We Are the One: Subcultural Politics and Leisure in Early San Francisco Punk
This essay examines the ways in which politics and leisure were entangled in early San Francisco punk. Although San Francisco is perhaps uniquely associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, the city was, by the late 1970s, also home to a punk scene largely defined by its fierce engagement with...
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| الحاوية / القاعدة: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles, |
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| المؤلف الرئيسي: | |
| التنسيق: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| اللغة: | Anglais |
| منشور في: |
Angles
2020
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| الموضوعات: | |
| الوصول للمادة أونلاين: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
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openedition-oai:revues.org:angles_1133 |
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openedition |
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openedition-oai:revues.org:angles_1133 https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.1133 urn:doi:10.4000/angles.1133 en https://journals.openedition.org/angles/1133 2020-07-16T02:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess article info:eu-repo/semantics/article urn:handle:20.500.13089/9mzh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ We Are the One: Subcultural Politics and Leisure in Early San Francisco Punk Angles Société des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/2274-2042 URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles Foley, Michael Stewart États-Unis loisirs punk culture politique subcultures San Francisco Californie divertissement United States leisure punk fun political culture subculture San Francisco California This essay examines the ways in which politics and leisure were entangled in early San Francisco punk. Although San Francisco is perhaps uniquely associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, the city was, by the late 1970s, also home to a punk scene largely defined by its fierce engagement with political issues. At the same time, punks experienced this scene — which existed at a time of sustained national, state, and local crisis — as deliriously fun. Their idea of fun was vastly different than mainstream ideas of American leisure, but there is no denying that punk, like most subcultures, was experienced at least in part as a leisure activity. I argue that punks acted deliberately to not only intertwine fun and politics, but to make fun and play vehicles for political struggle, if not revolution. At least in this one major American city, punk was equal parts political engagement and diversion, equally confrontational and escapist. More importantly, the leisure and fun elements contributed to the building of a prefigurative community as a micro-model of what punks hoped could be achieved on a larger scale. In that way, fun and politics contributed to a fundamentally utopian vision in a subculture marked not by nihilism — as punk is so often cast — but by possibility. Cet article examine les modalités des rapports complexes entre politique et loisir aux débuts du mouvement punk à San Francisco. Bien que la ville soit sans doute associée de la manière la plus marquante à la contre-culture des années 60, San Francisco est aussi, à la fin des années 70, le foyer d’une scène punk définie en grande partie par son engagement politique farouche. En même temps, les punks vivent cette expérience — à un moment de crise soutenue au niveau national, régional et local — sur le mode du divertissement exacerbé. Leur idée du divertissement est radicalement différente de celle des idées dominantes en la matière aux États-Unis, mais il est indéniable que le punk, comme la plupart des subcultures, est vécu en partie comme une activité de loisir. Je défends l’hypothèse selon laquelle les punks ont délibérément cherché non seulement à mélanger loisir et politique, mais à faire du loisir et du jeu un vecteur de lutte politique, sinon révolutionnaire. Au moins à l’échelle de cette ville américaine importante, le punk est tout autant engagement politique et divertissement, antagoniste et récréatif. Surtout, la présence d’éléments de loisir et de divertissement contribue à la formation d’une communauté qui préfigure, sous forme de micro-modèle, ce que les punks espèrent pouvoir réaliser à plus grande échelle. En ce sens, loisir et politique contribuent à une vision fondamentalement utopique d’une subculture marquée non par le nihilisme — comme dans les représentations courantes du punk — mais par les possibles. |
| collection |
OpenEdition Journal |
| language |
Anglais |
| format |
Article ou chapitre numérique |
| building |
0/Bibliothèque numérique/ 1/Bibliothèque numérique/OpenEdition Journals/ |
| topic |
États-Unis loisirs punk culture politique subcultures San Francisco Californie divertissement United States leisure punk fun political culture subculture San Francisco California |
| spellingShingle |
États-Unis loisirs punk culture politique subcultures San Francisco Californie divertissement United States leisure punk fun political culture subculture San Francisco California Foley, Michael Stewart We Are the One: Subcultural Politics and Leisure in Early San Francisco Punk |
| description |
This essay examines the ways in which politics and leisure were entangled in early San Francisco punk. Although San Francisco is perhaps uniquely associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, the city was, by the late 1970s, also home to a punk scene largely defined by its fierce engagement with political issues. At the same time, punks experienced this scene — which existed at a time of sustained national, state, and local crisis — as deliriously fun. Their idea of fun was vastly different than mainstream ideas of American leisure, but there is no denying that punk, like most subcultures, was experienced at least in part as a leisure activity. I argue that punks acted deliberately to not only intertwine fun and politics, but to make fun and play vehicles for political struggle, if not revolution. At least in this one major American city, punk was equal parts political engagement and diversion, equally confrontational and escapist. More importantly, the leisure and fun elements contributed to the building of a prefigurative community as a micro-model of what punks hoped could be achieved on a larger scale. In that way, fun and politics contributed to a fundamentally utopian vision in a subculture marked not by nihilism — as punk is so often cast — but by possibility. |
| author |
Foley, Michael Stewart |
| author_facet |
Foley, Michael Stewart |
| author_sort |
Foley, Michael Stewart |
| title |
We Are the One: Subcultural Politics and Leisure in Early San Francisco Punk |
| title_short |
We Are the One: Subcultural Politics and Leisure in Early San Francisco Punk |
| title_full |
We Are the One: Subcultural Politics and Leisure in Early San Francisco Punk |
| title_fullStr |
We Are the One: Subcultural Politics and Leisure in Early San Francisco Punk |
| title_full_unstemmed |
We Are the One: Subcultural Politics and Leisure in Early San Francisco Punk |
| title_sort |
we are the one: subcultural politics and leisure in early san francisco punk |
| publisher |
Angles |
| publishDate |
2020 |
| container_title |
URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles |
| url |
https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.1133 https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://journals.openedition.org/angles/1133 |
| _version_ |
1877293948264775680 |