SIG News 5 Manifesto: A Friendly Deconstruction

SIG Manifesto 

(SIG News 5: September 2026)

 

 

I.

 

The new, bumper edition of SIG News (#5) is out now - arriving two months ahead of its cover date and two weeks ahead of its public launch at the Mausoleum - sorry, Museum - of Youth Culture (see below). Edited by the established team of Russ Bestley, Tim Gibney, Kevin Quinn and Roger Sabin, it assembles an eclectic mix of articles by a disparate group of authors from both within and without the University of the Arts London (UAL). 

 

By deliberately choosing the inky medium of an old-school, limited-run newspaper, SIG's explicit aim is to thumb its nose at mass circulation and the algorithmic curation of the online world. Anyone interested in the history and practice of music- and style-based subcultures is guaranteed to find something to excite them in this issue. 

 

However, it is the ever-changing SIG Manifesto, printed boldly on the back cover, which I invariably read first, and it's this ten-point text that I'd like to discuss - by which I mean deconstruct - here. Let us begin by looking at each point in turn, offering a brief response before building towards a critical overview of a text that functions as a public declaration of the Group's ideology. 

 

Ultimately, we are obliged to ask: does this text genuinely rally readers to radical action, or does it risk encouraging mere repetition of the same old inauthentic busyness [1] and the restless pursuit of novelty? 

 

II.

  

1. We at SIG News decree that the high-street purveyors of plainstream bad dreams dispense nothing more than tribal whorefare. A cavalcade of copycat caricatures and clone-clowns cascade across mediascapes devoid of depth and bereft of breadth.

 

Point 1 playfully, if somewhat aggressively, sets the tone: mock-authoritative, mock-confrontational, and mock-avant-garde, delivered with an over-reliance on alliteration and Situationist-style wordplay. 

 

Strip away the performative hostility, however, and it's a bog-standard critique of the Mainstream Media (MSM). It accuses the latter of lacking both substance and diversity whilst actively exploiting social divisions for profit (tribal whorefare), manufacturing systemic anxiety (bad dreams), and recycling formulaic content (copycat caricatures).

  

2. Scenes should be heard, not spread. 

 

Point 2 of the manifesto posits that for subcultures to remain authentic and flourish, they must foster local, organic connections through live performance, material publications (such as fanzines) and word-of-mouth, rather than engaging in global, digital dissemination. In line with subcultural theory, the statement also suggests that exposure via modern media causes rapid commodification and the loss of a scene's underground edge.

 

Ultimately, there's nothing virtual or viral about SIG News: it demands physical presence. Ironically, however, by demanding scenes remain localised, it inadvertently privileges those living in metropolitan cultural hubs whilst excluding the isolated, provincial outsider, i.e., the sort of poor sod stuck in the sticks or in some shitty seaside town that SIG often seems to champion.

  

 

3. Within the suffocating technological netweb 'DIY-bother' has become the despairing mantra of an autonomous muddleground desperate for something 'more'. 

 

Point 3 suggests that within a restrictive digital infrastructure, autonomous DIY culture has devolved into an exhausting, ineffective, and futile struggle - hence DIY-bother.

 

Whether we like it or not, platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have successfully co-opted, neutralised, and commercialised creative independence, transforming the radical punk ethos of Do It Yourself into a neoliberal chore that demands constant content creation, algorithmic self-optimisation, and endless self-promotion.

 

Independent creators are left confused, isolated, and trapped on a digital muddleground - profoundly exhausted by the machinery of the burnout society [2], yet desperate for an authentic path forward that doesn't involve feeding the algorithm.

 

 

4. Be impossible, demand the unrealistic.

 

By reversing the famous Situationist slogan from May '68 - Soyez réalistes, demandez l'impossible - this point serves as an update appropriate to the age of capitalist realism [3]. It is a potent mix of defensive absurdism and revolutionary desire for alternatives in an era dominated by the mantra there is no alternative.

 

By becoming-impossible, one becomes capricious and unclassifiable and thus useless to systems that rely on reliable data and predictive modelling. By demanding the unrealistic, one asks for the very things that consumer capitalism cannot commodify or deliver: silence, secrecy, and stillness.

 

   

5. It is absolutely normal to be resolutely on the outside of anything and everything. 

 

Point 5 normalises and validates splendid isolation and magnificent marginalisation, asserting that refusing to belong to any mainstream group, trend, or digital network is a completely valid way to live. 

 

This position is arguably more countercultural than subcultural. For in actively rejecting anything and everything one acknowledges that even the most radical subcultural movements will eventually be compromised, co-opted, and commodified. 

 

However, in affirming such an extreme model of individualistic detachment, it becomes politically problematic for those of a more socialist persuasion who believe that it requires collective power (i.e., solidarity with others) to build lasting alternative structures.  

 

  

6. Inspiration + imagination x application = no sweat.

 

Quite possibly, this is the point I dislike the most. It reads like an uninspired motivational slogan dreamed up by some corporation trying to sound knowledgeable about the creative process. Ironically, it undermines SIG's own depiction of cultural production as involving a good deal of sweat (not to mention blood and tears). Only artificially intelligent machines don't sweat.   

 

If I were to be generous, I might accept that the author of this manifesto is attempting to subvert the capitalist no pain, no gain work mantra. In other words, they might be trying to say that when one is genuinely inspired, creative work ceases to feel like alienated, exhausting labour. 

 

However, by dressing this concept up as a reductive, pseudo-logical mathematical formula they have ended up producing a trite, neoliberal slogan that completely devalues the demanding reality of artistic practice.

 

 

7. Omniformed existences expire with no trace. A feast of spectres amasses. 

 

Jesus! Point 7 reads like gothic poetry as much as cultural theory. Nevertheless, the warning here is stark: if you allow yourself to be shaped entirely by the Matrix, your life will leave no lasting legacy; you will expire with no trace and the world will become haunted by the ghosts of mass-produced human entities who failed to realise their potential or blossom as individuals.

 

Put another way, it's arguing that total conformity leads to a form of spiritual and cultural death and what Mark Fisher would term lost futures.  

 

 

8. Humanarchism is the logical evolutionary step away from total disconnection towards renewed social connection. Unplug, turn off, conjoin in. 

 

Is humanarchism a SIG neologism? At any rate, it's a new word to me; a portmanteau blending humanism and anarchism which suggests that in order to survive the isolating effects of modern digital life, society must evolve a new philosophy that rejects technological control in favour of autonomous (and essentially analogue) human community. 

 

There's no point (and no fun) in being connected to networks if we are physically out of touch not only with other people, but with animals, plants, and objects. We need a form of libidinal materialism born of desire, not merely a new idealism. 

 

Unfortunately, whilst I approve of the necessary update to (and inversion of) Timothy Leary's famous countercultural mantra, I'm not sure humanarchism is the best term for this new philosophy. 

 

Also, one must ask how realistic is this as a solution; by simply instructing people to unplug and turn off the SIG manifestoists assume people can easily walk away from the digital infrastructures that control their jobs, bank accounts, and daily communication and make a nostalgic return to pre-internet socialising [4]. 

 

 

9. Renounce the over-the-counterculture. Spurn the splendour-vendors and venal frontiers. Difference is natural indifference.

 

I like that last sentence: Difference is natural indifference (even if, obviously, I think indifference is a highly stylised pose born of stoicism and dandyism and has nothing natural about it). Indifference, along with several other 'I' terms - irony, insouciance, insincerity - is one of my watchwords here on Torpedo the Ark (TTA). 

 

The starry individual does not care about being noticed or need to be validated. They are secure in their own distinctiveness and completely indifferent to mainstream trends, social media metrics, or corporate attempts to categorise them - and, as the rest of the point makes clear, they have renounced the over-the-counterculture too which all-too-often means pseudo-rebellion and commercialised bullshit sold by splendour-vendors (i.e., hucksters working in the advertising business or those in marketing who wish to build and promote brands).    

 

Of course, again, this sounds good - but it involves the same naive romanticism as we have encountered already; just because you choose to ignore the Matrix it doesn't mean you are outside of it; in capitalist reality, modern data tracking doesn't care if you are indifferent to it; the system still tracks your habits and monetises your lifestyle; it might frame your structural isolation and indifference, for example, as the adoption of a zen attitude (Would you like to buy a yoga mat?)   

  

 

10. Fashion is no more than a fleeting fad. Follow nothing except your shadow. Go forth and amplify. 

 

The SIG Manifesto ends with a tripartite series of slogans intended, one assumes, to inspire readers and incite them to acts of defiant rebellion. 

 

The third - Go forth and amplify - is simply a play on the biblical injunction given initially by God to Adam and Eve (Genesis 1:28) and then later repeated to Noah and his sons (Genesis 9: 7). I suppose it's encouraging us to find our own voices and to speak up (so is again at odds with the ethos of silence and shutting the fuck up promoted on TTA). 

 

The first sentence - Fashion is no more than a fleeting fad - is one that I'm astonished to see in a manifesto born of a university which includes the London College of Fashion as one of its six constituent colleges. Also, as the author of Philosophy on the Catwalk (2011), I am very much of the view that in fashion we can discover "all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been" [5].

 

As for the fleeting character of fashion - or what we might term after Barthes the logic of fashion - isn't that its beauty and philosophical importance? Lars Svendsen is spot on when he writes: 

 

"Fashion does not have any telos, any final purpose, in the sense of striving for a state of perfection [...] The aim of fashion is rather to be potentially endless, that is it creates new forms and constellations ad infinitum." [6] 

 

This is why, one might suggest, the most interesting writings on fashion have tended to come from our poets and novelists; for "they alone are sufficiently free from its perceived triviality" [7]. 

  

As for the second sentence ... ironically, despite speaking of shadows, it's another essentialist injunction; for it is saying, is it not, be completely self-reliant and look only to your own true self for direction. One of the problems, however, is that Baudrillard powerfully illustrated how in an obscene hyperreal world and an era of total transparency, we have no shadows!  

 

So that's another issue - one of many - for the signatories of the SIG Manifesto to address ...

 

 

III.    

 

We are told to memorise the ten-point SIG Manifesto and ignore it at our peril. 

 

Obviously, this is said humorously - but, somehow, the text doesn't leave us smiling and I suspect that's because it functions primarily as an academic pastiche rather than a viable blueprint for contemporary cultural resistance. 

 

Whilst it accurately diagnoses the exhaustion inherent in a hyper-commodified digital landscape, its structural utility is limited by an outdated binary framework. It posits, for example, an enlightened avant-garde operating from an imaginary external position that ignores how modern capital functions through decentralized, participatory networks. 

 

Consequently, directives to unplug (Point 8) or remain on the Outside (Point 5) overlook the material reality that economic survival and communication are fundamentally embedded in digital infrastructure. Further, by framing resistance as a personal lifestyle choice, the manifesto risks falling into bourgeois individualism and what theorist Mark Fisher termed the privatisation of discontent, effectively atomising opposition rather than fostering collective solidarity.

 

Aesthetically, the wider SIG project draws heavily from historical precedents, specifically 1970s punk fanzines and 1990s culture jamming. The decision to print SIG News as a physical newspaper highlights a deliberate engagement with obsolete media forms, positioning the work closer to an archival art project than a contemporary subcultural critique. 

 

However, viewed through the lens of radical graphic design and visual history, the SIG Manifesto might be said to succeed on its own terms. For while it lacks a coherent political strategy for navigating an algorithmic mediascape and, theoretically, it has more holes than a proverbial piece of Swiss cheese, it functions effectively as a stylish conceptual provocation, illustrating the profound difficulty of offering meaningful resistance today. 

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Heidegger terms this Geschäftigkeit - a key concept introduced in Sein und Zeit (1927) as a structural component of Dasein's everyday manner of existing; i.e., constantly occupied with the immediate tasks at hand and numerous daily distractions. 

      For Heidegger, this relentless busyness is a coping mechanism; one that allows us to avoid confronting the deeper questions of our existence, including our own mortality. It is closely connected to his concept of Verfallen, wherein the individual tumbles into superficiality and evaluates their life simply by how much they are doing, losing their authentic self in the process. 

 

[2] The phrase Müdigkeitsgesellschaft was used by the philosopher Byung-Chul Han as the title of an essay first published in German in 2010 (the English translation by Erik Butler was published by Stanford University Press in 2015). 

      It might be noted that the term literally translates as fatigue society, but the word burnout - coined in 1970 by the German-born American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger to refer to a state of mental and physical exhaustion - arguably has greater contemporary resonance.     

      Readers who are interested can find a two-part post published on Torpedo the Ark back in November 2021 discussing Han's text: click here to access part one.  

 

[3] The phrase capitalist realism is, of course, forever associated with Mark Fisher; see his book of this title (Zero Books, 2009). The first of a three-part post written on this work published on Torpedo the Ark earlier this year can be accessed by clicking here. 

      In brief, capitalist realism refers to the fact that capitalism is more than an economic arrangement of society or a political ideology; that it has become a singular reality that is so all-encompassing that we mistake it for the natural order or inevitable way of the world. This, in turn, makes alternative models either unimaginable or seem foolish and utopian: 'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,' as Fisher famously puts it. 

  

[4] It must also be pointed out that in demanding that people gather and collaborate as what D. H. Lawrence would term a democracy of touch, point 8 is at odds with point 5 - remain a singular individual on the outside of everything.

 

[5] Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, ed. Kerry McSweeney and Peter Sabor, (Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 57. 

      Admittedly, this novel derides those who would make of fashion the basis of all human experience, but, contrary to his own idealism, Carlyle is obliged to concede that clothes do play a crucial role in materially constituting the self.  

 

[6] Lars Svendsen, Fashion: A Philosophy, trans. John Irons, (Reaktion Books, 2006), p. 29.

 

[7] Roland Barthes, 'Language and Clothing', in The Language of Fashion, trans. Andy Stafford, ed. Andy Stafford and Michael Carter, (Berg, 2006), p. 21.  

 

Straight Outta Kathmandu (Notes on Hip-Hop in Nepal)

Uniq Poet and Bluesss: Straight Outta Kathmandu (2019)

They 'hip to the hop like a black man do ...'

 

 

I. 

 

In one of D. H. Lawrence's most amusing and, in my view, most important articles, he complains about the way in which "two little white-haired English ladies" [1] staying in the room next to his at a hotel in Geneva, continually interrupt his contemplation of the world by transporting him off his balcony; "away from the glassy lake, the veiled mountains, the two men mowing, and the cherry-trees, away into the troubled ether of international politics" [2].   

 

His point being that he is "not allowed to sit like a dandelion on his own stem" [3] and muse over the things that directly concern him, or that are actually present. Why, he wonders, do so many modern people insist on talking about abstract ideas and caring about people they've never met and places they'll never visit, rather than live on the spot where they are ...? 

 

 

II.  

 

I was reminded of this at a recent SIG meeting [4] where the topic for discussion was hip-hop and youth culture in post-war Nepal ... 

 

Obviously, no one present had any direct experience or knowledge of the topic, but most had done the required reading beforehand [5] so conversation (of sorts) became possible and, despite what Lawrence says above, I found it quite interesting and took away four main points from the essay by Kritika Chettri:

 

(i) Globalisation needn't simply be read as a euphemism for Western imperialism; it is not just an attempt to impose cultural homogeneity, but can provide agency to local actors by exposing them to alien ideas, such as hip-hop, and new technologies. 

      

(ii) In Nepal, these local actors were at first the privileged urban youth based in Kathmandu who had the resources and opportunities to access the culture of hip-hop (its music and fashions). However, hip-hop soon spread like Maoist wildfire amongst the rural youth as well and took on a different character; one related to the folk culture and oral traditions of Nepal, but now in relation to global modernity. 

 

(iii) Hip-hop in Nepal allows for a reinterpretation of national political discourse, but from a different cultural perspective; it is, as Chettri writes, 'a ready vehicle for voicing youth concerns'. Nevertheless, the same old issues to do with class, caste, ethnicity, gender, etc., soon arise. 

 

(iv) Unfortunately, in Nepal as elsewhere, hip-hop remains a scene dominated by a lot of angry (and often misogynistic) young men and some of the language - not so much of delinquency, but of militant asceticism - is profoundly depressing. The author ponders (somewhat wistfully) at the end of her essay whether the introduction of more female rappers will bring about change and make Nepalese hip-hop a bit more progressive. 

      Personally, I doubt it; this is a country where, for example, arranged marriage (often with child brides) is still the norm and where there are still witch hunts in which elderly, usually lower caste women are beaten, tortured, force fed excrement, and sometimes burnt alive. I suspect it's therefore going to take more than spitting a few bars or busting some rhymes to change things anytime soon.              

 

  

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Insouciance', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 95.

 

[2] Ibid. 

 

[3] Ibid., p. 96. 

 

[4] The Subcultures Interest Group (SIG) is 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 and offering resistance to temporal colonisation; i.e., the imposition of a perpetual present in which it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine a future (or remember a past) that is radically different. I have published several SIG-themed posts here on Torpedo the Ark, which can be read by clicking here.

 

[5] Kritika Chettri, 'Straight Outta Kathmandu: Hip-hop and Youth Culture in Post-war Nepal', in Music, Subcultures and Migration, ed. Elke Weesjes and Matthew Worley (Routledge, 2024), pp. 203-216.  

 

 

Musical bonus: 'Straight Outta Kathmandu', by Uniq Poet and Bluesss (ft. MC Dave), taken from the album Blue Up High (2019): click here to play on YouTube.      

 

  

Punk History is for Pissing On: Notes on PZ77 by Simon Parker

PZ77: A Town A Time A Tribe (Scryfa, 2022) 

by Simon Parker

 

'Ah, those days... for many years afterwards their happiness haunted me. 

Sometimes, listening to music, I drift back and nothing has changed.' [1] 

 

 

I. 

 

Conceived, designed, narrated, and edited by Simon Parker - and published by an independent co-operative he established in 1996 to celebrate and promote contemporary Cornish writing - PZ77 is "a unique story of time, place, friendship, community, and an almost obsessive passion for making music" [2]. 

 

The book features more than ninety personal accounts, across 392 pages, from old punks like himself who grew up in a place "others came for their holidays" (Penzance) [3].      

 

It's not the kind of book I would normally read (for reasons we'll come to shortly). 

 

However, as a 40 page extract from the work - the first five tracks - is the chosen text for discussion by the Subcultures Interest Group (SIG) [4] this coming week - a group with which I'm associated - I thought I'd take this opportunity to assemble (and share) some thoughts in advance ...

 

 

II. 

There are, as Russ Bestley reminds us, now hundreds of books on punk in the mid-late 1970s, and it sometimes feels as if everyone and their dog who was in any way connected to the scene has now had their say on the subject or shared their memories of the time. 

 

For those over a certain age, punk nihilism has now given way to punk nostalgia; the chaos of a life lived blissfully in the moment (now/here) has been replaced with a comforting and conformist vision of the past. 

 

In other words, instead of going with the flow of events and strange becomings that carry them beyond the constraints of a fixed identity, many old punks now prefer to relive the past as best they can at the Rebellion Festival [5] and produce narratives which reinforce the mythology of punk by "re-articulating variations of the same story, often through a nostalgic lens centred on personal experience and memories" [6].  

 

 

III.   

To be fair to Parker, PZ77 might be read as an attempt to give a voice to many punk fans whose stories and memories of the time might otherwise have gone unrecorded, thereby expanding our understanding of punk (certainly as it unfolded in Corwall in 1977).  

 

As Bestley rightly points out, "punk's standard narrative has become so deeply embedded, its cultural and historical position so neatly summarized, that there is a desperate need for alternative perspectives that might sustain a sense of engagement and highlight new contributions to knowledge within a tired and over-familiar field of study" [7]. 

 

However, from what I've read of the work, I don't like it ... 

 

And the reason I don't like it is because, as a Deleuzian - and as a member of the extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars [8] - I don't like writing that attempts to impose a coherent and conventional linguistic form on lived experience and I don't like writing that is merely a form of personal overcoding; i.e., an opportunity for an author to give whatever it is they write about a familiar face that somehow resembles their own. 

 

Any form of writing that is heavily reliant upon the recounting of youthful memories is usually not only bad writing but dead writing; for as Deleuze says, literature dies from an excess of autobiography just as surely as from an overdose of emotion or imagination [9].   

 

Rather than transport us away from Oeidpal structures towards a zone of indiscernibility where we might lose ourselves, PZ77 attempts to take us back to a better time where we might rediscover our passions and dreams, renew old friendships, etc. 

 

Whereas I still believe in the ruins, Parker believes in building a sense of community. The interviews with participants in his project indicate a level of acceptance that punk has become part of mainstream culture; nice people, performing nice gestures, and leading nice lives, etc. 

 

 

IV. 

Ultimately, I was never going to like a book written by an obsessive Ramones fan: they may have been Sid's favourite band, but they were never my favourite band. 

 

And whereas Parker, a grammar school boy from a Methodist fishing village who likes to see the good in people is, by his own admission, "always thinking about music" [10], I don't care about the music; to paraphrase Malcolm, if punk had just been about the music it would have died a death long ago.   

  

It's his best mate, Grev Williams, however, who really irritates me. Thinking back to the Summer of Hate, he ponders just how important the period was to him: 

 

"Punk bursting into our lives was hugely invigorating and inspiring [...]  but I'd be lying if I said I found any expression of my inner self in it [... and] the idea that I was revolting against my background and community would be wholly false. I was blessed with the strength of knowing where I came from, I didn't want to smash it up - I loved it. Punk wasn't a spit-filled, nihilist cul-de-sac for me, it was a launch pad. As a budding musician it provided opportunities and informed my attitude, not my taste. [...] Anyway, long story short and truth be told, I didn't hate or revolt against much [...] [11]

 

Whilst aknowledging the benefit of his experiences in 1977, Williams has to ask himself whether he was ever really a 'punk': "As with so much, I'm really not sure." [12]

 

It's not, of course, my role to help him decide the matter. 

 

But I would say, given his confession above - every aspect of which (apart from his uncertainty) I find objectionable - that whilst he may or may not have been a punk, he was clearly not a Sex Pistol as I understand the term; i.e. in a manner largely shaped by McLaren's description in the Oliver Twist Manifesto (1977) - click here - and the ideas developed in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980). 

 

I look forward to discussing this with other members of the SIG, including Russ Bestley [13]. 

 

However, I won't be buying a copy of Parker's PZ77. For those who like this sort of thing, as Miss Brodie would say, this is the sort of thing they like: but, for me, punk history is for pissing on ...    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] J. L. Carr, A Month In The Country (Harvester Press, 1980). 

      This quote was used as an epigraph to PZ77. It should be noted, however, that the narrator of the novel goes on to ask himself would he have always remained happy had he somehow been able to stay in the same time and place. And the answer is: "No, I suppose not."  

 

[2] I'm quoting here from the Scryfa website: click here. 

 

[3] Ibid. 

 

[4] The Subcultures Interest Group (SIG) is 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 and offering resistance to temporal colonisation; i.e., the imposition of a perpetual present in which it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine a future (or remember a past) that is radically different. 

      I have published several SIG-themed posts here on Torpedo the Ark, which can be read by clicking here.    

      

[5] For those who don't know, Rebellion is the biggest independently run punk festival in the UK, that takes place each summer in the historic Winter Gardens, Blackpool. I haven't been and I don't want to go to this family-oriented event which celebrates Punk in all its forms with the blessing of the local council. For further information, click here. 

 

[6] Russ Bestley, 'Going Through the Motions: Punk Nostalgia and Conformity', in Trans-Global Punk Scenes: The Punk Reader Vol. 2. (Intellect Books, 2021), pp. 179-196. 

 

[7] Ibid. 

 

[8] This wonderful phrase was coined by Peter York to describe the denizens of 430 King's Road (i.e., the SEX people). It was used in his article 'Them' that appeared in Harpers & Queen (October 1976) and is cited by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329.

 

[9] See the post dated 30 August 2013 entitled 'A Deleuzean Approach to Literature' - click here. 

 

[10] Simon Parker, PZ77: A Town A Time A Tribe (Scryfa, 2022), p. 11.

 

[11] Grev Williams quoted by Simon Parker in PZ77 ... pp. 38-39.

 

[12] Ibid., p. 41.

 

[13] Russ Bestley's own review of Simon Parker's PZ77 can be found in Punk & Post-Punk, Volume 12, Issue 1 (Feb 2023), p. 131 - 134. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to gain free access to this text online, so couldn't discuss it here.    

 

 

On Jasmine Howard's Granny, My Mother, and the Likely Lasses

Two girls in Newcastle (1970)

Photo by Laszlo Torday 

 

I. 

 

The other day, on a sunny afternoon, as Ray Davies would say, I attended a meeting of the Subcultures Interest Group (SIG), 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. 

 

After discussing the graphic design of Dave King - the one who designed the Crass symbol; not the one who designed the Anti-Nazi League logo - and the contents of an upcoming issue of SIG News, there were three short presentations, including one by a canny lass dressed in a vintage outfit called Jasmine Howard; a Fashion Cultures and Histories student, writing her MA dissertation on class and clothing in the North East of England in the mid-late 1960s [1].

 

 

II. 

 

More interested in the women who lived and worked and raised families in the small towns and villages rather than big cities such as Newcastle, Ms Howard argued that her grandmother was not only a long way geographically from Swinging London and its youth-driven cultural revolution, but essentially belonged to a different world from the one inhabited by Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton.

 

And, after looking at a photo of her grandmother on her wedding day in comparison to a London model wearing one of the lastest Mary Quant designs, one has to agree. 

 

But that's not to say that Jasmine's granny didn't look lovely; futuristic minimalism and space-age fashion is all well and good, but there's nothing wrong with looking neat and tidy in a more traditional sense and wearing garments that are a little more down to earth and designed to last. 

 

My own mother, who was from the North East, but moved south after marrying in 1948, never had much money to spend on clothes and wasn't very much interested in fashion. Nevertheless, she always made sure she looked respectable when she left the house; always with makeup and never with bare legs or bare head. 

 

Back then, people would refer to themselves as working class and proud, which, amongst other things, implied they took care of their appearance, but didn't necessarily feel the need to wear silver miniskirts and go-go boots.          

 

 

III.

 

Having said that, as the North East fashion historian Caroline Whitehead [2] reminds us, there were young women (and young men) in the North East during the sixties - certainly in the large cities, but also, I suspect, in the smallest towns and villages - who were bang on trend and keen to keep up with all the latest fashions from London, even if they couldn't afford to buy such and had to make their own outfits or buy cheap knock-off designs by mail order.

 

I can't imagine, for example, that if you were a student at the Newcastle College of Art and Industrial Design [3] in the 1960s, you were dressed either like Jasmine's granny or my mother and, if one can judge from the clothes worn by Thelma and all the other likely lasses [4], by the early-mid 1970s many women in the North East were now wearing colourful outfits, often with very short hemlines.    

 

  

Notes

 

[1] The two other presentations were made by Nael Ali and Eylem Boz; the former spoke on the symbol of the wolf within black metal; the latter, on the way in which social media and other forms of digital communication transformed emo in the early 21st century. My thoughts on these papers can be read here and here.    

 

[2] Whitehead organised an event celebrating local history month on 1 May, 2010, at Newcastle City Library, which examined the impact that the 1960s had on the North East. She gave an illustrated talk entitled 'The Sixties Revisited: Dedicated Followers of Fashion'. Tony Henderson's article on this event in the Chronicle can be found online by clicking here.

 

[3] Newcastle College of Art and Industrial Design was a key institution in the NE region in the 1960s. It eventually merged with other colleges to form Newcastle Polytechnic (now Northumbria University).

 

[4] I'm referring here to the female cast of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads (BBC TV 1973-74), led by Brigit Forsyth as Thelma Ferris (née Chambers). See the post dated 2 December 2023: click here. 

Joining the Black Parade: Brief Reflections on Emo

 Portrait of the Scottish poet, philosopher, and founder 

of Emo, Thomas Brown (1778 - 1820)  [1]

 

 

I. 

 

The other day, on a sunny afternoon, as Ray Davies would say, I attended a meeting of the Subcultures Interest Group (SIG), 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.

 

After discussing the graphic design of Dave King - the one who designed the Crass symbol; not the one who designed the Anti-Nazi League logo - and the contents of an upcoming issue of SIG News, there were three short presentations by post-grad students, including one by a vivacious young woman called Eylem Boz, who was writing her MA dissertation on the way in which social media and other forms of digital communication have transformed emo - an alternative music genre - in the 21st century.

 

Now, I have to confess that my knowledge of emo is pretty limited, although I am aware of the fact that it has existed not only as a sound but as a fashion - and not only as a look, but as a lifestyle - since the early-mid 1990s, so I was keen to listen and learn a little more from someone who was clearly speaking with an insider's knowledge, experience, and passion, whilst still viewing things with a degree of academic objectivity [2].

 

 

II. 

 

If I'm not mistaken, Ms Boz was arguing that emo, as a subculture, radically developed (and mutated) as an online phenomenon - particularly in the early 2000s - in a way that earlier youth subcultures had not had the opportunity to do so. 

 

So, whilst some emo bands - such as My Chemical Romance [3] - found a level of mainstream success during this period, that's kind of irrelevant. What really matters and what really interests, is the way that emo was a fan-driven phenomenon; they made their own rules, relationships, and values, etc. [4]

 

And so, whilst emos may or may not be overly-sensitive and prone to mental health issues, they are also highly creative and tech-savvy and one can't help feeling a mixture of admiration and affection for them. 

 

What ultimately struck me during Eylem's presentation, however, was that emo is something of a paradox. For what she revealed is not that members of this community have a rich and complex inner life, but that their authenticity is a game of artifice and their model of selfhood is something created, stylised, and performed, rather than something to be known via philosophical reflection.

 

That's not to denigrate those who identify as emo, or mock them for their concern with clothes, haircuts, and makeup; I'd be the last person in the world who would wish to rain on their black parade, so to speak.

 

I'm simply suggesting that it would be a good idea for Ms Boz to acknowledge in her dissertation that that the emotions are things that demand expression, always pushing towards a surface [5], and that the ancient Greeks were wise to adore appearance, believe in forms, and courageously remain, as Nietzsche says, superficial out of profundity [6]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This image features an engraving by William Walker based on a painting of Thomas Brown by George Watson (1806) and a ghostly-looking version of an Emo Girl by the graphic designer and illustrator Manuela Zamfir. Her original can be viewed (and downoaded for a fee) on vecteezy.com. 

      Brown, for those who don't know, has been described as the 'inventor of the emotions'. For more details, see Thomas Dixon's post dated 2 April 2020 on the History of Emotions Blog, operated by the Queen Mary Centre for the History of the Emotions: click here. 

 

[2] Eylem Boz certainly looked the part, though whether she would identify herself as an emo girl I don't know and, amusingly, her lively and outgoing character seemed to be somewhat at odds with the popular idea of the latter as someone a bit reserved and introverted (though perhaps this popular idea of an emo girl is a misconception and stereotype).    

 

[3] My Chemical Romance rejected the label after the UK press whipped up a moral panic surrounding the cult of emo and accused them (and other groups) of promoting social alienation, self-harm, and suicide amongst their young followers. To play their huge hit single, 'Welcome to the Black Parade', taken from the album The Black Parade (Reprise Records, 2006), click here.  

 

[4] As the character Dewey Finn would say: "That is so punk rock."

 

[5] The English word emotion was coined in the early 1800s by Thomas Brown - arguably the first emo - and derives from the French term émouvoir, which means to stir up (i.e. to move things towards the surface). It is arguable that whilst people before this date experienced certain passions and affections, no one felt emotions in the modern psychological sense.

      It is also arguable, that our emotions (like our ideas) are entirely constructed by external regimes of power, which is why I would like to close this post with the following (non-emo) track from the American punk band the Dead Kennedys; taken from the album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (Cherry Red Records, 1980), 'Your Emotions' amusingly suggests that our emotions betray our monstrous nature and that our scars only begin to show when we confess how we're feeling or what we're thinking. To play, click here.  

 

[6] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, preface to the second edition (1886), section 4. 

 

 

For a related post to this one, in which I offer some Deleuzean reflections on the symbol of the wolf in black metal, click here.  

 

For a related post to this one on the politics of female fashion in the NE of England during the 1960s, click here.

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 deterritorialisation; not becoming hirsute, growing large carnivorous 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 believe, just starting his research into the topic of black metal wolves - but it's important, sooner or later, that Ali recognise 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, it's 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 Treadwell's, 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. 

 

For a sister post to this one in which we follow the black parade and reflect on emo, click here. 

 

And for another SIG-inspired post, this time on the politics of female fashion in NE England during the 1960s, please 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.