Fight back

Punk, politics and resistance

The Subcultures Network

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781847799609
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Relazioni internazionali

Fight back examines the different ways punk – as a youth/subculture – may provide space for political expression and action. Bringing together scholars from a range of academic disciplines (history, sociology, cultural studies, politics, English, music), it showcases innovative research into the diverse ways in which punk may be used and interpreted. The essays are concerned with three main themes: identity, locality and communication. These, in turn, cover subjects relating to questions of class, age and gender; the relationship between punk, locality and socio-political context; and the ways in which punk's meaning has been expressed from within the subculture and reflected by the media. Jon Savage, the foremost commentator and curator of punk's cultural legacy, provides an afterword on punk's impact and dissemination from the 1970s to the present day.

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I wanna be me: punk and identity

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‘If you want to live, you better know how to fight’: fighting masculinity on the Russian punk scene

-HILARY PILKINGTON-

The discussion of masculinity and femininity on punk scenes is a relatively recent phenomenon.¹ The emphasis in published work to date has been on reclaiming young women’s experience and practice; driven, in part, by their increasing visibility thanks to the emergence of the Riot Grrrl scene in the 1990s. The broad consensus reached might be encapsulated in LeBlanc’s conclusion that ‘gender is problematic for punk girls in a way that it is not for punk guys, because punk girls must accommodate female gender within subcultural identities that are deliberately coded as male’.² LeBlanc substantiated the claim with ethnographic research that shows how, through punk, young women enact ‘strategies of resistance to both mainstream and subcultural norms of femininity’ but also how the subjectivities they forge remain circumscribed by male punks’ creation and maintenance of the masculinity of the punk subculture.³

Leblanc argues that this closing down of space is a product of the replacement of spontaneous, diverse and gender-transgressive style and body practices on early punk scenes by the masculinist stylistic uniformity of North American hardcore.⁴ However, testimonies from the early UK scene suggest that although punk created a space where women ‘felt free to express difference’, female punk musicians were often attacked physically and abused from the floor for their appearance.⁵ Thus, O’Brien suggests, ‘contrary to the myth, punk was not necessarily woman-friendly’ and ‘while there were men wrestling with questions of masculinity and feminism, there were just as many content to leave it unreconstructed’.⁶ Arguably, the ‘myth’ that punk scenes were the site of anti-sexist practices and alternative masculinities has inhibited the discussion of masculinity in punk. Recent studies of hardcore scenes, however, suggest dancefloor – including fighting – practices are central to constructing and maintaining a ‘masculine sense of community and collectivity’.⁷ Hardcore slamming or thrashing is interpreted as ‘a dance of male hardcore solidarity’ constituting symbolic rather than genuine fighting.⁸ Simon’s study of slam dancing,⁹ however, suggests a fine line between order and chaos in ‘the pit’; while scene participants do not seek violence, it is always a potential outcome.¹⁰ Haenfler’s study of the straight edge movement within hardcore confirms incompetent dancing to be a common cause of violence; in a typical scenario someone new to the scene pushes or runs into someone else and the act is interpreted by regular scene members as deliberate.¹¹ However, he suggests, violence could also result from internal divisions within the movement – specifically between ‘militant’ and ‘positive’ elements¹² – making fighting, at some events, ritualised rather than incidental.¹³ The role of fighting among diverse elements within the straight edge movement illustrates the ‘contradictory’ expressions of masculinity as members aligned themselves with anti-sexist and anti-homophobic sensibilities but also engaged in practices that tacitly support hegemonic masculinities.¹⁴ This suggests, contrary to LeBlanc’s assertion, that gender may be a problem for male punks too.¹⁵

Violence and ritual fighting has been considered within the literature on subcultural studies primarily in relation to ‘deviant’ rather than ‘spectacular’ subcultures. This violence, it is argued, is rooted in a sense of territoriality ‘deeply ingrained in most working-class parent cultures’ albeit mediated through institutions such as the local pub, shops, political, religious or cultural associations or, in the case of young people, the ‘gang’.¹⁶ The exception is the study of skinhead culture, in which fighting is understood to be central to group solidarity and identity; ‘A skinhead cannot claim to be a “skin” if he does not fight’.¹⁷ Fighting provides the public opportunity to demonstrate loyalty to the group and to further one’s reputation and is directly linked to the expression of masculinity since ‘never backing down, no matter what the odds are’, is central to proving one’s ‘hardness’.¹⁸ This understanding of fighting as strongly ritualised is a core element of critical deviancy approaches, which suggest that what is often interpreted from the outside as ‘violence’ and ‘disorder’ in youth spheres (on the terraces, in classrooms) is narrated from the inside as strongly rule-bound suggesting ‘an order in their actions that is their own’.¹⁹

More recently, this kind of violence has been categorised as ‘audienceoriented’ or ‘staged’ fighting.²⁰ Despite its usual association with gangs and football hooliganism, Collins suggests that audience-oriented fighting is most frequently encountered at entertainment venues, bars and parties.²¹ This is helpful for thinking about the kind of fighting that has been a consistent, if under-researched, element of ‘spectacular’ subcultural practices. Fighting between punks and Ted gangs, for example, was a characteristic of the early UK punk scene²² and New York City straight edge scenes in the 1980s were ‘legendary for their brutality’.²³ Indeed American punk and hardcore scenes of the 1980s were often intersected with skinhead scenes, which wavered between being ‘united’ and fighting each other,²⁴ while punk gigs in the UK in the late 1970s and early 1980s regularly attracted skinheads in search of a fight.²⁵ Even later anarchist scenes that adopted a pacifist stance as part of a wider struggle against institutionalised militarism, saw members abandon the pacifist commitment after experiencing violence from police and skinheads.²⁶

Gigs, clubs and other leisure spaces, it follows, might be seen (like football ‘Ends’) as sites of territorialism where groups protect ‘their’ space against invasion by incompetents or ‘others’. However, punks manage those spaces differently to football hooligans and this varies also over time and space. Thus, thrashing constitutes a rule-bound arena in which violence breaks out when rules are not known or conventions broken,²⁷ while straight edge scenes may have internal factions between which fighting could be anticipated.²⁸ Moreover, other forms of punk aggression may be less rule-bound. Tsitsos differentiates between slamdancing (characterised by apparent chaos and rejection of order in the pit yet evoking a certain ‘unity’ among dancers) and moshing (as developed by straight edgers), which places greater emphasis on individual dancers’ control of the pit.²⁹ This, he argues, reflects an ideology among straight edgers of rebellion against rules not in order to eliminate them, but to impose their rules on others.³⁰ Collins’s focus on the situational and interactional nature of violence is helpful here since it shifts attention from macro-level social factors in explaining violence to the micro dimension and interaction taking place in violence-threatening encounters.³¹ This more personal and situational approach facilitates the understanding of violence within the punk scene, which may be categorised as ‘audience-oriented violence’ but is not necessarily perpetrated for the purposes of initiation or ritual.

This article compares practices of fighting on punk scenes in two cities in Russia: St Petersburg and Vorkuta. This was not among the original aims of the research but arose in the course of ethnographic fieldwork as fighting emerged as an important aspect of punk practice and narrative (especially among male respondents). In both cases, the scenes were predominantly male and governed by dominant gender norms, notwithstanding the active participation of a small number of women. However, the positioning of punk in relation to other youth cultural scenes in the cities, as well as the very different socio-economic, cultural and territorial contexts of those scenes, revealed significant variation in the kinds of violence encountered as well as the meanings attached to them. Three characteristics of punk fighting are explored here. The first is the interactional nature of violence indicated by the dominant narrative of fighting on both scenes as a ‘response’ to attack (from ‘local thugs’, from ‘skinheads’). This discussion highlights the similarities with skinhead fighting – its rule-bound nature, territorial solidarity and readiness to defend the home district or other ‘own’ space – but also the differences, not least the fact that participation in fighting is not essential to the more individualistically oriented punk scene. Secondly, the relationship between fighting and ideology is discussed through examples of solidarities with both anti-fascist and racist skinhead groups that reflect the traditionally ambiguous political positioning of punk. Thirdly, the frequently chaotic and opportunistic nature of punk violence is considered. This mode of fighting is articulated not only as intensely pleasurable but through a peculiar narrativisation of punk fighting as tales of ‘heroic incompetence’ that constitute an important resource for ironic story-telling. The discussion aims to contribute to understanding the meanings attached to fighting as well as the ambiguities over masculinity within, and around, punk culture.

Research context and method

This chapter draws on ethnographic research conducted in Vorkuta and St Petersburg under the auspices of the project ‘Post-socialist punk: Beyond the double irony of self-abasement’ (2009–13).³² These two case studies are indicative of the wide spectrum of punk scenes in contemporary Russia. Vorkuta is an isolated, deindustrialising and depopulating city in Russia’s Arctic North. It was founded in 1932 as part of the Gulag system as prisoners opened up the Vorkuta mines to exploit the northern reaches of the Pechora coal basin. Following the closure of the camp in 1962, people came voluntarily to the city, attracted by higher wages and early pension rights. Vorkuta’s population peaked in 1991 at 180,000 but thereafter the city experienced rapid deindustrialisation and out-migration leaving its population standing at less than half that size and widespread speculation that the city is in its death throes. Vorkuta has a small alternative music scene in which punks and others (skinheads, emos and hard rock fans) overlap. The first punk band – Mazut – was formed in 1988 and continues to perform alongside a handful of younger punk bands. The constant ‘drain’ of musicians through out-migration from the city, as well as the difficulty bands face in finding rehearsal and performance venues, makes the scene highly intersected and mutually supportive.

In contrast, St Petersburg, founded in 1703, is the second largest city in Russia with a population of just under 5 million. It straddles forty-seven islands of the Neva delta ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• The Subcultures Network
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: from protest to resistance
• I. I wanna be me: punk and identity
• II. Transmission: punk and place
• III. When the punks go marching in: punk, communication and production
• Afterword – the cultural impact of punk: an interview with Jon Savage
• Index