In Anticipation of the Forthcoming Book 'Punk & the Animal' (Intellect Books, 2026)

(Intellect Books, 2026)
 

 

I. 

 

One of the forthcoming books I'm looking forward to this autumn is Punk & the Animal: Ethos, Ethics and Aesthetics, ed. Laura D. Gelfand and Angela Bartram [1]. 

 

And the reason I'm curious is because apart from the fact that Sid Vicious was named after Rotten's aggressive pet hamster, I can't really think of any alignment or intersections between a subcultural movement that originated in the 1970s and multicellular organisms belonging to the biological kingdom Animalia [2]. 

 

In fact, one of the things that lyricist and lead singer with the Sex Pistols, Johnny Rotten, insisted upon was that he was not an animal [3] and the punk movement as I remember it was an urban experience with a deliberate sense of its own artificiality [4].  

 

And so, it will be amusing to see how, for example, Kieran Cashell approaches the idea of punk as enactive animality (i.e., a form of nonhuman behaviour). And it will be fun to discover what rodent-loving Russ Bestley has to tell us about the rat in punk lore [5].

 

 

II.

 

If I'd been asked to contribute to the above volume - which I wasn't - I suppose I may have discussed the division of animals into three main categories made by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus [6]:

 

(i) Oedipal animals - particularly pampered pets with which people form sentimental attachments. It's popularly believed that dog owners come to resemble their mutts, but, unfortunately, it's more often the case that domesticated creatures reflect the all-too-human neuroses and petty personal histories of their owners.  

 

(ii) State animals - i.e., archetypal (sometimes mythological) creatures affiliated with fixed territories and molar classifications; noble beasts that symbolise the power and history of a nation, such as the lion and the unicorn as seen on the UK's Royal Coat of Arms.  

 

(iii) Pack animals - i.e., demonic creatures that must be conceived collectively, such as wolves, bats, and rats. Deleuze and Guattari are also fond of animals that typically swarm - particularly insects - as they conveniently illustrate the idea of a multiplicity (a large, self-organising body or assemblage). 

 

No prizes for guessing which category they were most excited by. 

 

And no prizes either for what my argument would have been; namely, that we might also describe these pack animals as punk animals and examine how forming a molecular alliance with these creatures may enable a becoming-animal of the human being [7].  

 

 

 

 Stuffed punk rat made by mbcreature

etsy.com 

 

Notes

 

[1] For more details of this text due to be published in October - including a list of contents - please visit the Intellect website: click here.  

 

[2] Cynics might suggest that this volume is primarily an example of academic trend-merging; a hybrid book born of two increasingly exhausted sub-genres - Punk Studies and Animal Studies - as publishers, editors, and authors all desperately seek novel areas of research.

 

[3] I'm referencing the track 'Bodies', which can be found on the album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (Virgin Records, 1977): click here. 

 

[4] I'm aware that the second wave of punk in the early 1980s became concerned with animal rights, anti-vivisection, and vegetarianism. But this anarcho-hippie variant (typified by bands like Crass) wasn't something I was involved in or cared about.

 

[5] Dr Kieran Cashell is a lecturer and researcher at the Limerick School of Art and Design, within the Technological University of the Shannon, Ireland. His chapter is titled 'Nonhuman Behaviour: Punk as Enactive Animality' and opens Punk & the Animal (2026). 

      Dr Russ Bestley is Reader in Graphic Design & Subcultures at London College of Communication (University of the Arts London). His chapter immediately follows and is titled 'Rattus rattus: The Rat in Punk Lore'.

 

[6] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (The Athlone Press, 1988). See the section '1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible ...' (pp. 232-309). 

      Note that Deleuze and Guattari also allow for exceptional animals that can't always be categorised; animals such as Moby Dick, for example, or the Cheshire Cat. Russ might like to be reminded also that they make frequent reference to rats - including the large and highly intelligent rat named Ben, star of the 1971 American horror movie Willard (dir. Daniel Mann).

 

[7] I really don't wish to go over the concept of becoming-animal again at any length, as I have discussed and referenced this idea in several earlier posts on Torpedo the Ark: click here. 

      Let it suffice to say that it describes a dynamic and experimental process whereby a subject detaches from fixed, normative identities and enters a continuous, molecular flow of traits, speeds, and affects shared with the non-human world. It does not mean mimicking, imitating, or literally transforming into an animal - and it involves more than merely using an image of rat, for example, as a band logo à la The Stranglers. 

 

 

Torpedo the Ark Goes k-punk: A Little Bit More Politics (Sections I - VI)

Mark Fisher photographed in 2011 at 

Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona 

 

'Politics is the last great sentimental indulgence of mankind and it has never achieved anything 

except a deepened idiocy ... Quite naturally we are bored of it to the point of acute sickness.' 

                                                                                                                     - Nick Land (1992)

 

 

I. 

 

Having read the first fifty-odd pages of Mark Fisher's political writings collected in k-punk (2018) [a] and having commented on them in a previously published post - click here - I must confess I'm increasingly sympathetic to Nick Land's position stated above.

 

However, once I start reading a book, I'm like the proverbial dog with a bone ... And so, here are some more fragmented remarks on Fisher's political writings, as I once more pick out those things that either inspire or irritate; delight or disappoint ...   

 

 

II.  

 

For Fisher, Damien Hirst is the artist of capitalist realism par excellence. Thus, whilst he's "not interested in rehearsing [...] discussions of Hirst's merits as an artist" (444), he is interested in Hirst's "symptomatic status as a figure who embodies capital's penetration into all areas of culture" (444). 

 

Personally, I think it a little ridiculous to even mention Hirst in the same sentence as Andy Warhol, but Fisher claims that the former is, in fact, "the Warhol of capitalist realism" (444) albeit one who has "none of Warhol's blank charisma" (444) - or genius. 

 

Fisher writes:

 

"In place of Warhol's android awkwardness Hirst offers a blokish bonhomie. Warhol's studied banality has become the genuinely ultrabanal. Or, rather, the Hirst phenomenon typifies the way in which, in late-capitalist art and entertainment culture, the ultrabanal and the super-spectacular have become (con)fused." (444-445)  

 

For Fisher, Hirst's work lacks any ambiguity: it is what it is, no more, no less, and in its flat realism it "leaves no space for commentary" (445). His dead animals in formaldehyde "cannot be re-imagined, transfigured or changed" (445) - just like the political system and the culture which produced them. 

 

 

III. 

 

Torpedo the Ark wasn't a thing back in the summer of 2012, but, if it had been, I'm pretty sure that what Fisher says of the London Olympics is what I would have said: they were designed to be a massive distraction; "the antidote to all discontent" (449).  

 

Sit back, relax, forget all your worries, and enjoy the show - brought to you by McDonalds and Coca-Cola. 

 

Just to be clear: you can hate the greed and cynicism of the corporate sponsors and hate the media who broadcast the event with professional enthusiasm - or hysterical PR delirium as Fisher describes it - and still love the sport (though, in my case, I don't give a shit about sweaty athletes competing for medals and breaking records). 

 

Fisher nails exactly what's going on:

 

"The point of capital's sponsorship of cultural and sporting events is not only the banal one of accruing brand awareness. Its more important function is to make it seem that capital's involvement is a precondition for culture as such. [...] It is a pervasive reinforcement of capitalist realism." (450)

 

Amusingly, Mark isn't a fan either of the ArcelorMittal Orbit - that 376-ft sculpture and observation tower designed by Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond and intended to be a lasting legacy of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. My mother described it as an eyesore, but Fisher says it's the perfect symbol of the inertia and sterility of capitalist realist culture.     

 

 

IV.

 

Capitalist realism is both a belief and an attitude: we believe that it is the only viable option (that there is no alternative); and we therefore resign ourselves to this with a mixture of defeatism and depression - politics is over, history has terminated, and now we're all in it together. 

 

Fisher thinks the only hope is to raise consciousness among the young; get them to see that there can be an alternative modernity (only don't confuse this with postmodernism, which, like Fredric Jameson, he hates and believes to be the cultural logic of late capitalism). 

 

The other thing to do is get the young to engage with mainstream forms and institutions (despite what the anarchists say); "the idea that mainstream culture is inherently coopted, and all we can do is withdraw from it, is deeply flawed" (466) [b]. That is perhaps the most liberal-sounding thing Fisher ever wrote, although, arguably, it is entirely consistent with his radical politics (later named acid communism).   

 

Where I do not agree with Fisher, however, is on the question of success and failure. In a revealing passage, he writes:

 

"There is too much toleration of failure [...] If I ever have to hear again that Samuel Beckett quote, 'Try again, fail again, fail better', I will go mad. Why do we even think in these terms? There is no honour in failure, though there is no shame in it if you have tried to succeed. Instead of that stupid slogan we should aim to learn from our mistakes in order to succeed next time. The odds might be stacked in such a way that we do keep losing, but the point is to increase our collective intelligence. That requires, if not a party structure of the old type, then at least some kind of system of coordination and some system of memory." (467)  

   

My goodness me! Anyone wishing to know how, where, and why k-punk differs from TTA might be advised to start with this passage ... 

 

First of all, no matter what Fisher seems to think, even if we can learn from our mistakes, we don't learn how to succeed in the future. At most, as Beckett indicates, we learn only how to fail better. For as much as we may wish to believe that endurance, struggle and sacrifice will eventually pay off, success is never an option: we are destined and doomed to fail; such is the tragic character of existence (it takes what Nietzsche calls a pessimism of strength to affirm this and find in it a source of dark comedy) [c].   

 

Secondly, unlike Mr Fisher, I do not think in terms of honour and shame and I would not wish to belong to the kind of collectivist culture which subscribes to this way of thinking (and judging); i.e., the kind of culture where breaches of social or religious norms that threaten to bring shame (or dishonour) upon a family or community often lead to ugly acts of violence.

 

Linking these notions to a system of coordination, memory, and collective intelligence sounds suspiciously like the imposition of a bureaucratic superego to me and one fears that even the most acidic form of communism would invariably result in increased surveillance, control, and conformity [d]. Prioritising the collective over the individual and thinking in terms of honour and shame obliges us to align with party goals and justifies the State using public humiliation to punish deviants and deter dissent [e].

 

Obviously, Fisher wouldn't want this to happen. But the language he uses in the passage above makes me more than a little uncomfortable ...    

 

 

V.

 

For me, Fisher is at his best when at his most outrageous; as he is in the piece entitled 'Suffering with a Smile' (2013), in which he describes how the division between life and work no longer exists and that even CEOs are servants of the Machine. 

 

Now workers are not only stretched to their physical limits, but obliged to smile and show how much they love their jobs:

 

"Being exploited is no longer enough. The nature of labour now is such that almost anyone, no matter how menial their position, is required to be seen (over)investing in their work. What we are forced into is not merely work, in the old sense of undertaking an activity we don't want to perform; no, now we are forced to act as if we want to work." (473)

 

And yet ... that's not quite right: "The subjugatory libidinal forces [...] don't want us to entirely conceal our misery. For what enjoyment is there to be had from exploiting a worker who actually delights in their work?" (473)

 

And so, in order to understand the sadistic game being played now in the world of work, one must consider the pornographic practice of bukkake:

 

"Here, men ejaculate in women's faces, and the women are required to act as if they enjoy it [...] What's being elicited from the women is an act of simulation. The humiliation is not adequate unless they are seen to be performing an enjoyment they don't actually feel. Paradoxically, however, the subjugation is only complete if there are some traces of resistance. A happy smile, ritualised submission; this is nothing unless signs of misery can also be detected in the eyes." (474)

 

That's a brilliant insight into the staging of desire and reminds one of how cruelty remains one of the oldest pleasures of mankind ...[f] 

 

   

VI. 

 

One of the ironies of punk was that although it protested against boredom, it was in fact born of such and derived much of its impetus and inspiration from the fact that everything in the mid-1970s seemed so bloody boring to many teenagers looking for emotional rages as TV Smith would have it [g].

 

Fisher understands that and regrets the manner in which smartphones have effectively eliminated boredom via constant distraction. Now, young people are anxious and depressed, but never bored. 

 

Amusingly, he writes that he almost feels nostalgic for the "dreary void of Sundays, the night hours after television stopped broadcasting, even the endless dragging minutes waiting in queues or for public transport" (485). The smartphone provides a vast array of features and applications offering instant, on-demand entertainment - who could ask for more?

 

Fisher, for one - and I'd second him here: "Boredom was ambivalent; it wasn't simply a negative feeling that one simply wanted rid of. For punk, the vacancy of boredom was a challenge, an injunction and an opportunity ..." (485)    

 

In neutralising boredom and dispersing our attention, capitalism has made everything boring! 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Mark Fisher, k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004 - 2016), ed. Darren Ambrose (Repeater Books, 2018). Please note that all page references to this text will be given directly in the post.

 

[b] In the article 'How to Kill a Zombie: Strategising the End of Neoliberalism' (2013), Fisher writes: "Neo-anarchist doctrine maintains that we should abandon mainstream media and parliament - but our abandoning it has only allowed for neoliberals to extend their power and influence." (478). 

      Similarly, Fisher argues that the anarchist emphasis on direct action "conceals a despair about the possibility of indirect action" (478), yet it is only via the latter that "the control of ideological narratives is achieved" (478).  

      And later, in 'Limbo is Over' - a k-punk post from April 2015 - Fisher even breaks ranks with his then hero Russell Brand and encourages people to get out and vote: "It's hard not to have some sympathy with Brand's disdain for voting [...] But the problem is that popular disengagement from parliamentary politics suits the right more than us." (490) I don't know if that's true, but I tend to share Sartre's position on this question and agree that whilst it might make sense to sometimes vote against, one should never vote for.   

 

[c] See my post on Beckett's phrase from Worstward Ho (1983) dated 11 June 2013: click here.    

 

[d] Fisher would obviously challenge this. Indeed, in 'How to Kill a Zombie' he does precisely that, writing that whilst he doesn't want a return to "old-school Leninism", he would like to see the left get a little more organised and "overcome certain habits of anti-Stalinist thinking" (479), so that it might impose an effective programme of change and take seriously the task of actively dismantling neoliberalism. 

      In other words - and Fisher is explicit about this - the task for those on the left is not merely to rethink questions of solidarity, but retrain in the art of class war. I'm afraid this is all a bit too militant for my tastes.   

 

[e] Readers will recall how, in the Soviet Union, prorabotka sessions were held in workplaces and universities; or how, in Maoist China, class enemies were forced to publicly confess misdeeds and wear derogatory signs, thereby creating a culture of self-censorship and fear, wherein individuals closely monitored their own actions to avoid being labelled a regime opponent.

 

[f] In Daybreak (I. 18), Nietzsche argues that cruelty should not be viewed as a perverse aberration, but, rather, as one of the "oldest festive joys of mankind". In his view, the ability to inflict or witness suffering was historically not only a source of deep delight, but also an act via which "the community refreshes itself and for once throws off the gloom of constant fear and caution". 

      I am using R. J. Hollingdale's translation in the 1982 Cambridge University Press edition of Nietzsche's book originally published in German as Morgenröthe - Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurtheile (1881).    

 

[g] I'm referencing the song 'Bored Teenagers', written by TV Smith of punk group The Adverts (which featured as the b-side of their hit single 'Gary Gilmore's Eyes' (Anchor Records, 1977): click here to watch them play the track live on The Old Grey Whistle Test (BBC2, Feb 1978). 

      And here's another classic punk track on the theme of boredom - written by Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks and included on their Spiral Scratch EP (New Hormones, 1977): click here. 

 

 

This post continues here.   

 

We're Born Naked ... Notes on Simon Doonan's Complete Story of Drag (Part 3: On Popstar Drag, Movie Drag, and Radical Drag)

Simon Doonan: Drag: The Complete Story (2019) [a]

Alt. cover feat. Curtis Dam-Mikkelsen (aka Miss Fame)  

Photo by Albert Sanchez and Pedro Zalba

 

 

I.

 

And so we come to chapter 7: Popstar Drag ...

 

Doonan claims that for most of the 20th century, "the guiding principle for men's clothing design was anonymity" (163) and that's true, though perhaps requires some qualification - and I don't believe it's because the average male is "terrified of being stared at" (163). 

Actually, the desire for anonymity - founded upon uniformity of dress and the will to conformity - can be traced back to a shift in sensibility known as the Great Male Renunciation, which began in the late- 18th century and saw men abandon ornate and colourful clothing in favour of more sober, functional attire. 

 

It was the age of the dark suit, designed to signal seriousness and professionalism as well as social conformity. But the aim was not anonymity per se, but to look the business whilst not being conspicuous [b].   

 

It's the modern pop star - that 20th century dandy born of the music business in the 1950s - who challenges this: "In order to sell records, the male popstars of the conservative American mid-century needed fans to take notice, and a sure-fire way to stand out was to raid the feminine repertoire." (163)

 

Doonan continues (in a passage that again rather reinforces the argument often put forward by conservative critics; namely, that pop music was an assault on manly virtue):

 

"The boys were encouraged in their flamboyance by a select and influential group of homosexuals, such as gallery owner Robert Fraser, interior designer Christopher Gibbs, Brian Epstein (manager of The Beatles), Robert Stigwood (Cream and Bee Gees), Simon Napier-Bell (The Yardbirds, Marc Bolan), Billy Gaff (Rod Stewart) and Ken Pitt (David Bowie). These gay Svengalis were drag enablers ..." (165) [c]  

 

For Doonan, two names in particular stand out when it comes the golden age of glam rock in the 1970s: Bolan and Bowie - but they were by no means the only two camping it up:

 

"Billowing bohemian blouses and cascading tresses became the norm. Boys wore girls' skimpy knits and crop tops with unisex crushed-velvet bellbottoms. Ladies' accessories [...] were piled on with gypsy-ish abandon. The emerging popstar drag was nothing if not radical." (166)

 

At this point, Doonan return us to his (strangely unisex) vision of utopia "where men and women overcame their vast differences by dressing alike" (168). 

 

I'd really like to know what he thinks these differences are exactly; is he here talking about differences that are constructed socially, or differences that have a crucial biological basis? If these differences are so vast - his word - then can they really be overcome simply by wearing the same clothing or shade of eyeshadow? I doubt it. 

 

And I'm pretty sure also that Doonan's claim that glam rock (or what he calls popstar drag) was "repellent to the establishment" (171) is simply not the case. It may have been viewed by some members of the older generation with mild disdain and dislike, but, in general, it was met with confusion and amusement. It was certainly not feared and hated in the way that punk rock would be a few years later (or even the countercultural, drug-taking hippie movement had been in the '60s) [d]. 

 

While androgynous fashions, a garish use of makeup, and gender troubling behaviour were scandalous to some, glam was a popular, commercial force that was ultimately tolerated - and often enjoyed - by the wider public; Bowie and Bolan and company were regulars on Top of the Pops and their records were not banned (cf. the Sex Pistols). 

 

In sum - and despite what Doonan likes to think - popstar drag was considered frivolous rather threatening and its huge commercial popularity meant it was soon just seen as another form of showbiz. That was true in the 1970s and it remained true in the 1980s, when figures like Boy George and Marilyn [e] were dominating the charts and airwaves.     

 

And don't get me started on Eurovision - an annual festival of "gloriously naff pop, easy to mock but never boring" (181) - if Doonan really thinks this is in anyway radical or presents a positive vision of the future, then, I'm afraid to say, he's more naive than I thought he was.  

 

 

II. 

 

From the world of pop drag to the world of movie drag ... 

 

Those of you who read part 2 of this post will recall I have already noted my favourite celluloid scene involving drag. 

 

For those of you who haven't read part 2, it's the one in Carry On Constable (dir. Gerald Thomas, 1960), in which officers Benson and Gorse - played by Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey respectively - drag up as Ethel and Agatha in order to go undercover as store detectives.      

 

For me, this scene is as good as it gets when it comes to comedy drag on film and I rank it above the work even of Laurel and Hardy in Twice Two (dir. James Parrott, 1933), or Curtis and Lemmon in Billy Wilder's Some Like it Hot (1959). But, funnily enough, Doonan doesn't mention the film - so I guess it's not amongst his favourites, although he predictably raves about the latter as "the most beloved movie of all time" (187).  

  

Doonan also indicates how movie drag is often associated with pervy horror and homicidal insanity - starting with Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and coins the amusing term dragsploitation. Being dressed to kill often means putting on a frock and wig in the mainstream cinematic imagination.   

 

Meanwhile, underground movie makers - including Andy Warhol - also liked to include elements of drag: 

 

"What was unsavoury and objectionable to a mainstream audience - as we've seen, drag was acceptable only as laughable slapstick or the prelude to a homicidal bloodbath - was given a warm and rousing reception in the art houses of yore." (192) 

 

What he had done for soup cans, Warhol also did for drag queens and trans women: 

 

"Warhol's genius was to plonk [... marginal figures and] unconventional attention junkies in front of the camera and let their natural charisma do the rest. Plots were thin but the screen magic is undeniable." (192)

 

I don't mind Candy Darling, but, I have to admit, I'm not a big fan of Divine; described by Doonan as the "empress of underground movie drag" (192), so will skip past the films made by John Waters ... 

 

And, because I hate them so, I'm also not going to say anything either about those "upbeat, non-sexual, non-homicidal, and worthy" (195) films made in the 1980s, when drag became family-friendly, Tootsie (dir. Sydney Pollack, 1982), starring Dustin Hoffman, and Mrs. Doubtfire (dir. Chris Columbus, 1993), starring Robin Williams. 

 

Similarly, I don't wish to say anything about The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (dir. Stephan Elliott, 1994) - although that's not a film I've seen (and, by the sound of it, don't think I want to, either; even Doonan describes it as shrill and cartoony).   

 

Ultimately, whilst I'm all for films spreading joy and celebrating individuality, I don't want to have sequins thrown in my face and an ideological message shoved down my throat to do with the need for greater DEI. 

 

In other words, I prefer those films involving drag and/or trans actors that are non-shrill and non-cartoony and don't invite audiences to dress up and sing along à la The Rocky Horror Picture Show (dir. Jim Sharman, 1975) - films such as Sean Baker's Tangerine (2015), described by Doonan thus:

 

"Tangerine is a groundbreaking 2015 movie that combines the early Warhol approach - find charismatic gender-fluid individuals and let the cameras roll - with more solid plotlines. It is is also very Warholian in that the individuals are not presented as noble or worthy." (204)    

  

 

III. 

 

And finally ... chapter 9 - Radical Drag - and a chance to really examine the politics of the topic (or at least Doonan's understanding of such) ... 

 

Before we turn to the material in chapter 9, however, I'd like to pick up on a sentence from earlier in the book (ch. 8), which suggests where I think Doonan will be heading:   

 

"In these trans-positive times [...] nobody is going to high five a hetero dude for frocking up unless he actually means it. Dragging up purely for attention or dough would, in our era of increased sensitivity, be viewed as less than respectful." (185)

 

That, I think, is true - but it's also a call for authenticity that I find problematic and something which has led to a lot of recent debate within the acting profession: should a straight cis male actor be able to play gay or trans (even if he does so in all sincerity and his performance is sympathetic and convincing)? [f] 

 

I would answer 'yes' to this, but understand the controversy surrounding the issue - particularly when it is presented in terms of representation and opportunity, rather than in terms of authenticity or the need for lived experience in order to play a part (lived experience is the most overrated thing in the world - something that the unimaginative unempathetic pride themselves on). 

 

And surely, if drag is radical in any sense, it's precisely because it deconstructs gender roles; how does that square with a modern sensitivity that insists only certain people have the right to inhabit certain identities? Answer: it doesn't.    

 

Moving on ...

 

Predictably - but still a bit disappointingly - in chapter 9 Doonan returns to all his favourite themes to do with Victorian prudery and puritanism in contrast to the subversive fuck you attitude of drag queens whose rebellion against the binary nature of society is to be uncritically lauded:

 

"Even when done in jest, the donning of a frock or a drag king suit is a provocation that automatically messes with the stale conventions of any society." (208)

 

Subscribing to this line of thought gives Doonan a good deal of what Foucault called speaker's benefit - i.e., a false sense of pride in one's own courage and rebelliousness in daring to speak up and speak out on issues which are (mistakenly) believed to still be feared and subject to censorship by mainstream society. 

 

Foucault argued this perceived transgression actually reinforced existing power structures and that the benefit of speaking in terms of repression and resisting power is merely a way to feel edgy and enlightened, while still adhering to an old-fashioned and untenable model of sexual politics.  

 

It strikes me as a little odd that, having compiled a complete history of drag, Doonan sometimes writes as if nothing important really happened before the late-1960s and '70s (i.e., when he was a young man):

 

"When, in the late 1960s, the counter-culture began to bloom - black power, gay lib, women's lib - drag followed suit. With the gays for solidarity, drag finally had the support it needed to hit the streets and to walk tall [...] Harassment and discrimination continued, but this time the dragsters fought back, birthing new and creative genres of drag activism." (210)

 

Out of this period of political upheaval, three radical groups emerged: the Cockettes [i], the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence [j], and the Radical Faeries [k] ... Now, without wishing to denigrate members of these groups - about whom my knowledge is strictly limited - one might ask whether they are truly sticking it to the Man or, actually, just engaging in theatrics and arty provocation?   

  

The fact is that, during the period Doonan specifies, drag was already being recuperated into the Spectacle as a safe (and highly commercial) form of subculture - as he himself has shown in his chapters on popstar drag and movie drag.  

 

I have respect and admiration for those highly idiosyncratic individuals and brave souls who "through a combination of daring, resilience and reckless disregard for their own safety, lubricated the wheels of social progress" (218), but I have to admit I'm increasingly bored by radical activists of every stripe - dragged up or otherwise.      

That doesn't mean I'm a Trump supporter. But it does mean I don't find drag so "wickedly compelling in these new politicized times" (233) and don't believe that drastic times require dragtastic measures. 

 

Doonan closed his 2019 study insisting that, thanks to technology and social media, "mocking, shocking, radical satirical drag" (233) would spread into "every corner of the universe" (233), presumably changing things for the better. 

 

And yet, as we know, Trump won the Presidency for a second time in 2024 - winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote - and his administration has taken a firm stance against drag culture, prioritising the removal of drag performances from public venues like and limiting federal funding for related initiatives. 

 

So it seems that a revolt into a queer politics of style might not be the answer after all ...   

 

 

Notes

 

[a] The page numbers given here (in round brackets) refer to the 2024 concise paperback edition published by Laurence King. 

 

[b] Roland Barthes writes about all this in The Language of Fashion, trans. Andy Stafford, ed. Andy Stafford and Michael Carter (Berg, 2006).  

 

[c] Some might also suggest that Doonan's enabler narrative strips the artists of their own agency; framing them as puppets of a homosexual cabal (a trope that again feeds into the conservative and homophobic agenda). 

 

[d] Doonan doesn't say much about punk, other than that it was unconventional in every way, but not drag-friendly: "While drag was largely anathema to the genre, the punk makeup styles [...] have proven influential to subsequent drag queens." (175) 

      Again, I'm tempted to push back on this claim ... An openly queer aesthetic - informed by the drag queens, transvestites, and transsexuals associated with Warhol - was crucial to the clothing designed by McLaren and Westwood for their boutique, Sex. Iconic items of punk clothing - such as bondage trousers and the Tits T-shirt - were intentionally transgressive and could be worn by either sex.  

      One might even describe Jordan - with her extreme theatrical look - as a kind of drag queen. And who can forget Malcolm's cross-dressing in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980)?  

 

[e] Doonan obviously had the hots for gender-bending popstars Boy George and his pal Marilyn, admitting that he was "totally smitten" (176) with the former and claiming (rather laughably) that the latter's appearance on Top of the Pops in 1983 "is seared into the national consciousness" (178). 

      That might be true of a few ageing new romantics and homosexuals, such as Doonan himself, but I suspect it's not true for most UK residents. 

 

[f] The same debate is also taking place with reference to race and disability; should a black actor, for example, be allowed to play a role previously associated with a white actor (a lot of people were exercised by the prospect of Idris Elba becoming James Bond); or should an able-bodied actor be given the role of a paraplegic - think, for example, of Tom Cruise as Ron Kovic in Oliver Stones's Born on the Fourth of July (1989)? 

      Again, as I say in the main text, I recognise that there are a limited number of roles open to actors belonging to minority groups, but, even so, I can't get behind the idea that an actor must be X, Y, or Z in order to play the part (though the current trend within the profession seems to be moving more and more in that direction).  

 

[h] See Foucault writing in The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge (1976). 

 

[i] With their glitter-encrusted beards, the Cockettes "pioneered a delightfully amateurish do-it-yourself genre of performance drag" (213). 

 

[j] The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were a "group of gays [... wearing] nun's habits and a smidgen of makeup" (214), who wished to challenge religious fundamentalism with impromptu street theatre. According to Doonan: "By combining elements of religious piety with rampant decadent artifice, they successfully satirize conventions of gender and morality." (214)

 

[k] Founded in California in the late '70s, the Radical Faeries "embody many aspects of counter-culture, including environmentalism, paganism, communal living and free love" (215). Their drag is characterised by "a wilful randomness and lack of rigour" (215) and often they prefer nudity and body paint.  

 

To read part 1 of this post, click here.

To read part 2 of this post, click here. 

 

 

Retromania: Reviewed and Reassessed - Part 3: Then (Chapters 6-9)

Simon Reynolds: Retromania  - cover of the US edition

(Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2011)

 

 

I.

 

So, here we are at page 183 and still not half-way through a book which can be summarised in one short sentence: We live in a culture that prefers to curate the recent past rather than create the future. And whilst he doesn't use the phrase, Reynolds seems to suggest that the solution to this is: torpedo the archive! 

 

It amazes me that there are still another 7 chapters and another 250 pages or so to get through; Reynolds is like a spider that has already caught the fly, but can't resist weaving an ever-expanding web, delighted with its own ingenuity.  

 

Anyway, let's explore the four chapters that make up part two of Retromania - and let me remind readers that the page numbers refer to the 2012 Faber edition of the book.  

 

 

II. 

 

Because I like fashion, I do like chapter 6; one which opens with Reynolds expressing his excitement at discovering just how fabulous the futuristic looks designed by the likes of André Courrèges, Pierre Cardin, and Paco Rabanne in the early 1960s were - before everything turned psychedelic and full-on hippie and "youth style started to revel in anything and everything that was neither modern nor from the industrialised West" [185] [a]. 

 

I don't quite agree with this: "From a distance [...] retro and historicism blend into each other and look rather like inspiration-starved designers, rifling through the past's wardrobe" [190] - but it's not far from being the case. At some point, even Vivienne Westwood - for all her attempts to justify her historicism - ends up frantically pillaging the past just like everyone else.     

 

The footnote provided by Reynolds on vintage and class is excellent; "vintage is a largely middle-class game [...] The further down the class ladder you go, the more value is set on things being brand new [...] the UK's white working class [...] would not be seen dead in anything that even looked old, let alone actually was second-hand" [194]. Chavs, says Reynolds, are - in some ways - "Britain's last bastion of futurist taste" [194] [b] - heaven help us if that's true!   

 

 

III. 

 

Here's a claim that would make for an interesting discussion: "Pop music exists somewhere between fashion and art, but leans far more to the art side." [196] 

 

I'm not sure that's the case. And it's certainly not always the case. Indeed, one could make a strong counterargument; that music is, as Malcolm McLaren never tired of saying, the sound of fashion, just as fashion is often the look of music. 

 

And it's absolutely false to claim: "People are moved by music in a way that is different to the feelings they might have for a pair of shoes or a jacket. They become attached to music in a more enduring and deeply felt way." [196] 

 

I would remind Mr Reynolds that the king of rock 'n' roll himself valued getting dressed up to mess up above money or performing on stage and that whilst you can burn his house, steal his car, or smash his record collection, under no circumstances would he accept anyone criticising or stepping on his blue suede shoes [c].     

 

Ultimately, trying to defend a hard and fast distinction between music and fashion in terms of emotional value is not only in vain, but a little ridiculous. For the record, I remember the excitement of pulling on a pair of tight black PVC trousers for the first time just as vividly (perhaps more) than hearing the first Clash album. The fresh and bold aspect of punk lay in the fashions created by McLaren and Westwood, not in the records produced by bands strumming and banging away on traditional instruments to a 4/4 beat.   

  

 

IV. 

 

There are somethings I'd rather not know; including the fact that, when a student at Oxford, Reynolds chose to associate with a group of "out-of-time hippies" [202], despite the fact that his "musical leanings [...] were incompatible with theirs" [202] - and despite the fact that Malcolm had explicitly warned to never trust them.  

 

Revivalists and those living in a time warp (whether wilfully remaining there or trapped like insects in amber), have never particularly interested me. It's not that I encourage people to move on; but I don't like the idea of standing still and remaining the same either. The knack is to reverse the past into the present so that one might live yesterday tomorrow and ensure that what returns is difference itself, the engine of newness and becoming [d].    

 

Pleased to see Reynolds write this: "Time-warp cultists [...] seem unable to recognise that the same energies they prize about the music of the remote past can be found in the present [...]" [206], which is both true and important, but one suspects they want more than these 'energies' - though what it is they're after I'm never quite certain. 

 

If it's authenticity then there's a problem, for there's an "inherent contradiction to musical cults of authenticity: fixating on a style that is remote either in time or space [...] inevitably condemns the devotee to inauthenticity" [211]. Reynolds spells out this contradiction:

 

"Either he strives to be a faithful copyist, reproducing the music's surface features as closely as possible, risking hollowness and redundancy; or he can attempt to bring something expressive and personal to it, or to work in contemporary influences and local musical favours, which then risks bastardising the style." [211]

 

That is a dilemma. 

 

Were I to advise, I'd say to the faithful copyists, don't worry about hollowness; be a bit more Buddhist about how one views the idea and worry a bit less about what T. S. Eliot might say [e]. And to those who wish to jazz or punk things up a little even at the risk of bastardising the original, I'd say knock yourselves out; what is corruption and debasement to one man is the laughter of genius to another.     

 

 

V.  

 

"I've never totally understood the appeal of Northern Soul" [214]; no, me neither - so let's skip this section and abandon the faith ... If Reynolds is right to say that the logic of redemption is what defines this subculture, then let me just remind readers that, actually, you can never buy back the past. 

 

As for the post-punk mod revival of the late 1970s - wasn't impressed then, and I'm not interested now. Admittedly, The Jam made some great singles, but Paul Weller's a prick and the band essentially appealed, as Reynolds says, "to British kids who liked punk's high-energy sound but didn't care for either the yobbish element or the art-school theory-and-politics contingent" [224]. 

 

Ultimately, the new mods only contributed to the cultural stagnation; a "betrayal of the original principles of modernism, which involved being into the latest, coolest thing" [229] and not dressing up "in the glad rags of a secondhand subculture" and listening to "copies of yesterday's sounds" [229].      

 

   

VI. 

 

Rave culture: NMCoT. At all. 

 

But I'm sure my old friend Kirk Field [f] would agree with this:

 

"In its early years, 1988 to 1993, rave was like a flash flood-engorged river bursting its banks and scattering off foaming side-streams in a dozen directions. The era's sense of runaway momentum was stoked by the energy flash of Ecstasy and amphetamine." [234]   

 

But would he, I'd be interested to know, also agree with this, now that he makes a living from rave nostalgia:

 

"By the mid-nineties, though, rave's engine of drug/music synergy was sputtering; the participants had hurtled down the road of excess at top speed only to crash into various aesthetic and spiritual dead ends. Once so future-focused, ravers began to look back wistfully. 

      Like everyone else who got swept up in the collective rush, I never dreamed that the culture would ever slow down, let alone succumb to retrospection." [234] 

       

Old skool: it's always been a slightly irritating term; "a shorthand for notions of origins and roots [...] used by epigones [...] who believe that the present is less distinguished than the illustrious past. [...] People who [...] often seem to believe that things could be righted if only the ignorant and insufficiently reverent new generation [...] would let itself be schooled by wiser elders." [235]

 

Well said, that man! Surely, the only thing worse than someone identifying as old skool is someone insisting that we keep it real ...

 

Of course, we're all prone to a touch of nostalgia; Reynolds admits to being "highly susceptible" [239] himself. Which is why, perhaps, he suddenly offers the mnemonic muse defence: "Nostalgia [...] can be creative, even subversive [...] the past can be used to critique what's absent in the present" [239] - an idea that takes us into chapter 8 ...

 

 

VII. 

 

"There is a paradox right at the heart of punk: this most revolutionary movement in rock history was actualy born from reactionary impulses. Punk opposed iself to progress. Musically, it rejected the sixties idea of progression and maturity that had led to prog rock and to other sophisticated seventies sounds. A concerted effort to turn back the clock to rock's teenage past [...] punk rock also rejected the notion of progress in a broader philosophical sense. Driven by an apocalyptic appetite for destruction and collapse, its vision was literally hope-less." [240]

 

I might phrase the above passage slightly differently at certain points, but I would basically agree that this provides an insightful reading of the slogan no future. The rejection of progress as an ideal is, of course, central to Torpedo the Ark as well: it's a secularised religious fantasy, born of what Nietzsche terms enfeebled optimism. Life is not getting better, humanity is not moving toward some predetermined higher goal, and Sgt. Pepper's is not superior to Elvis Presley.    

 

Was punk the "ultimate time-warp cult" [257]? Again, that's debatable. But let's agree that even if it started out as such it quickly escalated into a revolution: 

 

"Musical influences from outside rock 'n' roll, as well as non-musical catalysts from the worlds of politics, art theory and avant-garde fashion, entered the picture. Everything came together in a surge of energy, and then, Big Bang-like, exploded outwards into new galaxies of sound and subculture." [258] [g] 

 

That's the key: punk was never a unified musical movement; it was an Event or, as Reynolds metaphorically implies, a singularity. Although, strangely, the post-punk universe saw "revivals of every kind" [262] and a "retreat to established forms" [262]; it's hard living in the chaotic period immediately after a Big Bang - much safer to retreat to a prior time [h].   

 

 

VIII. 

 

Billy Childish and Stuckism: I'm not convinced and I'm certainly not on a quest for authenticity. 

 

But interesting that Reynolds should conceive of it as a form of love; fidelity to a golden past that one either remembers or imagines (albeit a form of love that can quickly become obsessive and turn rotten). 

 

 

IX. 

 

Chapter 9 - the never-ending fifties revival; not sure that's a topic that warrants a whole chapter (any more than Childish warranted an entire section at the end of chapter 8), but let's take a look ...

 

Nice idea that glam rock "musically harked back to the fifties without replicating it" [291] - perhaps that's why I loved it so as a ten-year-old (and later loved punk) [i]. 

 

And I'm pleased to see that, despite everything, Reynolds has the courage and integrity to admit that "the glam era's most creative reinventions of rock 'n' roll came from Gary Glitter [...] It was a genuinely new sound achieved by communing with the decade's lost spirit" [292].

 

I think Glitter's writing out of pop history is absurd, quite frankly - and hypocritical. And I agree entirely with what Reynold says here:

 

"Glitterbeat's atavistic-futuristic brutalism sounded totally seventies. If the singer had been a little less camp and a lot younger and scrawnier-looking, songs like 'I'm the Leader of the Gang' could have been a proto-punk sound for early-seventies juvenile delinquents [...]" [292] [j]   

 

And then there's The Cramps ... "a fusion of non-mainstream rock 'n' roll and pulp fiction [...] into a cult of adolescence" [297]. 

 

I can't say I was a big fan, but I know a girl who was and those psychobillies who "fixated on the moment when rock 'n' roll's jungle rhythm and voodoo frenzy was seen as ungodly and subversive" [298] are alright by me [k].   

 

Reynolds concludes the chapter on a hauntological note ...

 

"From the early eighties on, rock 'n' roll recurred only as a ghostly signifier detached from any real-world referents. Like a spook, it moved through the world without affecting it, lingered as a faintly disquieting trace of what-once-was." [307]

 

One might interrogate the above by asking what constitutes a non-ghostly signifier and a real-world referent for Reynolds and what is the nature of their relationship - but as this part of the post is already far longer than I would wish, probably best we leave such questions for another day. 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] It amazes me that a young woman would choose to dress like a villager in Bangladesh when she could look as if she had just arrived from Moon Base Alpha. For my take on space age fashion, see my post on futuristic fashion with reference to the sci-fi mini-skirt: click here. 

      Interestingly, Reynolds also seems smitten with such designs invented for a world that hasn't yet arrived, though one might have imagined he'd approve of the authenticity of clothes made in Asia, but no, he prefers ultra-modernism to retro-shit and the Biba aesthetic.      

 

[b] Reynolds wrote this in defence of chavs earlier in Retromania: 

      "In the UK, almost the only people who remain immune to the romance of the antiquated are the 'chavs', a derogatory term for working-class whites who identify with black American style and music at its most flashy and materialistic. Although chav-haters complain about their lack of taste and vulgarity [...] the subtext of the animosity is the chav's un-English lack of interest in old stuff: antiques, heritage, costume drama." [24] 

 

[c] Obviously, I'm referencing Elvis's version of the Carl Perkins song 'Blue Suede Shoes', the opening track from Elvis Presley (RCA Victor, 1956) and later released as a single: click here.   

 

[d] According to Deleuze's reading of Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence, the key thing is not the return of the Same or the identical, but rather the repetition of difference itself. It's false to think we remain the same person from one moment to the next or that the phrase 'same time, same place' is meaningful. The future, my friend, is not merely blowing in the wind, it actively ruptures the circularity of habit (the present) and the depths of memory (the past) allowing for newness to emerge.  

      See Deleuze writing in Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962), trans. Hugh Tomlinson (The Athlone Press, 1983) and/or Difference and Repetition (1968), trans. Paul Patton (Columbia University Press, 1994).  

 

[e] In Buddhism the idea of emptiness (Śūnyatā) is a central, liberating truth about the nature of reality and understanding the hollowness of self is an important practice. For the poet T. S. Eliot, of course, hollowness implies spiritual and emotional deadness; hollow individuals lack substance, purpose, authenticity, and the ability to act in a morally meaningful manner.    

 

[f] Kirk Field is a dance culture devotee, promoter, travel agent, and writer; see his best-selling book Rave New World (Nine Eight Books, 2023). I knew him in a previous life when he was a punk rocker (and still, to this day, greatly admire his work as vocalist and lyricist with Initial Vision).   

 

[g] As Reynolds concedes: "Arguably, the non-sonic aspects of punk were more crucial in terms of generating all these 'futures' than the music itself ..." [258] - that must slightly pain him to admit as a music lover and music critic first and foremost.  

 

[h] I understand that this may not make any conceptual sense to a scientist for whom there is no before the Big Bang - but we're discussing pop history here, not physics. 

 

[i] See the post 'Notes on a Glam-Punk Childhood' (24 July 2018): click here.  

  

[j] In fact, Glitter was later adopted by the punks as one of their own, many of whom, like me, remembered him fondly from their childhood.   

[k] Reynolds provides an excellent footnote on the punk/rockabilly connection on pp. 303-306, rightly arguing that rockabilly remained a "submerged but crucial component" [303] of punk, repeatedly rising to the surface. 

 

 

Part 1 of this post can be read here. 

 

Part 2 of this post can be read here. 

 

Parts 4 and 5 of the post will be published shortly. 

An Open Letter to Simon Reynolds on Malcolm McLaren and the Art of Living Like a Hobo

Simon Reynolds and Stephen Alexander 

 

I.

 

Thank you for your remarks on a recent post entitled 'Destroy Success' (7 Nov 2025), in which you were either highlighting (without judgement) the paradoxical aspect of Malcolm McLaren's life and multifaceted career as an artist - the successful failure; the professional amateur; the bourgeois anarchist, the inside outsider, etc. - or you were making some kind of moral appraisal [1] and suggesting (without actually using the terms) that he was a fraud and a hypocrite.

 

I'd like to think you were doing the former and that any antipathy towards McLaren that you feel is nonethless born of love and an ongoing obsession with this fascinating figure: "Even now, despite all the reprehensible things he did and the suspicion that he helped misdirect a generation [...] I can't quite amputate McLaren from my consciousness." [2] 

 

I couldn't help wondering if perhaps you also begrudge the fact that, in his final years, Malcolm was paid large sums of money to give talks all over the world to people in business as well as the arts, travelling first class and staying in the best hotels, etc. But then, why would that be the case when you also give lectures and interviews on an international stage in your capacity as a hard-working pop-historian and pedagogue ...? 

 

 

II. 

 

Your main gripe seems to be that enjoying the rewards of such a lifestyle is further evidence of Mclaren's hypocrisy: "I mean, it's not exactly 'living like a hobo' ..." [3]

 

But, here again, I would disagree: for living like a hobo doesn't mean begging in the streets like a bum [4], anymore than being a punk means adopting a certain look or thinking one has to be angry and miserable all the time in order to be militant, like the po-faced political ascetics who would preserve the purity of the punk revolution. 

 

Whilst the etymology of the term hobo is uncertain, I like to imagine it could be an abbreviation of homeless bohemian, a description that could well be applied to McLaren who "cultivated the mannerisms and appearance of a bohemian outsider" [5] and whose life involved constant travel and a deliberate rejection of conventional work and societal norms; partly out of a desire for freedom and sometimes just for the fun of it. 

 

Malcolm may not have illegally hopped freight trains, but he rarely paid for his own travel - or even his own cigarettes! - and, just like a hobo, he was an extremely resourceful individual, flitting between London, Paris, and New York just as he had once flitted from art college to art college, living on his wits and other people's generosity. 

 

Above all, McLaren stayed true to the number one rule of the Hobo Code [6]: Decide your own life; don't let another person run or rule you. 

 

And one recalls, of course, that Duck Rock (1983) may have thanked many people for their collaboration on the project, but it was solely dedicated to Harry K. McClintock; better known by his hobo name, Haywire Mac, whose Hallelujah! I'm a Bum (1981) Malcolm insisted was crucial to an understanding of duck rock or hobo-punk as he conceived it and an album he made me buy in Collet's bookshop [7].  

 

 

III. 

 

In sum: living like a hobo is primarily about adopting a certain attitude and recognising the creative potential within failure - if I may return to this word. In a piece for The Guardian written two years before he died, McLaren wrote:

 

"I've always embraced failure as a noble pursuit. It allows you to be anti whatever anyone wants you to be, and to break all the rules. It was one of my tutors [...] when I was an art student, that really brought it home to me. He said that only by being willing to fail can you become fearless. He compared the role of an artist to that of being an alchemist or magician. And he thought the real magic was found in flamboyant, provocative failure rather than benign success. So that's what I've been striving for ever since." [8] 

 

McLaren's, therefore, is a very special understanding of failure; an artistic and philosophical understanding of the term. 

 

One is almost tempted to bring Samuel Beckett in at this point; for Beckett (as I'm sure you know) uses the symbolic figure of the tramp to explore various existential themes and informs us that what we learn from failure is not how to succeed in the future, but, at most, how to fail better [9]. Success, says Beckett, is not even an option; we are destined to fail - such is the tragic character of Dasein.

 

The fact that Beckett - like McLaren - affirms this and finds in it a source of darkly comic satisfaction, is something admirable I think. Nietzsche would call it a pessimism of strength [10] and he made it a central teaching of his Dionysian philosophy; a philosophy that, like McLaren's vision of punk, finds creative potential in destruction and flamboyant failure. 

 

McLaren had his successes - but he didn't chase or desire success. Indeed, if anything - and again to quote your own words Simon, if I may - he was thwarted by success [11]. His dream was always to go down in flames or sink beneath the waves [12].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring here to the claim made by Reynolds that Paul Gorman's excellent biography of McLaren failed to give a "moral appraisal of its subject". It was an allegation swiftly refuted by Gorman, who rightly pointed out that the primarly task of a biographer is to write a critically objective study, not pass judgement. 

     See: Simon Reynolds, 'Serious Mayhem', a review of Paul Gorman's The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2021), in The London Review of Books, Vol. 44, No. 5 (10 March 2022), and see Paul Gorman's letter in response in the following issue (44. 6), dated 24 March 2022. Both can be read by clicking here.             

 

[2] Simon Reynolds, 'Serious Mayhem', as cited and linked to above.   

 

[3] Simon Reynolds, comment on the TTA post 'Destroy Success' posted on 10 Nov 2025 at 16:56. Click here. 

 

[4] In the revised and expanded fourth edition of his The American Language (Alfred A. Knopf, 1937), H. L. Mencken argued that although commonly lumped together, tramps, hobos, and bums are actually distinct fron another. Both tramps and hobos like to travel around and lead an itinerant lifestyle, but the former try to avoid work preferring just to dream (and drink), whereas the latter, whilst enjoying some prolonged periods of unemployment, essentially want to work, albeit in a series of jobs with no desire to establish a long term career. As for the bum, according to Mencken, he neither wanders nor works.  Obviously, such a fixed and rigid classification is highly questionable.     

      

[5] Simon Reynolds, 'Serious Mayhem', as cited and linked to in note 1 above.  

 

[6] A set of ethical guidelines known as the Hobo Code was created by a hobo union during its 1889 National Hobo Convention, in St. Louis, Missouri.  It consists of more than a dozen rules intended to govern the conduct of hobos nationwide and help dispel negative stereotypes associated with their lifestyle. These rules essentially boil down to: 1. Respect the law. 2. Help fellow hobos. 3. Protect Children. 3. Preserve the natural environment.

      The National Hobo Convention continues to be an annual event - held in Iowa since 1900 - where the Hobo Code is still recognised. Readers wishing to know more are encouraged to visit the Open Culture web page on the subject: click here.  

 

[7] Collet's was a bookshop (that also stocked selected records and tapes) founded by Eva Collet Reckitt in 1934. It was famous for selling radical and revolutionary publications, particularly those from Russia and Eastern Europe, and acted as a hub for left-leaning intellectuals. 

 

[8] Malcolm McLaren, 'This much I know', The Guardian (16 Nov 2008): click here. 

[9] See my post on Beckett's short prose work 'Worstward Ho!' (1983) and the idea of failure (11 Jun 2013): click here.   

 

[10] This phrase - Pessimismus der Stärke - can be found, for example, in Nietzsche's 1886 preface to The Birth of Tragedy (1871), where he describes it as a "predilection for what is hard, terrible, evil, problematic in existence", arising from strength and well-being rather than decadence or enfeebled instincts. 

      See 'Attempt at a Self-Criticism', in The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Shaun Whiteside, ed. Michael Tanner (Penguin Books, 1993), p. 3.    

 

[11] Simon Reynolds, 'Serious Mayhem', as cited and linked to in note 1 above.  

 

[12] It is interesting to note that, etymologically, the term flamboyant that Malcolm used in relation to the kind of failure he aspired to, comes from the French and means 'flaming' or 'wavy'.