen the "aura of necessity and sanctity surrounding categories of the present" [1]. 

 

It's more a form of retrofuturism than nostalgia: "The pull of the future informs our drawing from the passed to provide the necessary soil and toil of the present" [2], as point 3 of the SIG Manifesto puts it.

 

Anyway, the third issue of SIG News (cover dated 1 September 2024) is out now and I thought it might be fun to take a look ...

 

 

II.    

 

The issue opens with a piece by Ross Schartel on developments in the world of girlypop following the social media phenomenon of #barbiecore. 

 

Now, I have to admit, I'm not really up to speed with these microtrends driven by TikTok; nor had I ever heard of Chappell Roan. 

 

Nevertheless, I was interested to learn of attempts to reclaim the hyperfeminine, even if Chappell Roan is clearly a pop persona heavily influenced by drag performance and rooted in queer cynicism rather than anything affirmative of the fact that girls at their most phenomenal and inhuman are extraordinary events whose individuation doesn't proceed via subjectivity, but by pure haecceity. 

 

In other words, girls are defined not by their girlyness or material composition (sugar and spice), but by the intensive affects of which they are capable. 

 

 

III.

 

Moving on, there's a nice piece on the British rockabilly revival of the late 1970s and early '80s by Jake Hawkes. 

 

I'm not sure, however, about the truth value of his claim that rockabilly was "the most forward-thinking subculture" of the period and when he writes that it feels "closer to the zeitgeist today" [3] one can't help asking the very same question that Mencius Moldbug once put to Richard Dawkins: What, exactly, is this Zeitgeist thing?

 

There's also an easy read article by Paul Tornbohm on London's easy listening scene in the 1990s, something I missed but would very much have enjoyed being part of had I only known about it, loving as I do TV theme tunes and the delights of Gallic pop, for example.

 

I wasn't quite sure what to make of Nael Ali's piece - 'The Goats of War Metal' - though I smiled when he conceded that the theme of gender politics in relation to his area of research "might be a topic" [4] worthy of future discussion - I would say so!

 

I would also suggest that Ali read the following by D. H. Lawrence:

 

Firstly, the poem 'He-Goat', in which Lawrence explores the wilful egotism of a male goat and the destructive aspects of libidinous desire [5]; and secondly, a letter written to Aldous Huxley [28 Oct 1928] in which Lawrence dismisses art which tries desperately to be transgressive as romantic and fascistic; a pornographic mix of the sentimental and the sensational. 

 

He writes: "if you only palpitate to murder, suicide, and rape in their various degrees [...] it becomes a phantasmal boredom and produces ultimately inertia [...] and final atrophy of the feelings" [6], which will of course result in war.  

 

IV.

 

Sadly, I just missed the skateboard craze of the 1980s: when I was a nipper, we used to make do with a book and skate to race down Daventry Road. 

 

Nevertheless, I did appreciate Joel Lardner's argument in his article on skateboard graphics that "visual interruption and glitch work call forth the distinct performative model in which these graphics are received, reflecting the inevitable accident, an ever-present aspect of skateboard practice" [7] - that's a clever insight. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] William E. Connolly, Political Theory and Modernity (Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. ix.  

[2] The SIG Manifesto can be found on the back cover of SIG News 3 (1 Sept 2024). Those who wish for more information on the Subcultures Interest Group can contact k.quinn@fashion.arts.ac.uk or r.bestley@lcc.ac.uk 

[3] Jake Hawkes, SIG News 3 (UAL, 1 September 2024), p. 5. 

 

[4] Nael Ali, SIG News 3 (UAL, 1 September 2024), p. 9.  

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'He-Goat', The Poems, Vol. 1, ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 334-336. The poem can also be found on allpoetry.com: click here.  

[6] D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 600.

[7] Joel Lardner, SIG News 3 (UAL, 1 September 2024), p.10.

 

 

This post continues in part two: click here.