Punk Pedagogies : Music, Culture and Learning 2017018358, 9781138279872, 9781138279889, 9781315276250

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
Contributors
1 Presenting Punk Pedagogies in Practice
Part I Punk Learning and Learning from Punk
2 Art Attacks: Punk Methods and Design Education
3 “Khas-o-Khâshâk”: Anarcho-Improv in the Tehrani Music Education Scene
4 Should I Stay or Should I Go? A Survival Guide for Punk Graduate Students
5 Punk Entrepreneurship: Overcoming Obstacles to Employability in the UK’s Higher Education Pseudo-market
6 Just Go and Do It: A Blockchain Technology “Live Project” for Nascent Music Entrepreneurs
Part II Punk Teaching and Teaching Punk
7 “Don’t Know Much About History, and We Don’t Care!” Teaching Punk Rock History
8 “Here We Are Now, Educate Us”: The Punk Attitude, Tenets and Lens of Student-Driven Learning
9 Laughing All the Way to the Stage: Pedagogies of Comedic Dissidence in Punk and Hip-Hop
10 Here’s Some Scissors, Here’s Some Glue, Now Go Make a Zine! A Teacher’s Reflections on Zine-Making in the Classroom
11 Give Violence a Chance: Emancipation and Escape in/ from School Music Education
Part III Theorizing from Punk Pedagogical Practice
12 Being Punk in Higher Education: Subcultural Strategies for Academic Practice
13 “There’s Only One Way of Life, and That’s Your Own”
14 From Punk Ethics to the Pedagogy of the Bad Kids: Core Values and Social Liberation
Index

Citation preview

Punk Pedagogies Punk Pedagogies: Music, Culture and Learning brings together a collection of international authors to explore the possibilities, practices and implications that emerge from the union of punk and pedagogy. The punk ethos—a notoriously evasive and multifaceted beast—offers unique applications in music education and beyond, and this volume presents a breadth of interdisciplinary perspectives to challenge current thinking on how, why and where the subculture influences teaching and learning. As (punk) educators and artists, contributing authors grapple with punk’s historicity, its pervasiveness, its (dis)functionality and its messiness, making Punk Pedagogies relevant and motivating to both instructors and students with proven pedagogical practices. Gareth Dylan Smith is Manager of Program Effectiveness at Little Kids Rock, New Jersey, USA. Mike Dines is co-founder of the Punk Scholars Network, UK. Tom Parkinson is Lecturer in Higher Education at the University of Kent, UK.

Punk Pedagogies Music, Culture and Learning

Edited by Gareth Dylan Smith,

Mike Dines and Tom Parkinson

First published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Gareth Dylan Smith, Mike Dines and Tom Parkinson; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Gareth Dylan Smith, Mike Dines and Tom Parkinson to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Smith, Gareth Dylan. | Dines, Michael. | Parkinson, Thomas, 1980– Title: Punk pedagogies : music, culture and learning / Gareth Dylan Smith, Michael Dines and Thomas Parkinson [and fourteen others]. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017018358 | ISBN 9781138279872 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138279889 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315276250 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Education—Philosophy. | Punk culture. | Autonomy (Psychology) | Freedom. Classification: LCC LB14.7 .P86 2018 | DDC 370.1—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017018358 ISBN: 978-1-138-27987-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-27988-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-27625-0 (ebk) Typeset in Minion by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Foreword

vii

ZACK FURNESS

Preface

ix

GARETH DYLAN SMITH, MIKE DINES AND TOM PARKINSON

Acknowledgements Contributors 1 Presenting Punk Pedagogies in Practice

xi xiii 1

GARETH DYLAN SMITH, MIKE DINES AND TOM PARKINSON

Part I Punk Learning and Learning from Punk 2 Art Attacks: Punk Methods and Design Education

13

RUSS BESTLEY

3 “Khas-o-Khâshâk”: Anarcho-Improv in the Tehrani Music Education Scene

30

NASIM NIKNAFS

4 Should I Stay or Should I Go? A Survival Guide for Punk Graduate Students

43

DAVID VILA DIÉGUEZ

5 Punk Entrepreneurship: Overcoming Obstacles to Employability in the UK’s Higher Education Pseudo-market

57

WARRICK HARNIESS

6 Just Go and Do It: A Blockchain Technology “Live Project” for Nascent Music Entrepreneurs

73

MARCUS O’DAIR AND ZULEIKA BEAVEN

v

vi • Contents

Part II Punk Teaching and Teaching Punk 7 “Don’t Know Much About History, and We Don’t Care!” Teaching Punk Rock History

91

JOHN DOUGAN

8 “Here We Are Now, Educate Us”: The Punk Attitude, Tenets and Lens of Student-Driven Learning

109

RYLAN KAFARA

9 Laughing All the Way to the Stage: Pedagogies of Comedic Dissidence in Punk and Hip-Hop

128

JESSICA A. SCHWARTZ AND SCOTT ROBERTSON

10 Here’s Some Scissors, Here’s Some Glue, Now Go Make a Zine! A Teacher’s Reflections on Zine-Making in the Classroom

144

LAURA WAY

11 Give Violence a Chance: Emancipation and Escape in/ from School Music Education

156

ALEXIS ANJA KALLIO

Part III Theorizing from Punk Pedagogical Practice 12 Being Punk in Higher Education: Subcultural Strategies for Academic Practice

173

TOM PARKINSON

13 “There’s Only One Way of Life, and That’s Your Own”

191

GARETH DYLAN SMITH

14 From Punk Ethics to the Pedagogy of the Bad Kids: Core Values and Social Liberation

210

TIAGO TELES SANTOS AND PAULA GUERRA

Index

225

Foreword

About five years ago, I put together a book called Punkademics that featured essays from a number of professors and graduate students who, like myself, had spent a considerable amount of time navigating the seemingly odd terrain between the punk scene and the university. I obviously knew there were a number of “punkademics” out there when I started the project, but in both the process of editing that collection and, especially, in the years following its publication, I ran across far more fellow travelers than I ever thought existed. In addition to making acquaintances with some of this book’s editors and contributors, I have met or corresponded with dozens of professors throughout the world who played in bands, wrote zines, started labels, cooked with Food Not Bombs, hopped trains, participated in protests and direct actions with other punks, opened DIY venues and put on punk shows— including, it turns out, the first one I ever attended when I was fourteen. As both an aging punk and a veteran teacher, I have long been interested in what punk teaches young people about the pragmatics and ethics associated with making music, art and other kinds of media where profit is not the central organizing principle. To put it baldly, I am fascinated by how punk and hardcore scenes function as pedagogical spaces: spaces in which people can learn to think critically, experiment with new ideas and practices, embrace a participatory view of culture and, ideally, cultivate a sense of self-awareness about punk’s own hypocrisies and dead ends. Given that many of these lessons are ones that professors spend enormous amounts of time trying to instill in their students, it is not surprising that punk similarly becomes a lens through which one can view the process of education itself. After all, university classrooms are some of the few designated spaces in which young people can also try to make some sense of the crazy world they inhabit while exploring the contours of a secular social space in which human beings are not implicitly reduced to their roles as workers or consumers. This book brings together a new collection of scholars who grapple with the inter-dynamics of punk and education in their writing and in their classrooms. Punk Pedagogies: Music, Culture and Learning features the voices of teachers and academics who draw inspiration and direction from their varied relationships to punk as a form of music, a set of cultural practices, and a critical vantage point from which to see, think and educate. Their chapters not only provide us with new theoretical issues to discuss and debate, they also give us some effective tools for teaching, as well as rich insights into how the boundaries of the thing we call “punk” can be pushed, pulled and expanded into new terrain. Zack Furness April 2, 2017 vii

Preface

“Punk” and “pedagogy” might seem like an odd, even contradictory choice of terms to share the title of a book. “Punk” is far easier to pronounce (is the second “g” in “pedagogy” meant to be soft or hard?), and almost everyone knows what they think punk means or denotes. Punk has enjoyed mainstream media attention, and as such has various familiar characteristics and associated stereotypes, whereas pedagogy has the air of a more specialist concept. Punk conjures (depending on who is doing the conjuring) music, rebellion, filth, anarchy, disrespect, criticality, disruption, noise, graffiti, an aesthetic, an ethos, a political or apolitical stance, particular times and places, and culture. Pedagogy is a less familiar word to many, albeit one that, once explained, everyone understands from their own experiences of it. We hope that it might be beguiling enough a term to attract readers who already understand the rest of our book’s title, and who, in traditional punk fashion, want to find out for themselves what it means. If someone picks this book off a library shelf or impulse-buys it online, just to find out what it’s about, that would exemplify a key tenet of punk pedagogy— the punk pedagogy of Punk Pedagogies, if you like! Pedagogy is about teaching and learning. It covers all the stuff that goes on in learning environments, usually classroom contexts in school, colleges and universities. But thanks to scholarship and practice in community music contexts, and the growth in understanding of informal learning praxes internationally, “pedagogy” now arguably accounts for—however (in)tangibly, temporarily or contingently this might be—what happens in a far broader range of contexts and situations of learning. So, while “punk” and “pedagogy” might at first glance appear to share very little, they in fact are both diverse sites of tradition, innovation and tension, and can each be understood to encompass both narrow and diverse practices and perspectives (hence our use of the plural, “pedagogies”, in the book’s title). The chapters are mostly rooted in the individual authors’ own practices as punks, and consider how aspects of punk can inform teaching and learning. Since this is not a methods book, we provide no instructions on “how to be a punk pedagogue”—to do so would be antithetical to almost all interpretations of punk. Readers can hear in these pages the voices of the authors, all of whom either self-identify as punks or have been identified by the editors as such. This being said, very few of the contributors would fit one easy stereotype of punk such as that perpetuated by, for instance, the North American chain of clothing stores Hot Topic.

ix

x • Preface The contributors look at punk through, broadly, three overlapping and mutually constituting frames: music, aesthetics and ethos. While each of these “frames” or “lenses” informs the others, and to separate them seems somewhat artificial, the chapters emphasize these aspects of punk to varying degrees. We are not trying to claim or to construct punk as anything that it is not; rather, our aim is to draw attention to the complex and multifaceted nature of what pedagogies could be when construed under the malleable, iconoclastic and evasive rubric of punk. The book is divided into three parts: punk learning and learning from punk, punk teaching and teaching punk, and theorizing (from) punk pedagogical practice. The section headings are intended as broadly descriptive rather than narrowly prescriptive, so chapters in the punk learning section include much that could have fitted under punk teaching, and vice versa. Similarly, the final part of the book contains chapters that might have worked in the preceding pages, but which emphasize a more theoretical orientation to punk pedagogies. The section headings describe the main orientations of the chapters in each section, and will hopefully help guide the reader through the book. Punk pedagogies are yours, the reader’s, to embrace, reinvent, copy, paste, smash, critique, adopt, mould to your needs, or to disregard and ignore. We believe there is a need for punk pedagogies, in our lives and in the education of others. We invite teachers and students, pedagogues and learners (for all of us are, to some extent, both) to take from this book what you will. Perhaps it presents an affront to your assumptions or convictions about what, how and why teaching should be done. Maybe it affirms a suspicion you had, that learning can be more democratized, dangerous, diverse and disruptive, and will inspire you to pursue new approaches with your students and in your own learning journey through life. Hopefully you will devour and digest the discussions, divisions and declamations that characterize this book. We invite you to savour the tensions, embrace the uncertainties and realize (in both meanings of the word) the ramifications of a set of practices and perspectives that threaten and aspire to emancipate individuals and groups from the shackled and un-punk mind. Gareth Dylan Smith, Mike Dines and Tom Parkinson

Acknowledgements

The editors would like to acknowledge the contributions to this book project of all those people without whom it would not have been possible. The book began as an idea proposed by Louise Jackson, and Louise’s time became consumed with her commitments along the way; we owe Louise a considerable debt of gratitude for conceiving of the project and inspiring us to take part. Mary Stakelum saw promise in our proposal to discuss this book at the 2017 Research in Music Education conference at Bath Spa University; Mary’s confidence in the project reassured us that we could be on to something worthwhile. We are tremendously thankful to all the contributing authors, for their diligence in attending to feedback from us, and for continuously aspiring to produce the best possible work in construing and critiquing punk pedagogical practices. A special thank-you is owed to Russ Bestley, who designed the book’s marvellous cover art. We also wish to thank Constance Ditzel for her enthusiasm for this volume, and the team at Routledge for helping us to produce a book dealing with complex subject matter that is close to our hearts. Gareth, Mike and Tom April 2017

xi

Contributors

Zuleika Beaven teaches in the Music department of Middlesex University, where she leads the MA Arts Management. Her PhD was a study of nascent musician entrepreneurs. For over a decade she has practised and researched the application of experiential learning for creative enterprise and was the recipient of a TQEF-funded award for embedding enterprise learning in the curriculum while at the Arts University Bournemouth. Russ Bestley is Reader in Graphic Design at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. He co-authored and designed several books, including Experimental Layout, Up Against the Wall, Visual Research and The Art of Punk, and has contributed articles to publications including Eye, Zed, Emigré, The National Grid, 360º and Vive Le Rock. He is editor of the journal Punk & Post Punk, and a member of the Punk Scholars Network. David Vila Diéguez is a PhD candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Vanderbilt University, with research interests in contemporary Iberian cultures and languages, subcultural and punk studies, and the relationship between contemporary popular culture and political activism. His thesis is on punk and antifascism in the Iberian Peninsula. He plays guitar in bands around Nashville, Galicia and the Basque Country. He is a founding member and editor of Furman 217 magazine (www.furman217.com). Mike Dines is co-founder of the international Punk Scholars Network. He has published extensively for scholarly and non-scholarly audiences, including the co-edited Tales From the Punkside (2014), Some of Us Scream, Some of Us Shout (2016) and The Aesthetics of Our Anger: Anarcho-Punk, Politics, Music (2016). Forthcoming publications include And All Around Was Darkness (2017), Postgraduate Voices in Punk (2017) and The Punk Reader: Research Transmissions From the Local and the Global (2017). John Dougan has a PhD in American Studies from the College of William & Mary, and is professor of music business and popular music studies in the Department of Recording Industry at Middle Tennessee State University. He is the author of two books: The Who Sell Out and The Mistakes of Yesterday, The Hopes of Tomorrow: The Story of the Prisonaires.

xiii

xiv • Contributors Zack Furness is Associate Professor of Communications at Pennsylvania State University, Greater Allegheny. He is the author and editor of several books, including Punkademics, and has published various articles and book chapters on bicycling, media, punk music/culture and the NFL. In addition to his academic work, his writing has also appeared in Souciant, Bitch, Punk Planet and Bad Subjects. He has played in punk bands since 1997, most recently in Barons. Paula Guerra is Professor of Sociology and Researcher at the Institute of Sociology at University of Porto. She is Adjunct Associate Professor of the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research (GCSCR) and founder and coordinator of the research network Todas as Artes (All the Arts) and KISMIF. She is author of numerous scientific articles published in journals such as Journal of Sociology, Popular Music and Society, European Journal of Cultural Studies and Critical Arts. Warrick Harniess is an entrepreneur and a musician. Warrick’s company, Scandinavia Stories, provides experiential learning programmes and consultancy services in leadership and entrepreneurship. He’s been playing punk rock since it changed his life in the mid ’90s. For more info visit www. scandinaviastories.co.uk or contact him at [email protected]. Rylan Kafara is a PhD student at the University of Alberta. His research examines the contrast between gentrification and grassroots community development in Edmonton’s urban core. He serves on the board of directors for Heart of the City Music and Arts Festival and CJSR 88.5 FM. In addition to The History of Punk, he also teaches with the University of Alberta’s Humanities Program, a free course for Edmonton residents facing barriers to formal education. Alexis Anja Kallio is a postdoctoral research fellow in music education at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on narratives that construct, reinforce or unsettle social stratifications that result in inequity and injustice in diverse arts education contexts. She has published her empirical, theoretical and methodological work in Finnish and international academic journals and books, and engages with broader audiences through Finnish news media, trade journals and blogs. Nasim Niknafs, the recipient of the Connaught New Researcher Award, Faculty Mobility Grant, and OMEA’s Agha Khan Initiative, is an Assistant Professor of Music Education at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto. Born and raised in Iran, Nasim’s selected publications have appeared in Music Education

Contributors • xv Research, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical and Qualitative Perspectives on Assessment in Music Education (forthcoming), The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Music Education and IASPM@Journal. Marcus O’Dair is a Senior Lecturer in Popular Music at Middlesex University, where he co-leads the BA in Popular Music and is convenor of the Blockchain for Creative Industries research cluster. He is the author of Different Every Time, an authorized biography of Robert Wyatt. He has also released three acclaimed albums and toured Europe as one half of Grasscut. Tom Parkinson is Lecturer in Higher Education at the University of Kent, where he leads the MA in Higher Education. His research considers the values that underpin higher education policy, pedagogy and curriculum, with a particular focus on arts and humanities disciplines. Tom has previously taught music in several schools and universities, and as a musician has performed throughout Europe and Southeast Asia. Scott Robertson is a PhD candidate in the Graduate School of Education and Information Sciences at UCLA, and a teaching associate in Musicology at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. He teaches at Cypress Community College in Cypress, California. Prior to his academic career, he was involved in the punk scene, performing in bands: Girlband, and My Bible Company. He continues to record and play music while injecting punk into his research and teaching. Tiago Teles Santos was born in Porto, Portugal, and developed an interest in various cultural issues. With undergraduate and master’s degrees in Sociology from the University of Porto, his research interests include social exclusion, space and territory, education and culture. His master’s thesis “Bad Kids. Towards an understanding of the symbolic and material universes for existence: punk references in Porto, Portugal”, was one of the first works on Portuguese punk. Nowadays he works in Motorsport. Jessica A. Schwartz (Assistant Professor of Musicology, UCLA) explores sonic histories of creative dissent and has published in journals such as Music and Politics, Punk and Post Punk, American Quarterly and Women and Music. Her first book, Radiation Sounds: Marshallese Music and Nuclear Silences (Duke University Press, under contract), details Marshallese musical responses to US nuclear weapons testing. She is developing Engaging Punk, a multimodal punk educational project. She actively performs noise-based and punk music. Gareth Dylan Smith is Manager of Program Effectiveness at Little Kids Rock, USA. He edits the Journal of Popular Music Education with Bryan Powell, and

xvi • Contributors co-wrote Sociology for Music Teachers: Practical Applications, second edition with Hildegard C. Froehlich. Gareth is a co-author of The Music Learning Profiles Project: Let’s Take This Outside. He plays drums with Oh Standfast, Eruptörs and Stephen Wheel. Laura Way is a PhD candidate at the University of Leicester. Her research explores older women punks’ articulation and maintenance of punk identities, through qualitative interviewing and participant-created zine pages. Laura’s research interests also include alternative (specifically, punk) pedagogies and creative research methods. She is a steering group member of the Punk Scholars Network, advisory board member of Punk & Post Punk and currently a visiting tutor at Bishop Grosseteste University.

1

Presenting Punk Pedagogies in Practice GARETH DYLAN SMITH, MIKE DINES AND TOM PARKINSON

Introduction: Towards Punk Pedagogies in Practice Punk has emphasized two political philosophies—libertarianism and anarchism— which, while adherents share some common beliefs, diverge to occupy opposing poles on the political-ideological spectrum (Sofianos, Ryde, and Waterhouse 2015, 23). Punk has often tended to lean more heavily to the left than to the right of that spectrum. As a nation whose founding philosophies emerged from radical European movements during the English Civil War (Hill 1975) such as the Levellers (Foxley 2013), and the French Revolution, the United States of America has long favoured and mythologized the “self-made man”, painting itself as a land of opportunity and entrepreneurial spirit. As such, the nation’s identity is built on the decidedly punk philosophical premise of “elevat[ing] above most other aspirations the importance of freedom, self-determinism and the removal of rules” (Sofianos, Ryde, and Waterhouse. 2013, 23). In a New York Post article on the morning following the US presidential election in 2016, Kyle Smith suggested that Donald Trump was the “punk rock” president-elect (Smith 2016), epitomizing that American ideal for many. Trump built a property empire from scratch; he was a “reality” television star; he rose to be a presidential candidate and eventually the President of the United States of America by presenting himself as against the machine (despite pandering to big business and being a walking, talking advertisement for self-serving, late capitalist, neoliberal ideology). The aspects of punk that the author seemed, therefore, to be invoking were primarily those of DIY and anti-establishment rhetoric, while ignoring and thereby challenging the prevalent (although by no means exclusively) anarchist and socialist ideologies that inform much of punk narrative and activism. One of the most notable features of Trump’s brief political career has been the man’s lack of clear orientation towards any points of an ideological compass (Chomsky 2016). Trump thus could be seen to embody punk’s contradictions and its inherent discomfort in articulating (or inability to articulate) what it is that it stands for. As Sofianos et al. (2015, 26) note, “punk seeks to avoid the limiting qualities of, and subsequent laziness associated with, ideology. This attitude of constant

1

2 • Gareth Dylan Smith et al. challenge and determination to disrupt” is typical of that which is characterized as punk. Punk has, however, more often than not channeled its disruptive tendencies in tandem with emancipatory aspirations for marginalized or silenced voices, towards a social justice agenda. In this vein, Ivan Illich in the 1970s pointed to the need to change fundamentally the ways in which systemized compulsory education—schooling—operates, because of fundamental flaws in the assumptions that it makes, and how inequality is thus inscribed in the system. He urges that, “rather than calling equal schooling temporarily unfeasible, we must recognize that it is, in principle, economically absurd, and that to attempt it is intellectually emasculating, socially polarizing, and destructive of the credibility of the political system that promotes it”. He asserts, moreover, that: equal opportunity is, indeed, both a desirable and a feasible goal, but to equate this with obligatory schooling is to confuse salvation with the church. School has become the worldwide religion of a modernized proletariat, and makes futile promises of salvation to the poor of the technological age. (Illich 1970, 10) Authors in this volume mostly work in higher education, and as such have vested interests in perpetuating existing systems of education, compulsory and otherwise. We are perhaps thus reticent to embrace so (self-)destructive an agenda as to seek the total dismantlement of education systems. Through the frame of punk pedagogies, however, we seek to explore possibilities to effect change. Our intention in curating this volume is not to say what punk pedagogy is or should be. Our aim is, even less, to attempt to define punk, a notoriously evasive and multifaceted beast. Contributing authors grapple with punk’s historicity, its pervasiveness, its (dis)functionality, its evasiveness and its messiness. Punk is dynamic and responsive, like the best of pedagogical practice. For this reason, we do not attempt to delimit, contain or constrain pedagogies in, of, for or about punk. In the context of music education, David Lines asks: How can music teachers ensure that they do not succumb to the disabling discourses of neoliberalism, mastery, and narrow conceptions of learning? How can music students move from situations where they are treated as docile bodies in music learning production lines or mastery contexts to places of creative freedom, expression, and meaning? (Lines 2016, 126–127)

Presenting Punk Pedagogies in Practice • 3 In response to his own question, Lines suggests that: pedagogical action can . . . be taken in music education to ensure that students have opportunities to work with the subjective positions in music and, if necessary, exercise resistance to schooling discourses that negatively impact on open and creative subject positions. (Lines 2016, 127) This book resonates with Lines’s perspective—which he did not explicitly articulate as representing a specifically punk orientation—traversing pedagogical practice in and beyond just music, as well as in and beyond formal educational contexts. The focus of the book is on punk pedagogies. It is not, however, a “how to” guide to applying punk pedagogies, nor is it a manual or guidebook on being a punk pedagogue. The editors share music education philosopher Randall Allsup’s (2016, 106) “long[ing] to find or create a space in which people can connect with others across difference and ability in an ongoing and unfinished way”. We seek to challenge “a symbol system . . . in which mere relay of information is characterized as education” (107); we are “ultimately interested in the subjectivities from which engagement in open encounters are formed and reformed” (108). We propose punk pedagogies as possessing the potency and potential to achieve these ends and more. Punk Pedagogy: A Brief History Punk pedagogy lies at the intersection between radical, anarchist and critical pedagogies. It looks back to the anarchist writings of Godwin and Kropotkin in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Ward 2011; Springer et al. 2016); references the works of Freire, Giroux and Shor; and explores complex tensions around punk in academia (Furness 2012). Indeed, as Springer et al. so eloquently note in The Radicalization of Pedagogy: Anarchism, Geography and the Spirit of Revolt, “in an age that is desperately in need of critical new directions anarchist geographies exist at the crossroads of possibility and desire”. They conclude that “by breathing new life into the inertia of the old, anarchism intrepidly explores vital alternatives” through the practices of “mutual aid, voluntary association, direct action, horizontality and self-management” (Springer et al. 2016, 1). Through the malleability of the radical, punk pedagogy breathes new life into analysis of decades-old philosophical, cultural and political thought (Dines 2015a; Parkinson 2016; Torrez 2012). Punk pedagogy is not particularly “new”. Examples of its presence in scholarship can be traced back to the 1990s, with Robert Miklitsch’s (1994) “Punk Pedagogy or Performing Contradiction: The Risks and Rewards of

4 • Gareth Dylan Smith et al. Anti-Transference”, questioning the political stance of the teacher (the role of authority) in the classroom. The academy’s interest in punk as part of a curriculum was explored in Geoffrey Sirc’s (1997) “Never Mind the Tagmemics, Where’s the Sex Pistols?”, in which he uses punk as an opening and means for composition and writing. “The academic system left the student a bored, ignorant spectator”, writes Sirc (1997, 20), also noting that punk was a means of “articulating a more general inchoate social reality” (1997, 22) where lived experience comes to the fore (presaging Dines, explored further, below). Sirc’s article was followed by Seth Kahn-Egan’s aptly titled “Pedagogy Pissed: Punk Pedagogy in the First-Year Writing Classroom” (1998). Kahn-Egan takes up the compositional mantle from Sirc, expanding the discussion of punk pedagogy towards a clearer, more succinct definition. He concurs that there are issues around “trying to define and explicate punk ideology”, noting that “there is no Platonic ideal of ‘punkness’ from which we can extract a definition” (Kahn-Egan 1998, 101). That said, Kahn-Egan presents five principles that, for him, define punk: (1) The Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethic, which demands that we do our own work because anybody who would do our work for us is only trying to jerk us around; (2) A sense of anger and passion that finally drives a writer to say what’s really on his or her mind; (3) A sense of destructiveness that calls for attacking institutions when those institutions are oppressive, or even dislikable; (4) A willingness to endure or even pursue pain to make oneself heard or noticed; (5) A pursuit of the “pleasure principle,” a reveling in some kind of Nietzchean chasm. (Kahn-Egan 1998, 100) The author clearly notes that he is “not advocating a full-blown, anarchistic, self-mutilating classroom”, but instead encourages pedagogy which “teaches students that resistance resulting from inertia is pointless, as is rebellion for its own sake” (Kahn-Egan 1998, 101). “Pedagogy Pissed” is useful because it begins to unpack and interrogate what may be considered “punk pedagogy”. Kahn-Egan’s writing advocates a curriculum that encourages students to question authority, thus planting seeds of critical thinking and debate. Furthermore, Kahn-Egan situated his own reflexive practice in the same framework, whereby the course challenged him, as a teacher, “to keep from over-institutionalizing the very individuality [he] wants to foster”, thereby exploring tensions between the author’s “desire to teach active subversion and [his] institutional bonds” (Kahn-Egan 1998, 103). It is these tensions that are explored further in Estrella Torrez’s chapter,

Presenting Punk Pedagogies in Practice • 5 “Punk Pedagogy: Education for Liberation and Love”, in Zack Furness’s edited volume, Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower (2012). Torrez explores the philosophy around the notion and definition of a “punk pedagogy”, drawing on her experience of teaching a course on youth subcultures’ linguistic cultural practices as forms of resistance. Torrez’s punk pedagogy is positioned through the delivery of subject matter with an attempt at facilitating and engaging with the students at a critical level, exploring individual and social responsibility in “heal[ing] an ailing society” (Torrez 2012, 137). She asserts, “while punk philosophy frames how we interact with outside society, it likewise shapes our position as educators and the manner by which we construct the classroom . . . as a learning environment”. She also explains: It is [through] this particular pedagogical approach, influenced by our lived realities as punks, that we are able to establish a punk pedagogy. Punk pedagogy is a manifestation of equity, rebellion, critique, selfexamination, solidarity, community, love, anger and collaboration. It is a space where the teacher-learner hierarchy is disavowed and the normative discourse of traditional education is dissembled. (Torrez 2012, 135–136) Whereas Torrez, Kahn-Egan and Sirc examine punk in formal educational contexts, Mike Dines explores punk pedagogy outside of the classroom. In “Learning Through Resistance: Contextualisation, Creation and Incorporation of a Punk Pedagogy” (2015a) and “Reflections on the Peripheral: Punk, Pedagogy and the Domestication of the Radical” (2015b), Dines looks at how subcultural membership becomes a learning environment: “Drawing upon the autobiographical .  .  . punk is treated as the educator—the facilitator—that provided a framework of enquiry, questioning and interrogation” (Dines 2015a, 21). He notes how, for many, “punk became a source of expression that made more sense than those in the classroom” (Dines 2015a, 28), and thus “it meant that individuals like [himself] found subcultural membership synonymous with being politically and socially aware” (Dines 2015a, 29). While recognizing the influence of radical pedagogies on the birth and development of punk pedagogy, Dines also raises concerns over what he calls “reification of the radical, a domestication of theory and practice, paradoxically underpinned by adherence to the politics of freedom and conformity” (Dines 2015b, 134). In other words, for Dines, “punk has become domesticated by its striving for the radical [which] encourages inclusivity, but only if that identity adheres to the conformity of the ‘punk ethos’ ” (Dines 2015b, 134). He draws comparison with the observation of pedagogue and academic Peter McLaren, who found critical pedagogy to have become a haven for posturing academics, shifting from its critical core. If punk pedagogy is to continue to develop, it

6 • Gareth Dylan Smith et al. needs to be self-critical and not, as he notes, a “sanitized study” of subculture (Dines 2015a, 138). Jessica A. Schwartz (also a contributor to this volume) takes punk pedagogy in another direction. Her essay for the journal Punk & Post-Punk explores the “ways in which early punks’ intellectual history and views on education informed their musical thoughts” (Schwartz 2015, 142). Schwartz endeavours to look less at “practitioners’ rebellion” and more at the “creation of alternative educational spaces that are reflected in philosophically informed musical aesthetics” (Schwartz 2015, 142), a notion that provides depth to the examination of ideological stance in punk, providing further insight into the complex marriage between punk and pedagogy. Structure and Content of the Book Although in no way exhaustive, the thirteen remaining chapters in this volume give some sense of the scope of approaches to, and current thinking about, teaching and learning that emerges from the union of punk and pedagogy. Just as punk runs a vast ideological and aesthetic gamut, confounding attempts to hem it into a tidy and coherent definition, punk pedagogy resists codification as a singular teaching strategy, toolkit or curriculum. Moreover, one punk pedagogical approach might be anathema to those who uphold another view, or could be seen to enshrine values that run counter to the spirit of punk, however the latter might be understood. Yet, as the chapters here attest, the utility and power of any manifestation of punk pedagogy lies in the conviction of its exponent and inspiration that the individual teacher or learner takes from their own unique interactions with counterculture. For some, the ideological associations of a particular punk scene form the basis of an ethical code that supports a values-driven pedagogy. For others, the form and aesthetics of a punk genre directly inform the modalities of their teaching and classroom environment, and the question of ideology is muted by comparison. Others still find in punk a form of provocation that brings them to interrogate their own experiences of teaching and learning as part of critical, reflective practice. The plural, pedagogies, in the volume’s title is an acknowledgement, and celebration, of this scope. In the following chapter, Russ Bestley explores the relationship between punk and design pedagogy, examining the historical intersections of graphic design and punk in practice. He highlights points of affinity between punk’s ideological and aesthetic tenets, and the principles of design thinking. This leads to a consideration of punk’s utility in today’s design classroom, as well as some of the challenges and pitfalls that an application of punk pedagogy in a design context might entail. In Chapter 3, Nasim Niknafs provides an account of a Tehran music scene which, by dint of legal and cultural restrictions on formal music education and

Presenting Punk Pedagogies in Practice • 7 popular music, serves as many musicians’ primary music education. Synthesizing ethnographic observations and interviews with insights from literature and research in music education and ethnomusicology, Niknafs proposes an anarcho-improvised music pedagogy that brings humans to reconnect with one another and our values, engendering resilience and resistance in the face of contemporary global crises. In Chapter 4, David Vila Diéguez reflects on his experiences of graduate school in the USA. Diéguez argues that normative expectations of graduate students’ and early career academics’ achievement and behaviour have given rise to a coercive and toxic scholarly environment that is detrimental to both critical inquiry and mental health. Here, the spirit of punk provides succour and serves as a resource and inspiration for resistance and emancipation from neoliberal performance management and managerialism. In Chapter 5, Warrick Harniess charts a personal moral and spiritual punk journey, beginning in Hong Kong in the mid-1990s. Harniess sets out his belief in the multifaceted pedagogic potential of punk, focusing on collaboration, product creation and entrepreneurship. Turning his attention to the higher education sector, he proposes that, despite its apparent contradiction, radical deregulation of the sector is the punk thing to do to destabilize a stagnant pseudo-market status quo. In Chapter 6, Marcus O’Dair and Zuleika Beaven recount how punk’s Do It Yourself (DIY) ethos informed the design and delivery of a project undertaken by undergraduate Music Business students. O’Dair and Beaven discuss DIY as an aspirational ideal and a pragmatic reality requiring compromise. They situate the project in relation to entrepreneurship education, punk pedagogy as learning through action leading to co-created knowledge, and the uneasy ethical boundaries between dominant discourse of entrepreneurship and dominant ideologies of punk. In Chapter 7, John Dougan recalls the challenges and unexpected outcomes of teaching a university course called The History of Punk Rock. Dougan’s frustration at the first cohort’s collective lack of enthusiasm and engagement serves as the catalyst for a reflective journey that considers contemporary concepts and issues in higher education, including the student-as-customer, the neoliberal university, the pitfalls of didactic canonization and the value of “useless” higher education. In Chapter 8, Rylan Kafara recounts designing and delivering The History of Punk, an inclusive and non-hierarchical course and learning community. Kafara discusses how an informal, learner-led pedagogy allowed for the remit and focus of the course to evolve organically in line with members’ personal interests, and how an embrace of amateurism in a non-academic setting offered a means to develop critical consciousness for learners from within and outside the academy.

8 • Gareth Dylan Smith et al. In Chapter 9, Jessica A. Schwartz and Scott Robertson set out what they term a “pedagogy of comedic dissidence” via two case studies of the punk band Dead Kennedys and the hip-hop act Public Enemy. They demonstrate how playful subversion of taken-for-granted aesthetics opens up space for the discussion of social and political issues, the confrontation of trauma and oppression, and collective learning, suggesting acknowledgement and incorporation of such approaches in formal educational contexts. In Chapter 10, Laura Way provides a reflective account of two uses of zines in the teaching of college sociology courses. Way argues that the aesthetics and practices of zine creation offer a versatile and inclusive alternative to traditional forms of coursework, providing a framework for students to consider their personal experiences in stimulating the sociological imagination, and providing teachers with a means to gather rich, qualitative and context-specific feedback from students. In Chapter 11, Alexis Anja Kallio considers the potential of punk in democratic school music education, describing a shift from curricula dominated by the canon of Western Art Music towards encompassing popular musics. Interrogating and recalibrating the deviantization of some popular music genres as morally risky “problem musics”, Kallio proposes that punk—as a music, but also as a pedagogic conceit—might offer a means to mediate value conflict and multi-directional power dynamics within a democratic education. In Chapter 12, Tom Parkinson explores the ambiguous relationship between university education, punk and other subcultures, identifying across a number of existing accounts anxiety relating to perceived risk of co-optation and corruption, but also a number of rhetorical strategies used by educators to reconcile these two aspects of their lives and achieve a working, ethical balance. Parkinson includes analysis of interviews with five academics self-identifying as punks, and who draw upon punk in their work. In Chapter 13, Gareth Dylan Smith offers an account of his personal academic, professional and musical journeys. Through the conceptual frame of eudaimonism, Smith describes how he reconciled an impulse to pursue his passions and interests with a commitment to a broader good, leading to a teaching approach that he has since identified as pedagogically punk. He calls for adoption of punk pedagogical action in higher education, for working towards a more socially just world. In the final chapter, Tiago Santos and Paula Guerra discuss punk’s opposition to the status quo and counter-hegemonic stance, arguing that these imbue it with a critical power that is of immense potential value to educators. Through a theoretical discussion that takes in the work of philosophers and sociologists Freire, Foucault, Bourdieu and Apple, they propose reasons that, and ways in which, punk might be drawn upon in curricula and pedagogy to help overcome crises in late modernity.

Presenting Punk Pedagogies in Practice • 9 In Conclusion This book was not construed explicitly to praise punk pedagogies. There are, however, no chapters in the volume that explicitly decry, abhor or warn against them. As such, it is appropriate that the editors confess we are all supportive of punk pedagogies, in principle and in practice. We all identify with aspects of punk, and are each affiliated with the Punk Scholars Network, of which Mike is a founder member. Mike’s PhD thesis was on anarcho-punk, and he has edited numerous books about elements and topics of punk. Tom and Gareth both are both members of bands that incorporate punk in outlook, ethos and aesthetic. Once again invoking Randall Allsup (2016), and looking far beyond specifically music education, we hope that this book serves as an opening for readers, that it creates space for discourse and action. It is in the nurturing of liminal spaces (Tuan 1977), in a wide range of contexts and places, that we see the potential for punk pedagogies. References Allsup, Randall E. 2016. Remixing the Music Classroom: Toward an Open Philosophy of Music Education. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. Chomsky, Noam. 2016. Noam Chomsky on the New Trump Era: UpFront Special. Al Jazeera. Accessed March 31, 2017. www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB54XxbgI0E. Dines, Mike. 2015a. “Learning Through Resistance: Contextualisation, Creation and Incorporation of a ‘Punk Pedagogy’.” Journal of Pedagogic Development 5, 3: 20–31. Dines, Mike. 2015b. “Reflections on the Peripheral: Punk, Pedagogy and the Domestication of the Radical.” Punk & Post-Punk 4, 2&3: 129–140. Foxley, Rachel. 2013. The Levellers: Radical Political Thought in the English Revolution. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Furness, Zack (Ed.). 2012. Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower. Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions. Hill, Christopher. 1975. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. London: Penguin. Illich, Ivan. 1970. Deschooling Society. London: Marion Boyars. Kahn-Egan, Seth. 1998. “Pedagogy Pissed: Punk Pedagogy in the First-Year Writing Classroom.” College Composition and Communication 49, 1: 99–104. Lines, David. 2016. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps: Music Education and Guitar as Leisure.” In The Oxford Handbook of Music Making and Leisure, edited by Roger Mantie and Gareth D. Smith, 115–130. New York: Oxford University Press. Miklitsch, Robert. 1994. “Punk Pedagogy or Performing Contradiction: The Risks and Rewards of Anti-Transference.” The Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies 16, 1: 57–67. Niknafs, Nasim, and Liz Przybylski. 2017. “Popular Music and (R)evolution of the Classroom Space: Occupy Wall Street in the Music School.” In The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music Education, edited by Gareth D. Smith, Zack Moir, Matt Brennan, Shara Rambarran, and Phil Kirkman, 412–424. Abingdon: Routledge. Schwartz, Jessica A. 2015. “Listening in Circles: Punk Pedagogy and the Decline of Western Music Education.” Punk & Post-Punk 4, 2&3: 141–158. Sirc, Geoffrey. 1997. “Never Mind the Tagmemics, Where’s the Sex Pistols?” College Composition and Communication 48, 1: 9–29. Smith, Gareth D., and Atar Shafighian. 2013. “Creative Space and the ‘Silent Power of Traditions’ in Popular Music Performance Education.” In Developing Creativities in Higher Music Education: International Perspectives and Practices, edited by Pamela Burnard, 256–267. London: Routledge. Smith, Kyle. 2016. “Donald Trump Is the Punk-Rock President America Deserves.” New York Post. Accessed November 9, 2016. http://nypost.com/2016/11/09/donald-trump-is-the-punkrock-president-america-deserves/.

10 • Gareth Dylan Smith et al. Sofianos, Lisa, Robin Ryde, and Charlie Waterhouse. 2015. The Truth of Revolution, Brother: An Exploration of Punk Philosophy. London: Situation Press. Springer, Simon, Marcelo Lopez De Souza, and Richard J. White. 2016. The Radicalization of Pedagogy: Anarchism Geography and the Spirit of Revolt. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1977. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ward, Colin. 2011. “The Anarchists and Schools.” In Autonomy, Solidarity, Possibility: The Colin Ward Reader, edited by Chris Wilbert and Damian F. White, 231–238. Edinburgh: AK Press.

Part I Punk Learning and Learning from Punk

2

Art Attacks: Punk Methods and Design Education RUSS BESTLEY

Introduction The relationship between punk and design pedagogy can be explored in two broadly distinct areas. These centre on what might be described as conceptual approaches—the nature of design thinking in comparison with punk doctrines; and practical strategies for the creation of designed artefacts or objects—the tools, processes and practices of design making in relation to common punk design tropes. In short, the twin themes of thinking and making. As someone who has self-identified with punk since my initial participation in the subculture during the late 1970s, and as a graphic design practitioner, researcher, writer and educator, I am in a rather unique position to be able to reflect on the ways in which punk visual strategies drew upon or adapted long-standing art and design traditions, and how those resulting revisions may have subsequently impacted upon graphic design and visual communication practice and, consequently, design education. Punk can be viewed as an approach—a way of relating to the world, and a practice—the production of certain things (music, in the form of performances or records, visual arts and fashion, for instance). By comparison, the word design is both a noun and a verb, and graphic design is an activity of creative reasoning (the act of designing) and a craft-based practice that involves the making of objects and artefacts (designs): The verb to design literally means to plan something for a specific role, purpose, or effect. As a noun, design can be defined as an act of creative reasoning—a process whereby the designer balances lateral, original thinking with pragmatic, logical, solution-driven methods. (Noble and Bestley 2016, 10) Since the advent of computer-based tools for design in the late 1980s and early 1990s, graphic designers have been increasingly concerned with all stages of the design process—from conceptualizing and planning to the practical 13

14 • Russ Bestley construction of the work itself, often employing digital technologies and/or working with specialist technical producers and manufacturers (printers, programmers, etc.). Whereas the process of graphic design traditionally involved a team of specialists at each stage of development, with the designer taking a planning and specifying role akin to an architect or product designer (Cherry 1976; Hollis 1994), contemporary professionals often cover most of these roles in-house. Graphic design education has followed suit, with design schools struggling to bridge the divide between traditional craft-based skills teaching and theory-led approaches to creative thinking and design methodologies, with often rather muddled results. Punk often seeks to embrace a number of conventions in relation to autonomy, self-determination and ownership of the full range of processes in the creation of artistic work (music, fashion, art and design), yet is also seen to espouse values of collectivism and networked cooperation. It may therefore be a useful model for comparison with this more recent shift in the design profession, moving from the group to the individual while at the same time retaining a strong relationship to what could be described as a collective endeavour. A reflection on punk, as a conceptual approach and practice, a process and a product, may therefore be helpful in navigating a way forward for design education. Researching Design The academic study of design, notably graphic design, can broadly be defined in three models of design research: Research about Design: The study of design histories, styles, influences, models and approaches. The main objective is to understand a context or history from different perspectives, such as design criticism and historical research. The goal is related to the deduction of new knowledge and understanding of design as a subject. Research into Design: The exploration of design methods and practices, including visual testing and experimentation. This research is centred on both understanding the process of design and developing new design actions, artefacts, or methods. Research through Design: The use of graphic design as an instrument for investigating and articulating a particular subject area that lies outside of the field of design—as such, this model of design research would include mapping, information design, and editorial approaches to visualizing and categorizing data. (Noble and Bestley 2016, 10) Graphic design is, then, an object of study, a creative practice and discipline in its own right, and a tool or method—a visual language—through which

Art Attacks • 15 to research, analyze, compare and display findings in the academic study of another subject. To an extent, punk occupies similar territory—as a subculture, a way of thinking about things, a way of doing things and the products created, and as a vehicle through which to comment on or engage with social, cultural or political themes. It needs to be stated, though, that these areas are fraught with potential pitfalls and need to be carefully addressed. A critical analysis of punk’s influence within the field of graphic design and visual communication might then be viewed in relation to three key areas: attitude or approach (punk principles and philosophies), methods (working strategies) and practice or performance (aesthetic and stylistic outcomes). These areas then relate to the separate phases of design production, from concept and critical position (theoretical) to research methods (theoretical and practical) and design artefacts or outcomes (physical). Punk Studies: A Philosophy of Punk In his acclaimed text, Higher Education: A Critical Business, Ronald Barnett extends the notion of critical thinking (a key underlying principle of Western academic tradition) into a framework for “critical being”—including thinking, self-reflection and action, suggesting “critical persons are more than just critical thinkers. They are able critically to engage with the world and with themselves as well as with knowledge” (Barnett 1997, 1). Punk’s oft-cited skepticism and aversion to convention could be seen to resonate with this model of academic practice, and at least some punk principles may be better understood in terms of method, rather than subject or practice. These might include notions of honesty and authenticity, alongside a rejection of authority and the empowerment of individuals. Since completing my PhD in 2007 on the subject of punk record sleeve design and the wider evolution of the subculture across the UK regions, I have observed something of a transformation in the reception and acknowledgement of punk as a field of study. The establishment of the Punk Scholars Network in 2012 reflected this shift in perspective, along with the Punk & Post Punk journal, now in its sixth year, and the variety of events, conferences, symposia, books and exhibitions that touch on the subject from a wide range of specialisms—history, cultural studies, social sciences, musicology, politics, feminism, gender studies, art and design, media and fashion, among others. For many of these fields and disciplines, punk is the object of research, a cultural phenomenon that can be historicized, contextualized and critiqued. Some, however, attempt to draw upon a vague notion of punk ideology and ethics as a method for critical analysis and reflection; punk is no longer simply the object of study, but a philosophical approach (or lens) through which to reflect upon other subjects. This is more problematic, and warrants closer scrutiny. Punk, perhaps more than any other youth subculture, has long been

16 • Russ Bestley subject to interference by activists from both the Left and Right, including the Socialist Workers Party, Rock Against Racism, the National Front, the AntiNazi League, the British Movement and others, its inherent radicalism often viewed as an opportunity for recruitment and the further dissemination of political dogma (Bestley 2008; Raposo 2011; Worley 2012, 2016). It also bears noting, however, that even in punk’s wider, perhaps more apolitical and less overtly ideological interpretation, notions of identity and authenticity often lead to a form of internecine squabbling over whose definition of terms is more valid, whose version of punk is closer to the “truth”. Punk and academia are not natural bedfellows, and the adoption of punk in some educational sectors as a vehicle for the promotion of ideological positions might be called into question. The relationship, at times uneasy, between a vague and unsubstantiated “philosophy of punk” and reliance on post-Marxist models of academic critique in contemporary higher education, within the Arts and Humanities and the Social Sciences in particular,1 can lead to a series of rather questionable punk canons, framed within academic discourse. Art and design education has adopted the same philosophical approach, with degree curricula widely drawing upon the critical theories of Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Terry Eagleton, Roland Barthes, Raymond Williams and Pierre Bourdieu as key texts, and Cultural Studies departments (introduced to shore up the academic credibility of practice-based courses and programmes) bringing their ideological baggage into the studio with them. The corresponding language of base and superstructure, ideology, agency and hegemony has also seeped into academic discourse on the subject of punk. For instance, Estrella Torrez, a professor within the Chicano/Latino Studies Program in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Michigan State University, argues for a model of “anarchist agency” in her definition of punk pedagogy as what she describes as an “education for liberation and love”: While dominant education alienates youth from their individual lifeworlds, punk pedagogy requires that individuals take on personal responsibility (anarchist agency in the face of capitalist structuralism) by rejecting their privileged places in society and working in solidarity with those forced on the fringes. By doing so, we strike to undo hegemonic macrostructures. (Torrez 2012, 135) When university lecturers and college professors introduce progressive politics and lifestyle choices under the banner of punk, students may be encouraged to adopt a range of prescribed models of punk activism, loosely centred on a wider set of moral or ethical principles such as anti-racism, gender politics, anti-militarism or lifestyle anarchism. A narrow version of punk becomes a vehicle for the promotion and dissemination of ideological vested interests and

Art Attacks • 17 academic posturing, a kind of fashionable Trojan horse to disguise political indoctrination. From classroom activities such as sharing meals2 and debating anti-war campaigns or the notion of open borders, models of social and political activism applied to punk pedagogy are often drawn from wider cultural and philosophical discourse, not, strictly speaking, from punk itself. This selfstyled libertarian approach is illustrated by Dylan Miner and Estrella Torrez, who note: our own identities as punks are intimately intertwined with radical feminism, anticapitalist self-organization, Third and Fourth World liberation, veganism and food justice, and DIY, not even mentioning the most fundamental desire to produce new and liberated societies. (Miner and Torrez 2012, 29) Of course, there is an overlap here, a grey area where a significant proportion of punk participants may express an affinity with, or sympathy for, certain ideological positions. Anti-racism, direct action and an outspoken suspicion of authority are broadly supported by a majority of punks, but such positions should not be interpreted as a general rule and retrospectively applied back to the entire subculture as some kind of punk code of ethics. Variations in attitudes towards racism (generally very clearly proscribed by the vast majority of punks) and sexism or homophobia (which elicit a broader range of perspectives), for instance, demonstrate the fluidity of ideological opinions within a diverse punk subculture. Those viewpoints were not born from punk itself, but adopted from wider political discourse and activism, and punk is not defined by them, or limited to them. This is an important point, and one that touches on contested themes of punk philosophy, for want of a better term (O’Hara 1999; Kristiansen 2012; Ryde et al. 2014; Bestley 2016; Ryde and Bestley 2016)—not least because, for many punks, the notion of a guiding philosophy is itself an oxymoron. However, these approaches to punk attitudes and pedagogy, while flawed, do have at least some validity; in broader terms, punk could generally be seen as oppositional. Yet what it opposes varies across the wider culture and contexts within which it operates. As a result, it is not always inherently progressive and at times may be reactionary, orthodox or politically ambivalent, but it does usually offer something of a contrast to its parent cultures. How might punk be purposefully used, then, to provide strategic methods of critique and analysis? Can punk be more than an object of study while at the same time avoiding being stereotyped as a colourful subset of progressive political discourse? Certain punk maxims are widely accepted and professed by a significant majority of participants in the subculture, and some stereotypes exist for good reason—punk’s association with a do-it-yourself ideal and the notion of autonomy, empowerment and a rejection of traditional hierarchies is a commonly

18 • Russ Bestley accepted trope, with DIY embedded in many definitions of the subculture. Like other punk maxims, this is not without contradictions: the celebrated first independent punk record released in the UK, Buzzcocks’ Spiral Scratch EP (January 1977), was funded through a number of loans, including £250 from guitarist Pete Shelley’s father, and a deal was arranged by manager Richard Boon for the pressing of the record at Phonogram. Sleeves were printed at Delga Press in Kent, and the batch production, manufacture and packaging of the record was handled by professional service providers—less a case of doing-it-yourself, perhaps, than buying-it-yourself (Bestley 2016). This might be a helpful model for graphic design and design educators to reflect upon, embodying an approach or rationale together with the adoption of innovative methods in the creation of designed objects or artefacts. Punk’s raw visual and musical aesthetic has also become a stylistic set of conventions for others to follow (notwithstanding the irony inherent in the notion of a punk canon). The problem here for educators is in relying on these stereotypes within a model of punk pedagogy—such as asking art and design students to create “punk” graphics through the production of fanzines that simply re-hash a stereotypical visual aesthetic of early punk material, with little or no critical understanding of the original rationale, or the technological constraints that led to the creation of those styles in the first place. The risk of falling into simple pastiche, without any clear intention to underpin such a strategy, is quite high; as Ian Trowell argues in his critical reappraisal of a collection of short-lived punk glossy magazines in the early 1980s, an archetypal aesthetic convention of punk publishing has become standardized and set in stone: instead we see a fetishizing of the format of construction and a championing of the cut-and-paste aesthetic that has now ironically become part of the mainstream onslaught of stylistic totalitarianism. (Trowell 2017, 23) The true value of considering punk in relation to design education falls somewhere between these two polarities—in approaches to the subject that might follow some common punk conventions (DIY, a rejection of traditional modes of thinking or practice, a questioning of authority, empowerment to have a go) along with practical strategies that reflect some of punk’s original creative methods (innovative use of materials, an embrace of experimentation and risktaking, the parodic or subversive adaptation of already existing visual material to offer counterpoints and alternative readings). The twin phrases anyone can do it and do-it-yourself were something of a punk mantra, tied to a vision of independence from the mainstream music industry, and these principles may be worth revisiting in respect to professional design approaches and the education of designers.

Art Attacks • 19 Equally, we need to consider the changing nature of design discourse and design pedagogy. Notions of graphic design and visual communication practice changed enormously in the second half of the twentieth century. A number of factors had a major impact, ranging from changing technologies (especially the advent of desktop publishing in the late 1980s, and the subsequent evolution of the internet), to the re-positioning of the discipline away from purely trade or vocation, and its subsequent professionalization, and corresponding academicization. In the United Kingdom, the late 1980s and early 1990s saw many traditional art schools merged with technical colleges and polytechnics under the banner of new universities.3 As a result, the discourse around visual communication took on more theoretical positions, with students encouraged to interrogate the critical context of their practice, and to see their work as more than craft-based, carrying social, cultural and ideological value. Graphic Design and Postmodernism Design, meanwhile, has an emancipatory ethical agenda at its centre. The notion of “making the world a better place” through socially responsible design has been at the core of the profession since the modernist projects of the early twentieth century (Howard 1994; Heller 2016). Ken Garland’s First Things First Manifesto, originally published in 1964 as a provocative call to arms for graphic designers to take an ethical stance in the face of the emerging consumer boom of the 1960s, was revisited and updated in 1999 and countersigned by 33 leading figures from graphic design’s professional and educational arenas. The manifesto was subsequently published in Adbusters, Emigre and the AIGA Journal in North America, Eye and Blueprint in the United Kingdom, Items in the Netherlands and Form in Germany. The notion of an ethical code for graphic design professionals has been a key subject of debate in the academic design press for many years. There are, of course, counterarguments: the letters pages of Eye and Emigre witnessed a hotly contested debate from either side of the divide between self-styled progressive professionals and career designers who saw their job as simply reflecting the client’s wishes and receiving payment for their services, without taking a view on the content of the message. This argument had been neatly summarized by First Things First Manifesto 2000 signatory Jeff Keedy in his keynote lecture at FUSE 98, San Francisco on May 28, 1998, where Keedy (1998, 57) asked the rhetorical question: “or is graphic design just a lubricant that keeps everything on the info highway moving—are we just greasing the wheels of capitalism with style and taste?” Roland Barthes had coined the phrase “the death of the author” in his influential essay “La mort de l’auteur” in 1967 (later republished within the edited collection Image-Music-Text in 1977), originally as a critique of literary theory and the traditional approach that involved drilling into the identity of the author in order to distil the underlying intention behind the text. Instead, Barthes

20 • Russ Bestley argued that each piece of writing contains multiple layers and meanings, and the world view and experience of the reader are, in fact, more influential to the reading of a text than the author. In turn, the author should not be seen as an independent agent, instead drawing upon wider social, cultural and historical codes and conventions. This position was important in the development of postmodern theories of communication, initially applied to literature and subsequently expanded to mass media, advertising and popular culture. This debate was at the heart of an ongoing dialogue within sectors of the graphic design press regarding the relationship between design practice and contemporary theories of postmodernism. Graphic design’s subsequent soul-searching could be seen on reflection as perhaps a little self-indulgent, and certainly some of the practice-based responses to the “death of the author” seemed ultimately to head up a blind alley of meaningless complexity. Keedy again summarized this problem rather neatly: That is why ultimately the strategies of resistance to Modernist dogma and the critique of the status quo, from the late 80s, only led to what is currently referred to as the ugly, grunge, layered, chaotic, postmodern design of the 90s. Only now there is little opposition and no resistance to what is an empty stylistic cliché. What I had hoped would be an ideological victory over the tyranny of style mongering, devolved into a onestyle-fits-all commercial signifier for everything that is youth, alternative, sports, and entertainment-oriented. (Keedy 1998, 54) Design critic Rick Poynor also attempted to engage with graphic design’s relationship with postmodernism in his critical history of the period, No More Rules, published in 2003. Noting Wolfgang Weingart’s late 1970s radical graphic experimentation and the evolution of what were termed “Swiss punk” styles, Poynor suggests that the British “new wave” in graphic design differed from its US and European counterparts, in part because of the different context of modernism to which it was responding: modernism had never been the dominant force in British graphic design that it was in Europe, or that it was, in a more corporate sense, in the United States. Much more than in the US, Britain’s new wave was identified with youth culture and popular music and these designers tended to position themselves outside of design’s professional mainstream, a quest for identity that could be read as a postmodern gesture in itself. (Poynor 2003, 32) From a graphic design perspective, then, at least some of the new aesthetic “revolution” brought about by punk could be situated within a broader

Art Attacks • 21 history of the modernist—and postmodernist—project. Certainly Weingart’s mid-1970s work, along with that of Dan Friedman and April Greiman later in the same decade, does not look out of place alongside much of the graphic design produced by professional designers for major punk and new wave groups and labels. In some respects, changes in the graphic design profession were already pre-empting (or at least paralleling) some “punk” design aesthetics, particularly at the more commercial end of the spectrum: for instance the work of Barney Bubbles, Chris Morton, Malcolm Garrett, Russell Mills, Alex McDowell and Neville Brody. Poynor describes five key thematic approaches associated with postmodern graphic design— deconstruction, appropriation, techno, authorship and opposition—and attempts to gather together practical examples in each category. Five years earlier, Jeff Keedy had suggested some slightly different themes that could be useful in relation to design methodologies, arguing: a few postmodern ideas like deconstruction, multiculturalism, complexity, pastiche, and critical theory could be useful to graphic designers if they could get beyond thinking about their work in terms of formal categories, technology, and media. (Keedy 1998, 59) Punk graphic design often employed appropriation, opposition, pastiche and parody, closely reflecting some of the same key themes of the postmodernist “project”. The fluidity of change over time also needs to be considered here. The concept of postmodernism impacted architecture in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the term was applied to approaches that were eclectic, hybrid, decorative or witty, a deliberate counterpoint to the form follows function austerity of contemporary modernism. Since the 1960s, writers including Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault had been exploring the notion of authorship and communication, emphasizing the importance of the reader as an individual with their own personal biases, interests and perspectives. The argument that texts may have multiple readings suggested a rejection of modernism’s rationality and universality, leading to shifts in popular culture, the visual arts and literature. Dramatic cultural and political changes were also underway, from the hippie counterculture and mass protests against the Vietnam War in the US to the May 1968 Paris riots and the activities of the Situationist International in Europe (Home 1991; Plant 1992). The first appearance of punk in the mid 1970s needs to be viewed as part of this continuum, despite the Year Zero rhetoric of its main players at the time. These trends within the graphic design profession would seem to indicate that at least some visual approaches adopted by punk designers and subsequently viewed as core punk aesthetics were evolving more widely in other

22 • Russ Bestley arenas. “Professional” punk graphics—the visual identities of major punk groups, brands, labels, reproduced on a large scale and marketed to punk consumers—reflected, to an extent, some of the “new wave” graphic design styles evolving contemporaneously in Europe and the US. That is not to say that punk graphic design was not in some way unique or innovative—particularly at the more do-it-yourself end of the spectrum, where arguments over the changing aesthetics of “postmodern” graphic design were as alien to those concerned as informed debates surrounding the influence of the Situationist International, Surrealism or Dada on punk. Punk Graphic Design in Practice While seeking to avoid the stereotype of a set of core, generic punk values, there are a number of common punk maxims that might be useful to apply to design thinking and strategy. The first revolves around risk-taking and having a go—together with taking ownership of the means of production. Design students are often encouraged to experiment, to “think through making” and to try alternative processes in the practical development of their ideas. On the one hand, this allows the accumulation of expertise in different styles and practices, but it also allows the practitioner to enter into a way of thinking that is less outcome-driven and more open to chance, as Noble and Bestley observe in their call for students to “make more mistakes”: The making of mistakes demonstrates that risks have been taken, that the designer has thought laterally, outside of the box, and that the range of implied boundaries that delineate standard methods and practices have been bypassed in the pursuit of original and unexpected results. Innovative and new design needs to make such mistakes, rather than to rely on established conventions and ways of reflecting the world. (Noble and Bestley 2016, 95) Second, punk’s persuasive models of rhetoric might be considered in relation to graphic design. The concept of rhetoric is usually applied to literature and philosophy, and it refers to the strategic use of language as a foundation for reasoned argument. The classical art of rhetoric involves several distinct phases, which may be described as (a) the discovery of ideas, (b) the arrangement of ideas, (c) the stylistic treatment of ideas and (d) the manner in which the subject matter is presented (Noble and Bestley 2016, 96). Visual communication is closely related to the construction and presentation of persuasive arguments, because designed messages are intended to provoke a response or reaction in a reader or viewer. Rhetorical strategies including irony, hyperbole, metaphor and pun can be seen in a range of punk graphic material, and can be compared with historical examples of political and agitational visual

Art Attacks • 23 material, from John Heartfield’s AIZ anti-Nazi magazine covers of the 1930s to the theoretical strategies of the Situationist International in the 1960s and Peter Kennard’s photomontages for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the late 1970s and early ’80s. The graphic work produced by, for instance, Jamie Reid, Linder Sterling and Gee Vaucher, can be directly compared with these historical antecedents and contemporary peers, and punk visual communication should be seen in the context of a longer historical tradition. That does not mean that punk did not bring anything new to the design table, nor obscure the fact that a wider audience were to discover these strategies through punk: for many who first encountered these kinds of visual approaches in the work of punk designers, they were punk attributes, not something drawing upon a longstanding legacy or heritage. Punk, then, enabled a re-focusing of some of these methods for a new audience. Like its musical heritage, punk visual communication drew upon a wide range of precedents, adopting and adapting methods to suit. Hebdige’s model of punk bricolage is useful here, in the aesthetic approaches adopted by punk pioneers in music, fashion, art and design. While such ideas were far from new, their creative re-appropriation was to give punk a diverse range of aesthetic styles that would become closely associated with the subculture. Again, for design education, part of the problem here is in the distinction between design thinking or strategy and design practice—punk styles can be easily appropriated and rehashed—indeed, the power and impact of some punk visual tropes has seen them commandeered for a wide range of purposes, from branding and advertising (especially where a suggestion of rebel chic is required) to protest graphics and political sloganeering where punk’s implied “authenticity” is a useful metaphor for down-to-earth, with-the-people communication. The first wave of punk gave rise to some hugely influential and long-lasting design output, but it also empowered thousands more amateur designers to create their own interpretation of a visual language that mirrored the excitement and ambition of the new scene—some of it highly innovative, some of it awkward, ugly, cheap and nasty, but collectively comprising what could be called a punk aesthetic. The natural limitations of simple tools and materials, as well as the quick production of graphic work by untrained designers, led to a repetition of certain graphic conventions: simple black and white artwork, hand folding and binding techniques, and hand-rendered or typewritten text. These basic graphic elements had also been central to a number of avant-garde art movements during the early twentieth century, and became key conventions in the visual aesthetic of subversion or political protest. Jamie Reid’s awareness of the work of the Situationist International and the late hippie underground in Europe and the USA may have led him towards more informed versions of agitprop graphic material, but many other punk designers made no such historical allusions—the look was simple, dirty and aggressive, and it meant “punk”.

24 • Russ Bestley Parody, Pastiche, Détournement and Recuperation Graphic designers at times employ nuanced references to already existing material in order to elicit an emotional response from viewers. Parody and pastiche form the basis of some of these strategies, particularly where the designer is attempting to present a humorous or ironic message to the viewer: Parody—The production of a new artifact or work created in order to mock, pass comment on, or make fun of an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satirical, or ironic imitation. Pastiche—The creation of an imitation or stylistic copy of an original earlier work, though with a different underlying intention from a parody . . . A pastiche may imply a generally light-hearted stylistic imitation, which although humorous is usually respectful, but it may also be seen as a less valuable copy without any clear or intended reference to the original work. (Noble and Bestley 2016, 98) A more powerful, political strategy can be seen in the use of détournement— the turning around of power structures within images, through appropriation and satirical intervention—a method devised by the Situationist International in the mid- to late 1960s. Much of Jamie Reid’s work for the Sex Pistols was directly related to the principles and practice of détournement, in part due to Reid’s earlier association with late 1960s countercultural groups and his work at the radical publication, Suburban Press, in the early 1970s. Collage, détournement, appropriation, parody and the use of fast, hands-on tools and techniques were staple parts of that aesthetic, in turn inspiring others to take up the challenge themselves. This is one area that, while obviously not unique to punk graphics, could be seen as an exemplar of the punk approach to image making and typography. While professional designers were employing appropriation and parody in some of their work labelled “new wave” in the late 1970s and 1980s, few were doing so with the aggressive, oppositional stance offered by those operating within the punk subculture. Of course, over time the radicalism of some of these approaches has been softened, recuperated to a large extent by cultural institutions and the media, its aesthetic adopted by advertisers and branding consultants seeking a bit of street-cred “edge”. That does not mean, however, that the entire subculture, or its visual aesthetic, has been—or could be—co-opted for commercial use. While the graphic styles of early UK punk—from dayglo colour palettes to ransom note lettering and gritty, distressed photographs—have become commonplace tropes in the marketing of sportswear, clubs, magazines, fashion brands and pop music, the more brutal, basic DIY template created by punk’s determinedly non-professionals often evades re-appropriation.

Art Attacks • 25 This is one subject that could form the basis of classroom discussions within graphic design education, as it relates closely to the ways in which radical or oppositional subcultural movements (and their associated aesthetics) can be absorbed back within the parent culture, in direct contrast to the fringe elements that found ways to evade this process. This mirrors a number of precedents within art history, some of which have been tied to something of a pre-history of punk itself. Robert Hughes’s The Shock of the New charts the evolution of avant-garde art practices in the twentieth century and the establishment of the term “modern art”, noting the philosophical and ideological influence of movements such as Cubism, Futurism and Constructivism, along with the impact of technological and cultural change. Later in the century, the Lettrists and Situationist International both widely acknowledged a debt to the early Surrealists, a group initiated by André Breton in the wake of the “anti-art” Dada movement in Europe and the US between 1915 and 1924. Resisting all attempts to institutionalize their own theories as an ideological “ism”, Guy Debord and the Situationists argued that the Surrealists’ original revolutionary intent had been recuperated and neutralized through the term Surrealism and its subsequent adoption within the art market. As Sadie Plant notes in her definitive history of the Situationist International, citing Ken Knabb’s translation of Mustapha Khayati’s Captive Words: Preface to a Situationist Dictionary in Internationale Situationniste #10, March 1966: the most corrosive concepts are emptied of their content and put back into circulation in the service of maintaining alienation: dadaism in reverse. They become advertising slogans. (Plant 1992, 79) As a counter-strategy, the Situationists attempted to combat recuperation by any and all means necessary, to the extent that many of the original artists involved in the SI actually gave up practicing art altogether, focusing instead on “mixing theoretical development with a varety of scandals, partisan propaganda, and cultural interventions” (Plant 1992, 81). In part taking its cue from the Surrealists, Situationists and the radical avantgarde,4 punk might be said to operate in direct confrontation with many of the same issues and arguments, from its commercialization by the music and fashion industries to the establishment of conventional models and practices that become stylized and replicated through a notional punk “canon”. However, some factions within the wider punk subculture did attempt to maintain a sense of radicalism and opposition (from a number of different ideological and political perspectives) (Bestley 2008; Raposo 2011), their non-commerciality becoming something of a badge of authenticity in the process. The emergence of post-punk, hardcore punk, anarcho-punk and a number of other sub-genres was, in part, a reaction against mainstream recuperation within the pop music

26 • Russ Bestley industry, and much of the aesthetic (musical, lyrical and visual) associated with these new scenes was deliberately awkward, “ugly” and unfashionable, in keeping with earlier doctrines of punk. In viewing such oppositional positioning within a subculture, rather than purely reflecting Hebdige’s established model of subcultures as an ideological counterpoint to the mainstream (derived in turn from the theories of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies developed during the late 1960s and early 1970s), it is worth considering the notion of subcultural capital (Thornton 1995). Extending Pierre Bourdieu’s work on high culture, Sarah Thornton posits the theory that subcultural agents acquire status through the acquisition of “unofficial knowledge”, commodities and objects, in turn raising their position relative to others within the same subculture. Alastair Gordon takes a more punk-specific view on the acquisition of status within local scenes in what he describes as “the workings of micro-discourse in maintaining and constructing subcultural punk authenticity” (Gordon 2014, 183). Caution needs to be exercised here, too, however, in order to avoid imposing yet another set of hierarchies within punk, in this case reflecting perceived levels of engagement and radicalism. A significant number of punk participants do not focus on the acquisition of status: indeed, the subculture is somewhat unusual when compared with others that focus more keenly on “scene-leaders” and a sense of being “cool”, in that punk, outwardly at least, celebrates the uncool, the dysfunctional and the marginal. Opposition to mainstream culture may, then, come not just from active engagement, but instead via a real or simulated attitude of contrarian indifference. “I Don’t Want to Go to Art School”5 Punk can be seen as a complex, and contested, set of competing communities, rather than a monolithic bloc operating purely in contrast to mainstream hegemony. Punk sub-genres may then adopt radical approaches in order to avoid recuperation—fashion styles become more outrageous, musical and visual aesthetics more “difficult”, words and statements more offensive or extreme. A comparative analysis between these alternative strategies of punk opposition, and a better understanding of the hierarchies at play, may be useful for design academics and their students. Punk’s guiding philosophies may be erratic and difficult to pin down, but common punk traits associated with criticality, a questioning (or rejection) of authority and established modes of thinking, empowerment and the guiding principle of doing-it-yourself are useful concepts for discussion within the classroom and the design studio. Such approaches were neither new nor unique to the subculture, but that is not to deny that punk provided a focal point for their re-evaluation, particularly among a new breed of musicians, filmmakers, artists and designers discovering them for the first time. Common punk visual tropes include the use of collage, détournement, parody, pastiche and lo-tech tools for reproduction (including the photocopier,

Art Attacks • 27 rubber stamps, stencils and direct printing techniques). Again, many of these methods drew upon a much longer tradition of agitprop art and design going back to the early twentieth century (Hollis 1994; Prince and Lowey 2014), though punk provided a new focus and context with, in some cases, a more powerful result. In part this was due to the wider social and cultural impact of punk, and the ways in which prominent designers such as Jamie Reid, Malcolm Garrett, Winston Smith, Gee Vaucher and Raymond Pettibon could employ mass-produced objects within popular culture—record covers, magazines, posters, flyers—as vehicles for their provocative visual work. Equally, the resourcefulness of the amateur punk creatives can offer inspiration and encouragement to design students. The lo-tech, lo-fi design methods adopted by these makers, often driven by their conceptual and physical limitations, clearly demonstrate the old maxim that “necessity is the mother of invention”. Graphic design students who are encouraged to “make more mistakes” would do well to look at the strategies adopted by punk and post-punk DIY designers, often with no formal training or experience. It is perhaps a rather ironic suggestion that students, who by definition are undertaking a rigorous curriculum of study, could learn a lot from analyzing the design work of a bunch of rank amateurs who did not so much break the rules as demonstrate a complete lack of awareness of their existence in the first place. Notes 1. Many Arts and Humanities departments within higher education have followed models developed by the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) in their approach to cultural studies, and notably the study of subcultures and popular culture. 2. See, for example, Chapter 8 within this volume: “Here We Are Now, Educate Us”: The Punk Attitude, Tenets and Lens of Student-Driven Learning by Rylan Kafara, University of Alberta, Canada. The History of Punk course, established in 2012, that forms the basis of this reflective essay focused on “non-hierarchical learning opportunities”, where “community and exposure to punk tenets was emphasized—for example, students were encouraged to bring vegan food to class to share with others”. 3. The Further and Higher Education Act 1992 was also a critical juncture for a range of new media disciplines and the bringing of popular culture into the academy. 4. Caution should be exercised here in the stereotyping of punk as a natural extension of the Situationist agenda. While key figures in the evolution of early UK punk, including Malcolm McLaren, Jamie Reid and Bernie Rhodes, were well-versed in the sixties counterculture, including the SI and King Mob, a wider attribution of causality is problematic, to say the least. See Home (1991) and Bestley (2008). 5. Leyton Buzzards, “I’m Hanging Around”/“I Don’t Want to Go to Art School”/“No Dry Ice or Flying Pigs” (Chrysalis Records, 1979).

References Barnett, Ronald. 1997. Higher Education: A Critical Business. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Barthes, Roland. 1977. Image-Music-Text. London: Fontana. Bestley, Russ. 2008. Hitsville UK: Punk and Graphic Design in the Faraway Towns, 1976–84. PhD thesis, University of the Arts, London. Bestley, Russ. 2015. “(I Want Some) Demystification: Deconstructing Punk.” Punk & Post-Punk 4, 2&3: 117–127.

28 • Russ Bestley Bestley, Russ. 2016. “Design It Yourself? Punk’s Division of Labour.” Cadernos de Arte e Antropologia 5, 1: 5–21. Bestley, Russ, and Ian Noble. 2001. Document: We Interrupt the Programme. Southsea: Visual Research. Bestley, Russ, and Alex Ogg. 2012. The Art of Punk. London: Omnibus. Bierut, M., W. Drenttel, S. Heller, and D. K. Holland (Eds.). 1994. Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design. New York: Allworth Press. Bierut, M., W. Drenttel, S. Heller, and D. K. Holland (Eds.). 1997. Looking Closer 2: Critical Writings on Graphic Design. New York: Allworth Press. Cherry, David. 1976. Preparing Artwork for Reproduction. London: BT Batsford. Dale, Pete. 2012. Anyone Can Do It: Empowerment, Tradition and the Punk Underground. London: Routledge. Furness, Zack (Ed.). 2012. Punkademics. London: Minor Compositions. Gordon, Alastair. 2014. “Distinctions of Authenticity and the Everyday Punk Self.” Punk & PostPunk 3, 3: 183–202. Hebdige, Dick. 1979. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge. Heller, Stephen. 2016. “America’s Big Design Problem.” Design Observer. http://designobserver. com/feature/americas-big-design-problem/39439. Hollis, Richard. 1994. Graphic Design: A Concise History. London: Thames & Hudson. Home, Stewart. 1991. The Assault on Culture. London: AK Press. Howard, Andrew. 1994. “There Is Such a Thing as Society.” Eye 4, 13: 72–77. Hughes, Robert. 1991. The Shock of the New: Art and the Century of Change. London: Thames & Hudson. Keedy, Jeff. 1998. “Graphic Design in the Postmodern Era.” Emigre 47: 50–60. Kristiansen, Lars J. 2012. Screaming for Change: Articulating a Unifying Philosophy of Punk Rock. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Latimer, Henry C. 1977. Preparing Art and Camera Copy for Printing: Contemporary Procedures and Techniques for Mechanicals and Related Copy. New York: McGraw-Hill. Lupton, Ellen, and J. Abbott Miller. 2006. Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design. London: Phaidon. Miner, Dylan, and Estrella Torrez. 2012. “Turning Point: Claiming the University as a Punk Space.” In Punkademics, edited by Zack Furness, 27–35. London: Minor Compositions. Noble, Ian, and Russ Bestley. 2016. Visual Research: An Introduction to Research Methods in Graphic Design. London: Fairchild Books. O’Hara, Craig. 1999. The Philosophy of Punk: More Than Noise! London: AK Press. Palmer, Jerry, and Mo Dodson. 1995. Design and Aesthetics: A Reader. London: Routledge. Plant, Sadie. 1992. The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age. London: Routledge. Poynor, Rick. 2001. Obey the Giant: Life in the Image World, 2nd edition. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser Verlag. Poynor, Rick. 2003. No More Rules: Graphic Design and Postmodernism . London: Laurence King. Prince, Suzy, and Ian Lowey. 2014. The Graphic Art of the Underground: A Counter-Cultural History. London: Bloomsbury. Raposo, Ana. 2011. Never Trust a Hippie: The Representation of ‘Extreme’ Politics in Punk Music Graphics and the Influences of Protest and Propaganda Traditions. PhD Thesis, University of the Arts, London. Reid, Jamie, and Jon Savage. 1987. Up They Rise—The Incomplete Works of Jamie Reid. London: Faber and Faber. Rose, Gillian. 2007. Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials. London: Sage. Ryde, Robin, and Russ Bestley. 2016. “Thinking Punk.” Punk & Post-Punk 5, 2: 97–110. Ryde, Robin, Lucy Sofianos, and Charlie Waterhouse. 2014. The Truth of Revolution, Brother: The Philosophies of Punk. London: Situation Press. Sabin, Roger. 1999. Punk Rock: So What? The Cultural Legacy of Punk. London: Routledge. Thornton, Sarah. 1995. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital . Cambridge: Polity. Torrez, Estrella. 2012. “Punk Pedagogy: Education for Liberation and Love.” In Punkademics, edited by Zack Furness, 131–142. London: Minor Compositions.

Art Attacks • 29 Trowell, Ian M. 2017. “Digging up the Dead Cities: Abandoned Streets and Past Ruins of the Future in the Glossy Punk Magazine.” Punk & Post-Punk 6, 2: 21–40. Worley, Matthew. 2012. “Shot By Both Sides: Punk, Politics and the End of ‘Consensus’.” Contemporary British History 26, 3: 333–354. Worley, Matthew. 2016. “Marx—Lenin—Rotten—Strummer: British Marxism and Youth Culture in the 1970s.” Contemporary British History 30, 4: 505–521.

3

“Khas-o-Khâshâk”1: Anarcho-Improv in the Tehrani Music Education Scene NASIM NIKNAFS

Here we have an aesthetics of the borderland between chaos and order, the margin, the area of “catastrophe” where the breakdown of the system can equal enlightenment. —Hakim Bey (2003, 129)

The first time we ever left Iran was when we got invited to perform at this festival in Amsterdam, in Holland, called The Iranian Intergalactic Music Festival2 . . . it was the first time for us also performing on a proper stage, you know, just this real rush of excitement of how cool it is to be on an actual stage and performing freely without worrying about the cops or anything. Because when we used to perform in Iran, we always had to have lookouts or people watching out for us . . . but that element of danger would add such an excitement to the show. The adrenaline of knowing any moment the doors could just bust open and then a whole bunch of cops would raid the place and take all your instruments. You know, when people were dancing in that room and they were screaming and having fun, it was all or nothing. And that sort of sense of carelessness, it was the most rock ‘n’ roll thing ever. I mean, I’ve performed hundreds of shows outside of Iran. Nothing has ever come as close to that for me, to sort of be able to enjoy that kind of freedom of just letting go. Over in the West, I was always self-conscious, “Shit! Am I good enough? Are people giving a fuck? Or is my mic loud or whatever, you know?” Over here, in the underground, when we were performing, it was just pure raw rock ‘n’ roll. There was nothing else. We weren’t pretending to be anything else. That’s all that we were. So explains Raam,3 an ex-“unofficial” and now “official”4 Iranian rock musician, who started his musical hobby-turned-to-career in his parents’ basement in the northern part of Tehran. Raam later left Iran, alongside so many other rock musicians, to be able to pursue his music legitimately—beyond the supervisory 30

“Khas-o-Khâshâk” • 31 gaze of the authorities—a genre of music that still to this day resides in a state of liminality (Nooshin 2005) due to unpredictable regulations over its production in the country. However, yearning for the voice of his city, neighbourhood and community, Raam returned to Tehran as can be inferred from the opening excerpt. The “pure raw” feelings he was seeking in his musical interactions were not readily achievable in the many different places he had travelled to, lived in or passed by when on tour. It seemed the “mainstream” music industry was not his thing! Nor were the diasporic interpretations of his music by the Iranian emigrants. Reflecting upon one of Raam’s concerts I attended in Toronto: His music was much improved, and he was more mature on the stage, but the adrenaline rush we all used to experience while being in those concerts back in Tehran was missing. His concert was reduced to “yet another rock show” within the Iranian diaspora overground, where most people attended to see and be seen, rather than experience the dangers and solidarity these events usually entailed. (Niknafs 2016, 357–358) Despite now being able to pursue his musical ambitions freely, he had encountered new, different, unexpected constraints within his new milieu, and found that he wanted to enjoy his unique musical experience divorced from the coercion and pressure of the market—even though what he sang and played was, in his own words, “low-quality”, “bad music” and even “garbage” at times. Raam’s story is unique in itself, but nonetheless similar to those of so many other rock musicians in Iran after the 1979 revolution who left the country to pursue careers in music. But why did Raam return? What was it that has persuaded other rock musicians (such as Behzad Omrani5) to remain? What was so intriguing about the place and space of their music-making that, regardless of the hardships associated with music production, encouraged them to stay? In this chapter I investigate a music [education] scene based on Bennett and Peterson’s (2004) understanding of “local, translocal, and virtual” scenes, in a vibrant city like Tehran. Basing upon Gosling’s (2004) writings on AnarchoPunk, I argue that the most practical way to pursue (rock and alternative) music and become engaged in one of Tehran’s music scenes seems to be through what I call Anarcho-Improv. In doing so, I examine three politically charged periods in the contemporary history of Iran, and engage with these mobilizing movements in relation to the anarchist, improvisatory and self-governing rock music scene. The periods I focus upon here are: • The 1979 revolution • The two uprisings of Kooy-e Dâneshgâh in 1999, and • The 2009 electoral turmoil known as the Green Movement.

32 • Nasim Niknafs I write this chapter as one of the scene members that Raam described in the opening excerpt. I danced, screamed, played and sang songs while participating at underground parties, concerts or what Howard Becker (1982) termed “art worlds”. Music was only one aspect of the scene that spoke to so many of us; beyond that, it was the sheer force of participating in artistic projects through live conceptual performances, theatre, visual arts and cultural engagements that turned us into—I realize today—anarchists, the ultimate projection of “a self-organizing society based on voluntary cooperation rather than [.  .  .] coercion” (Ward 2004, 10). And all of this was mostly through trial and error, imitation, peer-mentorship and proactive access to a lively creative scene without the figure of authority as teacher, although the capital “A” of Authorities as the controlling state loomed constantly over us. Similar to Raam, I have also left the country to pursue my musicianship, but unlike Raam I have not returned to live in Iran, though I have been back a few times to visit family and a handful of friends who have stayed in the country. I also visited Iran to situate myself again within the streets of Tehran, its traffic and social life, the familiar crowds and cafés, and to experience the newly emerged locales, art galleries and newer and younger scene members. Having experienced the life of a traveller/foreigner and various underground musical scenes in Europe and North America, I wanted to return mentally and emotionally to the place whence my music education began and that of many of my colleagues. As part of an ongoing research project into the life of “unofficial” and “official” rock musicians in Iran, this chapter illustrates some shared characteristics among these musicians and their music education: that of improvisatory anarchism in/as their music education that gave rise to “far smaller utopias [that] managed to convey the same sense of knock-you-down newness, [and] of soul-conquering significance” (Schneider 2013, xiii) and that encompass intricate internal dynamics (including both cooperation and competition), along with a pronounced ability to adapt to new circumstances and conditions [that] offer insight into the complexities of a musical production, interaction, and reception, with particular relevance to how we understand improvisation. (Borgo 2005, 61) An Unfinished Revolution6: A Nation of “Khas-o-Khâshâk” I acutely remember the day that Mahmood Ahmadinejad became the Iranian president for the second time in 2009. It was my birthday when the polls drew to a close. My eyes were fixated upon the TV in disbelief, as I sat with some of my Iranian and non-Iranian friends in Chicago, Illinois. Before the final

“Khas-o-Khâshâk” • 33 votes were tallied, the victory of Ahmadinejad was apparent; he “won the ballot with 62.63 percent of the vote, while Moussavi received 33.75 percent of the vote” (CNN 2009). Dismayed and zombied-out, it was such an out-ofbody experience that without a word we crawled back to our homes, in very much the same way that much of the world likely experienced the election of Donald Trump in 2016. How could it happen? It was unfathomable that after months of campaigning, and renewed energy and hope, Ahmadinejad had become the president again; another four years of political suffocation and economic frenzy. A hollow night filled with disbelief, anger, confusion and cold sweats turned into phone calls to Iran, to other friends in various parts of the world, all staying awake and soberly following every news channel, social media and local news in Iran. There was talk among my friends and I, through physical and cyber communications, of returning to Iran, but our parents would not accept it: “There is no way you are flying back. Stay where you are. Stay! This is not happening all over again”; a plea shared by so many parents in Iran with loved ones living outside the country, referring back to the 1979 revolution, when they had experienced mass mobilizations and the political aftermath of the revolution. I stayed where I was—a decision that haunts me still to this day. I had a complex understanding of the 1979 revolution through word of mouth from parents and elderly relatives and friends, first-hand experience of living through the Iran-Iraq war, and had experienced the establishment of the government over the years. Along with comprehensive research into the contemporary history of Iran post-1979 revolution, these experiences resulted in my non-participation in the 2009 post-electoral turmoil, or better said, uprising which immediately followed the election results. Instead, I devoured the news of a developing decentralized and leaderless movement, and following every move, I contacted my friends inside and outside the country, participating in online and offline petitions, and remote demonstrations. On June 14, 2009, two days after the election results, Ahmadinejad gave his victory speech and addressed the demonstrators: “the nation’s huge river [will] not leave any opportunity for the expression of dirt and dust [Khas-oKhâshâk]” (Tait 2009). This statement did not go unnoticed. People took it as a “badge of pride” (Tait 2009) rather than a mere insult, and art works, music and chants created by the protesters emerged, taking ownership of the accolade of “Khas-o-Khâshâk”.7 A now famous short poem, turned into a slogan in the 6/8 time signature, came out, similar to the structure and ethos of Rumi’s poetry— with short, rhythmic and poignant verses: You are the dirt and dust, you are the enemy of this land I am the passion, I am the light, I am the pained lover You are the coercion, you are the blind, you are the halo without beam I am the courageous, I am the owner of this land.8

34 • Nasim Niknafs Drawing from the values of anarchism, which poses the question “why bother to confront a ‘power’ which has lost all meanings and become sheer simulation[?]” (Bey 2003, 126, emphasis in original), and postanarchism as a “politics and ethics of indifference to power” (Newman 2016, xiii), this slogan can be seen to celebrate the Tehrani music [education] scene: passionate, bright, courageous and owning the “Khas-o-Khâshâk”, or literally, “punk” mentality. The protestors and rock musicians alike reimagined the offensive slur of being Khas-o-Khâshâk, and the lack of state-sanctioned music education, into a decentralized, new and proactive Event (Žižek 2014): “in this case, the previous trauma, [being called as Khas-o-Khâshâk], is that of the birth of subjectivity itself ” (97), such that the “Event [is] the act of reframing, [Khas-o-Khâshâk]” (190). Wilfully being Khas-o-Khâshâk, or “punk”, or “dirt and dust”, or “garbage”, becomes an act of subversion and anarchism, a diverse and heterodox assemblage of ideas, moral sensibilities, practices, and historical movements and struggles animated by [. . .] a desire to critically interrogate, refuse, transform and overthrow all relations of authority, particularly those centralized within the sovereign state. (Newman 2016, 1–2) Elsewhere (Niknafs 2016), I have discussed the socio-historical circumstances of music education after the 1979 revolution in Iran. Nooshin (2005), Robertson (2012) and Youssefzadeh (2000) have also extensively described the situation of music circulation in the country after the 1979 revolution, but here I would like to provide a brief understanding of the precarious situation of rock music in particular, post ’79, labelled by the authorities as “Westoxification” (gharbzadehgi) through the official rhetoric. Music as an art form has gone through convoluted waves of political messiness since the revolution alongside the government’s establishing of itself as the head of an Islamic Republic, and the country was enduring eight years of the last internationally known trench war. In the early years, “Revolutionary Songs” (Soroodhaaye Enqelabi) were ubiquitous on every radio and TV broadcasting channel, all under the auspices of the government. The only musical activity that took place in schools was the singing of these revolutionary songs every morning before entering the classrooms. Public teaching and performances of most genres of music were banned, and any kind of music deemed to reflect inherent “Western” values, such as Western classical music or “Western” pop and rock, was prohibited from public spaces, in reaction to the pro-Western policies of the prior Shah era. In addition, any kind of music such as Persian pop that might “entice” people to dance or commit eccentric behaviour was also prohibited. Nonetheless, music found its way into people’s private lives. With time and changes in presidencies, cultural production including music gained some public prominence. It was the presidency of Khatami in

“Khas-o-Khâshâk” • 35 1997 that launched a new era for musicians, termed the “Cultural Thaw” by Nooshin (2005). With less harsh regulations over the teaching, learning and performing of music, rock musicians of all walks of life began to surface in public. Nevertheless, their situation remained precarious, as these regulations were unpredictable. Rehearsals, performances, teaching and learning, and dissemination of their music did not enjoy the kind of freedom from which most of their counterparts in other parts of the world benefited, and the presidency of Ahmadinejad in 2005, and later his contested victory in 2009, made matters worse. In this unstable climate, rock musicians took control of their own learning.9 For instance, all of Behzad’s music-making and learning occurred through collaborating with peers and other artists. Even his guitar teacher, with whom he started his guitar playing, was considered a peer rather than a higher-ranking music professor, as the music scene-specific tendency was that if someone knows a craft, they teach whatever skills they have to another person, fuelling the concept of DIY, collective learning and communal education. Behzad remarked: Electric guitar was not as common in those days. You had to find a person who would even teach acoustic guitar. And they would tell you “hey, I don’t know it either, but I’ll teach you whatever I know myself ”. Robertson (2012, 69) argued that, “with very few outlets for official music training in the styles that unofficial musicians enjoy, these young men empower each other and build on communal knowledge of the scene by teaching new recruits”. Behzad was also adamant about creating the music of his band, Bomrani, collaboratively: We are co-dependent on one another. And none of us is anything without the group. When I’m not singing, I’m just Omrani, or our [guitarist] is not Jimi Hendrix .  .  .  . The good thing is that Bomrani has six wheels: even if one person would go missing, the car would be crooked, meaning we don’t have a member, that is not as significant as the rest of us. Examining the local, rich stories of Behzad revealed that he and his bandmates were following a do-it-yourself (DIY) ethos in their music-making and learning, like that espoused in punk culture. They created a local anarchist scene through mutual aid, experimentation and imaginary understanding (Suissa 2006) that responded to all their musical needs. They became simultaneously teachers and learners while representing a unique local music [education] scene rooted in their sense of geographical and mental belonging, very much in line with the revolutionary movement and the two uprisings that “emerge[d] from ‘outside previously circumscribed situations’, and those movements that

36 • Nasim Niknafs introduce ‘new arrangements’ of life outside the given possibility” (Rajchman, cited in Ghamari-Tabrizi 2016, 184). There were two crucial elements that were shared among the revolutionaries in 1979, the 1999 and 2009 protestors and the active parties in this music [education] scene: (1) there was no single moral rationale underpinning any of these events, and (2) the absence of a rule of thumb in these events created diverse and multi-layered voices and understandings through “aspiration” and “the creative act of engaging with the restructuring of society as a whole” (Suissa 2006, 139). For, as Ward argues in his advocacy of anarchism, “it is diversity and not unity that creates the kind of society in which you and I can most comfortably live”, according to a poststructural understanding of the “accommodation of local differences” (Ward 2004, 82, emphasis in original). These two elements formed the backbone of a music education that not only survives the hardships but also dynamically reimagines the possibilities away from static understandings of what, why and how its participants, or better said, creators, should be engaged with the acts of musicianship, and towards a dynamic interplay of motivations, actions and contingencies. According to Suissa (2006): It is intrinsic to the anarchist position that human society is constantly in flux; there is no such thing as the one finite, fixed form of social organization; the principle at the heart of anarchist thought is that of constant striving, improvement and experimentation. (141) Thus, the precarious situation of unofficial music in Iran might have unintentionally10 helped the emergence of an ideal, or in the anarchist terminology, utopian, music education as a “complex system” (Borgo 2005) divorced from a centralized, standardized and state-organized music education that more often than not is exclusive. For a system to be truly complex, it must be an aggregation of simpler systems that both work and can work independently; a whole made up of wholes. Systems of this sort are able to take advantage of positive feedback, to cultivate increasing returns. They exploit errors or unexpected occurrences, assess strategies in light of their consequences, and produce self-changing rules that dynamically govern. (Borgo 2005, 192) Therefore, in the case of a Tehrani music [education] scene, rather than a liberal democratic music education sanctioned by a centralized entity, a scene with a tangible “face-to-face democracy” (Bookchin 1974) would work effectively, as “coordination requires neither uniformity nor bureaucracy” (Ward 2004, 89). Working on the ground, being in constant connection with other musicians,

“Khas-o-Khâshâk” • 37 artists, thinkers, and the dynamic space of teaching and learning, would make for a more meaningful and profound music education than one so simplistically, abstractly and deterministically oriented that takes away the subjectivities and denotations of the parties involved. In what follows, I discuss a complex Anarcho-Improv music [education] scene where its source of inspiration originates from Persian traditional music, cultural and political history, and years of subversion through creativity that “makes us aware of the power of bottom-up design, of self-organization. It operates in a network fashion, engaging all the participants while distributing responsibility and empowerment among them. Networks facilitate reciprocal interactions between members, fostering trust and cooperation” (Borgo 2005, 193). Anarcho-Improv: A State of Persistent Disequilibrium In a public lecture unfolding Foucault’s understanding of the Iranian revolution, Ghamari-Tabrizi describes the 1979 revolution as unfinished, where the following two uprisings of 1999 and 2009 were the results and the continuation of what had already been started around half a century ago in Iran: Understanding the Iranian Revolution requires a temporal map that recognizes the contingencies and indeterminacies within which the revolutionary movement unfolded . . . What attracted [Foucault] to the revolution was precisely the same feature for which his critics ridiculed him: its ambiguity . . . it was the inexplicability of the man [sic] in revolt that motivated much of [Foucault’s] writing on the Iranian Revolution. (Ghamari-Tabrizi 2016, 189) The same ambiguity and indeterminacy discussed by Ghamari-Tabrizi contribute to the concept of Anarcho-Improv as a “  ‘non-linear dynamical systems’ theory” that happens to “model the unpredictable behaviour of systems in which the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts” (Borgo 2005, 60). Unpredictability is the third value in Iranian society that Nettl (1980) argues as mirroring its traditional music, along with hierarchy, individualism and position of power. While I do not agree to all four values that Nettl identifies, specifically related to the current events in the country, Persian traditional and folk music are deeply embedded in improvisatory practices, are highly complex and textured, and follow the idea of creative performance rooted in years of training, and specifically in knowledge of the canonic repertory or radif . . . and in particular the expectation that musicians should be responsive to their audience and to the performance settings. (Blum, cited in Nooshin 2003, 260–261, emphasis in original)

38 • Nasim Niknafs This indeterminate improvisatory practice might thus be seen to have seamlessly lent itself to the Iranian youth, its 1979 revolution and the following uprisings, creating a state of momentary spatial magic, or what Bey ([1985] 2003) terms a “Temporary Autonomous Zone” (TAZ): History says the revolution attains “permanence,” or at least duration, while the uprising is “temporary.” In this sense, an uprising is like a “peak experience” as opposed to the standard of “ordinary” consciousness and experience. Like festivals, uprisings cannot happen every day—otherwise they would not be “non-ordinary”. But such moments of intensity give shape and meaning to the entirety of a life. (98) What I propose, therefore, drawing upon the Tehrani music [education] scene described throughout this chapter, is an effective music education as a “peak experience” devoid of any specific criterion, frame of reference or standardization, rather than a state of “ordinary permanence” with its set rules and regulations, and immaterial power hierarchies. This is a music education as a “complex system”, without schooling or institutionalization that: seek[s] persistent disequilibrium; [that] avoid[s] constancy but also restless change. Because of this uneasy balance, complex systems are not necessarily optimized for a specific goal; rather, they pursue multiple goals at all times. Although they cannot be explicitly controlled, they can respond to guiding rules of thumb and are susceptible points of intervention [emphasizing] adaptation, perpetual novelty, the value of variety and experimentation, and the potential of decentralized and overlapping authority in ways that are increasingly being viewed as beneficial for economic and political discourse. (Borgo 2005, 193) Both Raam and Behzad, now well-known rock musicians within the country, learned their rock music from peers, intensive listening, copying sound from other artists and having the help of other fellow musicians, fans and scene makers, very much similar to Green’s study of British popular musicians (2002). Yet there are also dramatic differences in the political bedrock supporting their musicianship. Unlike Green’s participants, Raam, Behzad and so many other rock musicians in Iran were not permitted to practise their music in terms of learning, rehearsing, performing and disseminating their music. Their motivation was not necessarily about gaining foothold in the industry, but to be able, publicly and effortlessly, to enjoy their music. Not having a local rock model (Robertson 2012), Raam remarked: Word started getting out. We’d throw these underground parties, and we even had concerts . . . I remember we would like watch, you know, we’d really

“Khas-o-Khâshâk” • 39 record everything we would see on satellite TV.11 We’d record live concerts to see what microphones they’re using, what amplifiers, what guitars, how they played their instruments. And we would just emulate these different acts . . . And the shows were crazy, every time the news would spread to other people and other people would want to come and see what the hell is going on. And it all happened, you know, very organically. We didn’t have proper internet even though [there] was like good internet happening outside everywhere else. It was just really difficult for us to communicate any other way. So, it’s just basically word of mouth. And people started hearing about the band [Hypernova]. Then we just kept playing a couple of underground shows in Iran and move from studio to studio because it’s quite difficult, at that time, to even find a place to rehearse because of all the noise that we would make. And at one point we found this basement, underneath a parking lot, like four-stories underground. We would literally spend all of our days and nights over there just playing non-stop. All these little things, they seem pretty mundane, but for us it felt the most difficult task ever . . . for us it was just trial and error.12 When Raam discusses his music education in terms such as “trial and error”, “word of mouth”, “recording live concerts on satellite TV” and “underground parties”, he is recounting a local music [education] scene that is more concerned with: the ways in which emergent scenes use music appropriated via global flows and networks to construct particular narratives of the local. Besides music, such narratives of emergent local identity incorporate aspects of other local cultural forms . . . such as local dialect, dress, and history, as well as diverse forms of knowledge, that are often used as strategies of resistance to local circumstances [.  .  .] whereby particular local scenes construct shared narratives of everyday life. (Peterson and Bennett 2004, 7) According to Gosling (2004, 172), “in [such situations] we can see the importance of a collective DIY ethic and the authenticity of the bands. The members of the networks worked hard, not with financial motivations but with a common belief in the integrity of the networks” and a shared resistance towards the governmental impositions. In the case of rock musicians in Iran, “The topdown policy-making scenario cannot operate . . . What can work, however, is gradual minute changes, and local activism. To overcome the unpredictability and ambiguous legalities around creating their music, anarchism seems the most logical path” (Niknafs 2016, 8). It is precisely this mentality that makes anarchist education different from that of liberal education: “in anarchist theory, what renders a national curriculum or a body of knowledge objectionable is the simple fact that it is determined by a central, hierarchical top-down organization” (Suissa 2006, 137). The instability of the regulations of the musical

40 • Nasim Niknafs production in Iran somehow endowed all of the musicians to be at the margin as an inclusive act, as “we should . . . look to maximize participation from the fringes, rather than the core. In complex systems, a healthy fringe speeds adaptation, increases resilience, and is almost always the source of innovation” (Borgo 2005, 193). When no musician can publicly rehearse, perform, and learn her/his music, it would mean that all of them are in it together through a: radical imagination, [That] is . . . necessarily a collective process, something that arises out of dialogue and encounter rather than emerging fully formed from the mind of a gifted individual. Furthermore, while imagination is a terrain of political struggle it is not reducible to “ideology” in any simplistic sense of “false consciousness” or “fetishism” . . . the radical imagination embodies a more rich, complex, agent-driven and ongoing working-out of affinity. (Khasnabish 2012, 228) “Radical Imagination”: Concluding Remarks The contemporary world we live in has witnessed 9/11, the resultant “War on Terror”, two major wars in the Middle East (Afghanistan and Iraq), Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, indigenous movements such as Idle No More!, civil war in Syria, Brexit, the re-emergence of populism and the acceleration of neoliberalism, mass mobilization in less than twenty years, and just recently, the rise of Trumpism (Tarnoff 2016). In the current climate it seems appropriate to rethink and re-evaluate our approaches to life, our relationships to one another and the environment we live in, and reconsider our values, beliefs and beings in the world. What I have posited in this chapter only scratches the surface, and presents only one understanding based on my own past experiences as a scene member and ongoing research. It is definitely not a solution in itself, but it offers an alternative opportunity to re-examine our practices and principles when we as arts educators have the luxury and responsibility to potentially impact people’s lives. We only need to take a step back and stay humble. We should resist choosing sides, we should embrace our critical diversity to the fullest extent possible. This requires humility and a refusal to take oneself too seriously. [. . .] We need to realize that there are legitimate critiques regarding our own practices and conclusions. (Malott 2012, 264, emphasis in original) Considering Iranian rock music education in the way undertaken in this chapter may prompt and assist scholars and practitioners to think differently about music education more generally, and in particular to apply understandings to school settings where access, student enrolment, teacher retention and

“Khas-o-Khâshâk” • 41 relevancy are of increasing concerns. What might happen if we imagine a punk classroom—punk not necessarily in the sense of a genre or style of music, but a style of music teaching and learning—a pedagogy? What would happen if the decision-making in the classrooms were punk, set apart from the interruptions of the authority and away from the Orwellian surveillance?13 What kind of a music classroom would or could that be? When education becomes a state-owned commodity, human beings’ integrity suffers in the process. However, through “radical imagination” one can create and curate the fertile moment to change the setup into multitudes of active and noisy voices, as “ ‘Noise’ can be ‘richer’ in ‘information’ than certain ordered codes” (Hakim Bey 2003, 141). Raam, Behzad and their peers, the Khas-o-Khâshâk, did so. After all, “things emerge when the equilibrium is destroyed, when something goes astray” (Žižek 2014, 55). They anarchoimprovised and experimented with their learning, all the way from “the abrupt reversal of ‘not-yet’ into ‘always-already’ ” (Žižek 2014, 146). And they are still involved in the scene: humble, resilient and loud. Notes 1. In Persian, this means “garbage”, “punk” or “polluted particles in the air”, quoting President Mahmood Ahmadinejad discussing the nature of the 2009 electoral protestors in Iran. 2. www.festivalinfo.nl/festival/5353/Iranian_Intergalactic_Music_Festival/2006/. 3. www.kingraam.com/. 4. The terms “official” (rasmi) and “unofficial” (gheire-rasmi) are now extensively used in the context of Iranian rock music, and refer to the degree to which musics are aligned with and sanctioned by the state. Other terms such as “underground” (zirzamini) or “illegal” (gheire-ghanooni) do not sufficiently cover the depth and breadth of such music in the country. For further detail on the contextual meanings of these terms please refer to Nooshin (2005b) and Robertson (2012). 5. http://bomrani.com/. 6. Ghamari-Tabrizi (2016, October 28) referring to the 1979 Revolution, Book Launch, Toronto, ON: University of Toronto. 7. The “appropriation of stigmatizing labels” is a common trope of countercultures—taking a derogatory term and reappropriating it as a badge of honour. See for example Galinsky et al. (2013). 8. Translated by the author. 9. I would like to highlight that the peer learning norms of rock music flourished under these cultural constraints, where for instance Western classical music may have suffered, for the conditions of learning were conducive to rock’s learning setting. 10. Rock music is particularly conducive to this situation. For further discussion of rock’s characteristics from an educational perspective, see Green (2002). 11. Satellite TV was one of the major illicit outlets for Iranians to have access to the outside world: “These satellite TV networks offered new horizons for a population whose cultural life had been limited to war imagery and discourse. They provided sounds and images of life lived differently in the world outside their own borders” (Alikhah 2008, 95). For further detail please refer to Alikhah (2008). 12. The interviews with Raam were in English and transcribed verbatim. But the interviews with Behzad occurred in Farsi, and I translated them. 13. For example, the pressure placed on teachers to meet targets, the involvement of audit culture in educational management and also state interference and oversight in curricula are situations in which teachers and students cannot have full agency in the discourse of their teaching and learning situations.

42 • Nasim Niknafs References Alikhah, Fardin. 2008. “The Politics of Satellite Television in Iran.” In Media, Culture and Society in Iran: Living With Globalization and the Islamic State, edited by Mehdi Semati, 94–110. Abingdon: Routledge. Becker, Howard Saul. 1982. Art Worlds. Berkley: University of California Press. Bennett, Andy, and Richard A. Peterson. 2004. Music Scenes: Local, Translocal and Virtual. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Bey, Hakim. 2003. TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. Brooklyn: Autonomedia. Bookchin, Murray. 1974. Post-Scarcity Anarchism. London: Wildwood House. Borgo, David. 2005. Sync or Swarm: Improvising Music in a Complex Age. New York: Continuum. CNN. 2009. “Timeline: 2009 Iran Presidential Elections.” June 19, 2009. www.cnn.com/2009/ WORLD/meast/06/16/iran.elections.timeline/. Galinsky, Adam D., Cynthia S. Wang, Jennifer A. Whitson, Eric M. Anicich, Kurt Hugenberg, and Galen V. Bodenhausen. 2013. “The Reappropriation of Stigmatizing Labels: The Reciprocal Relationship Between Power and Self-Labeling.” Psychological Science 24, 10: 2020–2029. Ghamari-Tabrizi, Behrooz. 2016. Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution After the Enlightenment. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gosling, Tim. 2004. “  ‘Not for Sale’: The Underground Network of Anarcho—Punk.” In Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual, edited by Andy Bennett and Richard A. Peterson, 168–186. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Green, Lucy. 2002. How Popular Musicians Learn: A Way Ahead for Music Education. Aldershot: Ashgate. Khasnabish, Alex. 2012. “To Walk Questioning: Zapatismo, the Radical Imagination, and a Transnational Pedagogy of Liberation.” In Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflections on Education, edited by Robert H. Haworth, 220–241. Oakland: PM Press. Malott, Curry Stephenson. 2012. “Anarcho-Feminist Psychology: Contributing to Postformal Criticality.” In Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflections on Education, edited by Robert H. Haworth, 260–282. Oakland: PM Press. Nettl, Bruno. 1980. “Musical Values and Social Values: Symbols in Iran.” Asian Music 12, 1: 129–148. Newman, Saul. 2016. Post Anarchism. Cambridge: Polity. Niknafs, Nasim. 2016. “In a Box: A Narrative of a/n (Under)grounded Iranian Musician.” Music Education Research 18, 4: 351–363. Nooshin, Laudan. 2003. “Improvisation as ‘Other’: Creativity, Knowledge, and Power—The Case of Iranian Classical Music.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 128: 242–296. Nooshin, Laudan. 2005. “Subversion and Countersubversion: Power, Control, and Meaning in the New Iranian Pop Music.” In Music, Power and Politics, edited by A. J. Randall, 231–272. New York: Routledge. Robertson, Bronwen. 2012. Reverberations of Dissent: Identity and Expression in Iran’s Music Scene. London: Continuum. Schneider, Nathan. 2013. “Anarcho Curious? Or Anarchic Amnesia.” In On Anarchism, edited by Noam Chomsky, vii–xvi. New York: New Press. Tait, Robert. 2009. “The Dust Revolution—How Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Jibe Backfired.” Guardian. June 18, 2009. www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jun/18/iran-election-protestsmahmoud-ahmadinejad. Tarnoff, Ben. 2016. “The Triumph of Trumpism: The New Politics That Is Here to Stay.” Guardian. November 9, 2016. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/us-election-politicalmovement-trumpism. Ward, Colin. 1996. Anarchy in Action. London: Freedom Press. Ward, Colin. 2004. Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Youssefzadeh, Ameneh. 2000. “The Situation of Music in Iran Since the Revolution: The Role of Official Organizations.” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 9, 2: 35–61. Žižek, Slavoj. 2014. Event. London: Penguin Books.

4

Should I Stay or Should I Go? A Survival Guide for Punk Graduate Students DAVID VILA DIÉGUEZ

Introduction During my five years of graduate school in the US I have crossed paths with many peers who are having a really hard time finishing their PhDs. Although most are dedicated students and scholars, many feel that graduate school is sucking all their life out, as well as completely neutralizing them as academics. Having to adapt to specific discourses, being required to focus on “marketable” topics, competing with other students over research grants, and other pressures to toe an expected line, are turning their graduate school years into a stressful and dehumanizing experience. According to a study carried out by the University of California, Berkeley, in 2014, 47 percent of their PhD students and 37 percent of their MA students met the criteria to be diagnosed with depression (Graduate Assembly 2014, 7). In addition to this, a study carried out at an anonymous large US university in 2006 showed that 44.7 percent of graduate students reported “having an emotional or stress related problem over the previous year”, and 57.7 percent said that they knew a colleague who had experienced “an emotional or stress related problem over the last twelve months” (Hyun et al. 2006, 255). This prevalence of emotional and psychological instability in graduate school is, I would argue, closely related to the current neoliberalization of higher education culture. Integral to capitalism is the commodification of the everyday, and graduate students are going through a process of becoming competing commodities themselves. However, in spite of it all, many graduate students are turning their distress into active resistance. In the summer of 2016 I attended KISMIF (Keep It Simple, Make It Fast), an international conference on punk and underground cultures held in Porto, Portugal. There I met over 200 graduate students and scholars from all around the world who presented on niche topics such as feminist punk in Australia, Romanian underground music under socialism, and resistance patterns of tattooed bodies. Many did so in very personal and non-traditional ways. To cite just a couple of examples, some speakers played instruments and sang 43

44 • David Vila Diéguez during their presentations and one student made the audience dance. It was refreshing to see so many scholars giving such original presentations while still being profoundly analytical and “academic”. For a PhD student like me, it was mind-opening to realize that punk and underground cultures were not only the subject matter of most of the presentations but also influenced the way the organizers and presenters approached the event as a whole. In fact, the conference could be considered an underground event within academia due to the heterodox and irreverent character of both the form and content of the scholarship. Prior to attending the conference, I had read Punkademics (Furness 2012) and had also been in touch with various members of the Punk Scholars Network. In my development as a young scholar, KISMIF represented a peak moment in my initiation to date into the field of “punk studies”. Following the conference, two things became clear to me: first, that there are indeed many scholars who question and challenge the model of traditional academia; and second, that, following a punk DIY (Do It Yourself) ethos, they are organizing and creating very interesting alternatives. Punk Pedagogy as Self-Empowerment in Graduate School As I learned about how organized punk and underground scholars are, I discovered punk being incorporated as a subject matter, as an ethos and as a set of practices that can be applied across disciplines. There are studies on punk and philosophy (e.g. The Philosophy of Punk by Craig O’Hara), punk and sociology (e.g. Punk Sociology by David Beer), punk and religion (e.g. Hardcore Zen by Brad Warner), punk and biology (e.g. Biopunk by Marcus Wohlsen), punk and business management (e.g. Punk Rock Entrepreneur by Caroline Moore) and even punk pedagogy. Such a broad understanding of “punk” multiplies the research possibilities and opens innumerable new avenues for future punk scholars. In my particular case, due to my concern with the apparent psychological and emotional pressure felt among graduate student peers in the US, and determined to envision alternative ways of approaching graduate school, I find the relationship between punk and pedagogy especially productive to explore. Most literature focused on punk pedagogy looks at punk in one of two ways: as a subject of study in the classroom or as a set of practices that can inform the way professors proceed pedagogically in their classes. As part of this second perspective, Torrez (2012, 136) establishes a connection between critical pedagogy and punk philosophy when she states that “punk pedagogy is a manifestation of equity, rebellion, critique, self-examination, solidarity, community, love, anger, and collaboration”. By doing so, she combines the rebellious energy of punk culture with the emancipatory objective of critical pedagogues such as Paulo Freire (2005) or Henry Giroux (2011). For his part, Mike Dines (2015,

Should I Stay or Should I Go? • 45 22–23) acknowledges the connection between critical pedagogy and punk philosophy while also stressing the importance of including ideas drawn from anarchist pedagogies. Thus, he introduces other perspectives such as that of the Spanish anarchist Francisco Ferrer and the “free schools” developed in Spain at the beginning of the twentieth century. Meanwhile, other scholars such as Seth Khan-Egan explore the practical applicability of punk pedagogies in the classroom using “punk ideology and energy in a composition course” (1998, 99) as an example. From these three cases, one can easily see that punk pedagogy is a fairly broad concept that is still in the process of being defined—hence the inclusive plural, pedagogies, in the title of this volume. Yet, despite this broad spectrum, there is something that most texts on punk pedagogy share: they focus on professors’ perspectives, limiting punk’s pedagogical possibilities to something teachers apply in their classes. Overemphasizing these perspectives risks denying students agency in their own learning, suggesting that an occurrence of punk pedagogy is dependent on a teacher wanting to apply a punk pedagogical approach—whichever or whatever this might mean. In this chapter I will discuss punk as a culture and set of practices, from which graduate students can learn a different way of approaching university to achieve a more meaningful and satisfying experience, despite the professors they might have. To this end, I interpret punk pedagogy as a self-empowering strategy for graduate students. Punk Students and Punk Graduate Students “Punk” is quite an ambiguous word in current scholarship. Many interpret punk as an aesthetic statement, others as an ideology closely related to anarchism, and others as a general attitude towards life.1 In my understanding, a “punk student” is not just someone who wears a Sex Pistols t-shirt or has a pink mohawk while attending school. Neither is she/he just a student who plays in a punk band or enjoys listening to punk music. A “punk student” is one who, as Craig O’Hara puts it, “question[s] conformity not only by looking and sounding different (which has debatable importance), but questioning the prevailing modes of thought” (1993, 28). In addition to this, and resonating with the fundamentals of critical pedagogy, punk students’ “questioning of conformity involves the questioning of authority as well” (1993, 28). In short, punk students would be those who adopt and display a critical punk attitude towards the reality surrounding them at school even if they have never been involved with punk culture. Most teachers tend to interpret this rebellious punk attitude simply as deviant, turning students into “discipline problems, hard-core cases, or simply bad kids” (Kanpol 1999, 37). However, while that interpretation might hold true in some cases, many students’ constant questioning and opposition may also contain an act of resistance to “the assignment of social roles [that] are melted into schooling” (Illich 1970, n.p.).

46 • David Vila Diéguez Zack Furness defines punk as a movement of interwoven subcultures, and a broader “Do it Yourself ” (DIY) counterculture in which people put ethical and political ideas into practice by using music and other modes of cultural production/expression to highlight both the frustrations and banalities of everyday life, as well as the ideas and institutions that need to be battled if there is any hope of living in a less oppressive world. (2015, 10) At the same time, he uses the term “punkademics” in the context of higher education to refer to “professors, graduate students, and other PhDs who, in some meaningful or substantial way, either once straddled or continue to bridge the worlds of punk and academia through their own personal experiences, their scholarship, or some combination thereof ” (2015, 8). In hopes of helping to avoid—or, at least, attenuate—graduate school–related psychological conditions caused by the neoliberalization of higher education culture, in this chapter I would like to introduce a new sub-category that I call “punk graduate students”: graduate students who question the prevailing modes of thought and the authority within graduate school and academia while trying to foster solidarity and collaboration to resist the spread of neoliberal individualism. Taking this definition as a starting point, I propose that one way to help improve the graduate school experience is by more graduate students becoming punk graduate students. The rest of this chapter will point to a few ideas for my peers to achieve such transformation—and not die trying! Be Critical But Take Full Advantage of Graduate School While punk graduate students would question graduate school and academia, they would not do so just for the sake of it, without any specific criteria. Coinciding with the fundamentals of critical pedagogy, a punk graduate student would question graduate school and academia “as part of a broader project that attempts to address the growing authoritarian threats posed by the current regime of market fundamentalism against youth, critical modes of education and the ethos of democracy itself ” (Giroux 2011, 8). This approach to graduate school resembles the way Greil Marcus (1989) frames punk within the Frankfurt School’s broader concept of “negative dialectics”. Interpreting punk as “a voice that denied all social facts, and in that denial affirmed that everything was possible” (1989, 2), Marcus agrees with Theodor Adorno, who says that “to proceed dialectically means to think in contradictions, for the sake of the contradiction already experienced in

Should I Stay or Should I Go? • 47 the object, and against that contradiction. A contradiction in reality, is a contradiction against reality” (2004, 145). Following this idea, punk graduate students would expose graduate schools’ and academia’s contradictions too because, since those contradictions exist in reality, they act against the general perception of universities as unquestionably democratic and critical institutions. In other words, since there may be a fairly significant misconnection between the abstract concept of university as a democratic and critical institution and what many universities are in reality, by making the contradictions explicit, punk students would be able to expose how distorted those universities’ reality is and act on it. Only by doing so could one think of another possible reality and challenge the taken-for-grantedness of all universities as democratic and critical institutions. It is one of these contradictions that Miner and Torrez (2012, 30) acknowledge when they say that “while the university may have the façade of radicalism, it is all too frequently a ‘free trade area’ where the capitalist model of ‘intellectual entrepreneurship’ supersedes any organic means of knowledge dissemination”. A classic example of this is students writing grant proposals. They always have to sell their research/product to a university/financial backer adapting their discourse to that favoured by the institution or those reading the proposal so that it can be successful—hence the increasing frequency of classes and workshops on topics such as “grant proposal writing”. This is not to say that every proposal should receive a grant or that there should not be any “quality checks” for those projects being financially supported. Neither would I suggest that there is a conscious and organized conspiracy to keep specific students from succeeding at graduate school. The problem arises when those “quality checks” are influenced by the neoliberal hegemonic ideology, and turn the grant into an economic investment in which the efficiency of the results is the only determinant aspect. While Terry Eagleton states that “the word ‘ideology’ has a whole range of useful meanings” (1991, 1), John B. Thompson says that to study ideology “is to study the ways in which meaning (or signification) serves to sustain relations of domination” (1984, 198). Following this last definition, when I discuss “neoliberal hegemonic ideology” I refer to the way in which citizens in current capitalist societies, without necessarily being aware of it, subject themselves (and are simultaneously subjected) to a system of practices and meanings that tend to favour already socially advantaged people. This way, when a grant is given only on the basis of “meritocracy”—as it is normally the case at most universities influenced by neoliberal ideology— those people in charge of choosing the recipient of the grant rely excessively on a utilitarian analysis of the proposal and turn the grant and its recipient into merely investments. Efficiency becomes the most important aspect of the proposal—which candidate would provide the institution with better and

48 • David Vila Diéguez faster outcomes and, at the same time, require fewer university resources? In such circumstances, students become merely the means to the results of the research, and their specific realities are completely ignored. Using the US as an example, while a middle-class white American male who is economically supported by his parents might have written the most convincing proposal, the committee evaluating the proposal might be ignoring that he is competing with a foreign female student of colour who is supporting her whole family with her graduate stipend while taking care of two children. Submerged in neoliberal ideology, universities would only pay attention to the “quality” and potential results of the project proposal, perpetuating the inequality with the already socially advantaged people: the foreign student will keep struggling to finish her PhD while the American student who had no financial problems will just have some extra money. Punk graduate students should normally acknowledge these contradictions since, due to their constant challenging of the norm, they would often be part of the group of students that is most vulnerable to such structural discrimination. According to Pierre Bourdieu, taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects, classified by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make, between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar, in which their position in the objective classifications is expressed or betrayed. (1984, 6) Choosing a topic that exceeds the limits of what is normally considered to be worth studying, adopting a perspective that clashes with the viewpoints of their committee members, or simply not dressing in any special way to attend a meeting, punk graduate students would question the prevailing taste of many departments, and would distinguish themselves as scholars in ways that could often hinder them from receiving the necessary support to push their projects forward or achieve validation. Universities need to “produce” students who are competitive in academia, and it is the neoliberal academic (job) market that will decide which topics or approaches will be more valuable. The “pressure to research something ‘marketable’, a topic that won’t ruffle too many feathers or be perceived as too ‘political’ ” (Haenfler 2012, 41) is ever-present. As a student trying to move forward in one’s PhD, this experience can be infuriating, but it is important to resist and be wise about it. A helpful understanding of resistance is provided by Antonio Gramsci, who asserts that power cannot be held for very long by a single group in society without the consent of the rest of the citizens (Jones 2006, 45). While other philosophers such as Louis Althusser believe that an individual can never escape the dominant ideology because he or she “is always-already a subject, even

Should I Stay or Should I Go? • 49 before he [or she] is born” (2001, 1505), Gramsci thought that power is something dynamic and that the dominant ideology is mutable and can therefore be subverted. In order to do so, Gramsci asserted that progressive forces have to pay attention to popular culture and the already existing concepts in it, to try and contest hegemonic power.2 In order to explain this, he gives the example of Italian folklore during the first half of the twentieth century; while it was very conservative, it was also the most influential culture in Italy. Gramsci thought that it was a huge mistake not to use Italian folklore as a tool for subverting the meanings construed by the hegemonic forces of the time (Jones 2006, 37). In this way, he observed that folklore and popular culture should also be used to separate old concepts from those “which are in the process of developing and which are in contradiction to or simply different from the morality of the governing strata” (Gramsci 1985, 190). I believe that this is an attitude from which punk graduate students could learn a good lesson for their everyday life at university. When it comes to taking advantage of resources that help students develop their PhD research, punk graduate students should find a balance between staying dogmatically true to their principles and temporarily playing by the rules of neo-liberal academia. Otherwise, they would only be hindering their own development as well as leaving greater space for other students to continue to perpetuate traditional practices within the university. Punk graduate students need to question the prevailing modes of thought within graduate school and academia, but they would also need to negotiate with the established concepts and practices in order to move forward, act upon them, and then change them. In other words, drawing a parallel with Mallott’s (2012) suggestion, it is crucial for punk graduate students to learn “to identify where power resides, understanding how it operates, and then devis[e] methods of challenging it” (2012, 65). Therefore, one should be perfectly fine with shaping grant proposals, papers or event comments to appeal to those in charge of choosing the grant recipients or grading her/his classwork if needed. These are things that will not have any real repercussion on students’ future contribution as academics, but that can tremendously limit their development at graduate school when it comes to, for instance, financial support or recommendation letters, among other things. Meanwhile, punk graduate students should also keep looking for other DIY spaces in which they can be more radical in their questioning and keep trying to subvert the current hegemonic ideology through those other means too. Just like punks created their own fanzines, had their own radio stations and created their own record labels to publish their music, punk graduate students should create alternative blogs and websites, publish magazines and organize workshops, round tables, discussion groups, conferences and more, to keep contesting hegemony without having necessarily to miss out on the opportunities that graduate school offers—just like the students who took part in KISMIF did.

50 • David Vila Diéguez Leave the Library and Engage With the Outside World at Least Once a Week Another problem with the rampant neoliberalization of teaching institutions is the resultant commodification of knowledge and students. As Jean-François Lyotard points out: The relationship of the suppliers and users of knowledge to the knowledge they supply and use is now tending, and will increasingly tend, to assume the form already taken by the relationship of commodity producers and consumers to the commodities they produce and consume—that is, the form of value. Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorized in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange. Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself, it loses its “use value”. (1984, 5) At university, knowledge becomes a commodity one can buy and sell in even more commodified forms such as diplomas, certifications or publications. As these things become the signs of knowledge, the student who owns them also becomes a commodity as a knowledge-containing object that is little more than an instructional book or video. In other words, the student turns into a thing that a teaching institution can buy on the back of the amount of knowledge she/ he is supposed to have, given the diplomas or certifications she/he holds. Through this process, the commodity form “stamps its imprint upon the whole consciousness of man [and woman]; his [or her] qualities and abilities are no longer an organic part of his [or her] personality, they are things which he [or she] can ‘own’ or ‘dispose of ’ like the various objects of the external world” (Lukács 1971, 100). At university, the commodifying process permeates the whole institution, imposing its fragmented logic upon everything including students’ consciousness. It is not only the job market that sees students as things, but even the students struggle to feel like an organic part of their job. This way, students—but also professors, lecturers, secretaries, etc.—become fragmented as human beings, and their abilities become completely disconnected from an organic and complete experience of life. Put differently, the student in graduate school becomes a specialist in specific topics through the purchase of commodified knowledge on those specific topics with the sole purpose of being competitive in the job market. By doing so, she or he becomes a profoundly fragmented “ ‘free’ worker who is freely able to take his [or her] labour-power to market and offer it for sale as a commodity ‘belonging to him [or her], a thing that he [or she] ‘possesses’ ” (Lukács 1971, 91)—hence, not something he or she is. This way of experiencing the learning process at university can result in an obsessive search for commodity-abilities and commodity-knowledge in order to become more competitive in the job market. There is always that other discipline

Should I Stay or Should I Go? • 51 you can learn, that other perspective you can also apply, all those other works you can also read, all those theories and authors you can cite, and so on. In such cases, the acquisition of commodified knowledge for the purposes of participating in a knowledge economy and positioning oneself as an attractive proposition within the academic marketplace can generate much stress, anxiety and even depression. In order to confront these added difficulties, punk graduate students need to stay focused on their own goals and work hard to achieve those, not the ones imposed by any kind of institutional or macroeconomic pressure. Otherwise, one can enter a circle in which, as Marx noted when talking about workers’ alienation from the “rest of workers” and “from their species-essence” (2009, n.p.), separates herself or himself from the rest of the people and the important things in life as human beings—alimentation, sleeping or exercising, to name a few things about which graduate students might tend to forget. It is also important to notice that in spite of rhetoric advocating critical thinking, students attending graduate school will in many cases not be trained in autonomous critical thinking as much as in rehearsing and adopting already existing discourses within academia. As Terry Eagleton points out when talking about literary studies, “becoming certificated by the state as proficient in literary studies is a matter of being able to talk and write in certain ways. It is this which is being taught, examined and certificated, not what you personally think or believe” (1996, 175). One can extend this to the rest of the academic fields too, especially in the humanities. Students will learn whom they need to quote as well as how to reproduce many of the already institutionalized concepts in their fields. As a result, they will be partially deskilled as critical thinkers to learn how to shape their thoughts in an academically recognizable trend, which can result in students’ loss of agency by having to change their thoughts to succeed. In order to avoid the alienation caused by the commodification of knowledge and students as well as the loss of agency, it is extremely important for punk graduate students to explore other spaces of education outside the university. Giroux (2011, 13) asserts that critical pedagogy within schools [but also] critical public pedagogy produced in broader cultural apparatuses are modes of intervention dedicated to creating those democratic public spheres where individuals can think critically, relate sympathetically to the problems of others, and intervene in the world in order to address major social problems. Through the concept of “critical public pedagogy”, Giroux opens the learning experience to the public sphere, breaking the limits of the university. Following this perspective, I agree with Dines (2015, 28) when he says that the relationship between punk and pedagogy remains complex and intricate, not least because a discussion of punk’s involvement in the

52 • David Vila Diéguez classroom—both as a practice and as a subject matter—excludes an analysis of a punk pedagogy that lies beyond the school and university. Punk has always been a culture that has been involved with innumerable social movements: antimilitarism, squatting, feminism, queer movements and anti-racist movements, among many others. In the same way that punk has, for many people, been the “the educator—the facilitator—that provided a framework of enquiry, questioning and interrogation” (Dines, 2015, 21), one can also seek out other scenes or social movements that provide similar learning environments. Leave the library and go engage with people who are not part of academia wherever you live. As Paulo Freire (2005, 72) points out, “we all know something; we are all ignorant of something”, and that includes people outside the university too.3 Wherever you attend university, there are likely high schools, libraries, theatres and other spaces you can use to explore different cultural activities through which to engage with the community. There are hundreds of social projects with which one can get involved: enrichment programs in high-risk and low-income communities; projects dealing with matters of race, gender, homelessness, immigration and asylum; fair food, housing and eviction-related projects and so forth. As part of my everyday life at graduate school, I have been part of different music groups with which I have participated in political conventions celebrating Hispanic and other less represented cultures in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition, alongside a diverse group of students, I have organized literary recitals and an online magazine open for anyone who wants to participate (www.furman217.com). These are just a couple of examples [of] things that punk graduate students can do in their community to expand the learning experience beyond the library walls. Organize, Stay Together, and Support Each Other as Students Apart from learning where power resides in order to taking full advantage of graduate school and going beyond the university walls to avoid alienation and loss of agency, there is something else the punk graduate student should beware of: becoming the neoliberal student who imposes external pressure on herself or himself because she/he believes it is her/his own desire and, as a result, ends up detaching herself/himself from the rest of the students. This neoliberal student is that student who has assimilated the neoliberal ways of current education and inflicts upon herself/himself all the alienating demands of university, believing they are her/his own. This student is often able to suppress the feeling of alienation mentioned in the previous section, because in this case, “following one’s desire and obeying the Other who speaks softly within the self are one and the same thing” (Dardot and Laval 2013, 332). In my experience at graduate

Should I Stay or Should I Go? • 53 school in the US I have come to identify the first symptoms of turning into this neoliberal student when one starts to feel guilty any time she/he is not studying, or when enjoying leisure time begins to feel like procrastinating or being a lazy graduate student.4 Many graduate departments contribute to nurturing this neoliberalized student, encouraging students to compete with one another through various grants, awards and distinctions that only consider students’ work as individuals—best paper, best presentation, best teaching assistant (TA) and so on. By doing so, they isolate students from each other and manufacture a “high performance ego, [that] always demands more of the self ” (Dardot and Laval 2013, 274). These individualistic rewarding methods can be very damaging for the student body because they perpetuate the classification of students in groups of winners and losers, often turning students against one other. Under such circumstances, graduate students might adopt a very strict and unnecessary discipline, hoping to achieve some sort of validation, and could end up overestimating the importance of cultivating the individual over the collective, fuelling the drive for competition and hindering cooperation with their cohorts. In addition to this, students might also feel extremely disappointed when, despite their hard work, they are not rewarded, which can also damage their self-esteem tremendously and contribute to general discomfort among students. Instead of exclusively rewarding the successes of students as individuals, it would be interesting and valuable to explore different ways of celebrating or acknowledging every student’s work and making all students part of everyone’s success. In order to do this, punk graduate students could foster a culture of joint research projects, presentations and publications, instead of focusing on their own projects individually. The same can be said about fostering collaborative grant proposals and sharing funds between students—something normal in most scientific disciplines but less so in the humanities. In addition to the foregoing, it would be crucial for punk graduate students to organize and stay together; it is extremely important to develop a student community that goes beyond the self-entrepreneurial competition. One of the most important ideas would be that of creating a non-hierarchical group of students whose voice is heard within the department decisions and which functions as a support group for all students. This could take the shape of a union or just a student organization. In my years as a graduate student, we have started a more or less organized committee, have a representative who goes to meetings with professors, and have held creative writing workshops, open mics and literary recitals. Along with this, we founded the magazine, mentioned earlier, in which many of us are involved (www.furman217.com). Punk graduate students can create student associations; try to procure resources from their departments or universities to bring their own speakers; organize workshops or

54 • David Vila Diéguez film clubs; create online platforms, Facebook groups, shared clouds and folders; create a common archive with materials for exams or other information they think incoming students might benefit from; share syllabi and materials for those who work as TAs; distribute surveys to inform the department if there are any issues regarding students; or even just get together to have dinner, chat and listen to each other. Students, as a community, have the power to keep the individual from becoming this self-absorbed, alienated, neoliberalized student. Only by making these practices part of students’ daily lives can alternative approaches to graduate school be explored and, thus, a culture of collectivism and resistance to the current individualistic practices of neoliberal university be created. Fuck This Shit! (Conclusion) Attending graduate school can, as discussed in this chapter, be a very stressful and dehumanizing experience but this is precisely why graduate students need to turn into punk graduate students by organizing, showing resistance and challenging those aspects with which they do not agree and which do not agree with them. Symptoms of emotional and psychological conditions seem to keep increasing among graduate students, and it is common to feel that one does not want to be part of an apparently neoliberal and often profoundly hypocritical academia. However, it is extremely important for punk graduate students to stay and fight to change the very nature of university itself. Creating an alternative, underground movement towards social change outside academia is extremely important, but punk graduate students need also to claim a space within the university so that they can occupy the centrality of the education system once they become professors. This is one way to fuel a future academic culture in which solidarity, mutual support and the interaction with non-academic people becomes an important part of scholars’ work. Punk graduate students need to organize their own academic journals and associations, and create networks among students in their institutions and at other universities. There needs to be an active graduate movement that can nourish the creation of future punkademics and critical pedagogues. This is the only way in which graduate students can resist the neoliberalization of university and encourage a revitalizing democratization of teaching institutions that could help create a more democratic and egalitarian world. Punk graduate students need to take advantage of their critical attitude, and through different strategies work to create a more meaningful experience of graduate school. This chapter presented some strategies that I believe are key to a satisfying and meaningful graduate experience, and connects them with punk culture elements. However, it is up to each punk graduate student to develop the ones that best apply in their own circumstances. There is a lot of work to do, and it is time for action. Punk graduate students of the world, unite!

Should I Stay or Should I Go? • 55 Notes 1. In this sense, and following Paula Guerra’s example, it might be useful to think of “punk” as a “hyperword”: a polysemic word with meanings that are constantly changing depending on various factors (2010, 131). 2. My interpretation of “popular culture” here coincides with that of John Storey when he says that “popular culture in [Gramci’s] usage is not the imposed culture of the mass culture theorists, nor is it an emerging from below, spontaneously oppositional culture of ‘the people’—it is a terrain of exchange and negotiation between the two: [. . .] marked by resistance and incorporation” (2015, 10). 3. The idea of learning from people that are not necessarily certified scholars or experts in a specific field is also brilliantly exposed in Cultures of Anyone (2015) by Luis Moreno-Caballud. In his work, the Spanish scholar/activist uses social movements in Spain as an example of a collective thinking/learning process that can teach individuals involved in them more than any of the ideas developed in most academic papers. 4. Riyad A. Shahjahan offers a provocative interpretation of “being lazy in the academy” by defining it as “being at peace with ‘not doing’ or ‘not being productive,’ living in the present, and deprivileging the need for a result with the passage of time” (2015, 489).

References Adorno, Theodor W. 2004. Negative Dialectics. London: Routledge. Althusser, Louis. 2001. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” In Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, edited by Vincent B. Leitch, 1476–1508. New York: W. W. Norton. Beer, David. 2014. Punk Sociology. London: Palgrave Pivot. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard Press. Dardot, Pierre, and Christian Laval. 2013. The New Way of the World: On Neo-liberal Society. London: Verso. Dines, Mike. 2015. “Learning Through Resistance: Contextualisation, Creation and Incorporation of a ‘Punk Pedagogy’.” Journal of Pedagogical Development 5, 3: 20–31. Eagleton, Terry. 1996. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Cornwall: Blackwell. Freire, Paulo. 2005. Teachers as Cultural Workers. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Giroux, Henry A. 2011. On Critical Pedagogy. New York: Continuum. The Graduate Assembly. 2014. Graduate Student Happiness & Wellbeing Report. Berkeley: University of California. Gramsci, A. 1985. Selections From Cultural Writings. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Guerra, Paula. 2010. A instável leveza do rock: Génese, dinâmica e consolidação do rock alternativo em Portugal. PhD dissertation, Universidade do Porto. Haenfler, Ross. 2012. “Punk Ethics and the Mega-University.” In Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower, edited by Zack Furness, 37–48. Brooklyn, NY: Minor Compositions. Hyun, Jenni Q., Brian C. Quinn, Temina Madon, and Steve Lustig. 2006. “Graduate Student Mental Health: Needs Assessment and Utilization of Counseling Services.” Journal of College Student Development 47, 3: 247–266. Illich, Ivan. 1970. Deschooling Society. London: Marion Boyars. Jones, Steve. 2006. Antonio Gramsci. London: Routledge. Kanpol, Barry. 1999. Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Khan-Egan, Sathan. 1998. “Pedagogy of the Pissed: Punk Pedagogy in the First-Year Writing Classroom.” College Composition and Communication 49, 1: 99–104. Lukács, Georg. 1971. History and Class Consciousness. London: Merlin Press. Lyotard, Jean François. 1984. The Postmodern Condition. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Mallot, Curry. 2012. “Finding Balance in the Academy.” In Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower, edited by Zack Furness, 65–67. Brooklyn, NY: Minor Compositions. Marcus, Greil. 1989. Lipstick Traces. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Marx, Karl. “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.” Marxists.org. Accessed August 22, 2016. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Economic-PhilosophicManuscripts-1844.pdf.

56 • David Vila Diéguez Miner, Dylan, and Estrella Torrez. 2012. “Turning Point: Claiming the University as a Punk Space.” In Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower, edited by Zack Furness, 27–35. Brooklyn, NY: Minor Compositions. Moore, Caroline. 2016. Punk Rock Entrepreneur: Running a Business Without Losing Your Values. Portland, OR: Microcosm. Moreno-Caballud, Luis. 2015. Cultures of Anyone. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. O’Hara, Craig. 1999. The Philosophy of Punk: More Than Noise. San Francisco: AK Press. Shahjahan, Riyad A. 2015. “Being ‘Lazy’ and Slowing Down: Toward Decolonizing Time, Our Body, and Pedagogy.” Educational Philosophy and Theory 47, 5: 488–501. Storey, John. 2015. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. New York: Routledge. Thompson, John B. 1984. Studies in the Theory of Ideology. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Torrez, Estrella. 2012. “Punk Pedagogy: Education for Liberation and Love.” In Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower, edited by Zack Furness, 131–142. Brooklyn, NY: Minor Compositions. Warner, Brad. 2005. Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock Monster Movies & the Truth About Reality. Somerville, MA: Wisdom. Wohlsen, Marcus. 2011. Biopunk. New York: Penguin Group.

5

Punk Entrepreneurship: Overcoming Obstacles to Employability in the UK’s Higher Education Pseudo-market WARRICK HARNIESS

Neutral Territory Start a band, throw a brick, you lazy fuckers make me sick. —Lifetime, “The Gym is Neutral Territory”

When I was 15 I did a bad thing. In Hong Kong on Sundays, then as now, domestic maids, predominantly women and predominantly Filipino, gather in downtown parks and skyscraper plazas on the north side of the island, and on public beaches near luxury apartment complexes on the south side, to socialize on their weekly day off. The amahs, as they are known, cook, read, watch TV, play games, do their hair and manicure their nails. The kinds of things that everyone does, everywhere, but unlike other socio-economic groups they do not have their own private or commercial spaces in which to do them. Though the mood and atmosphere is generally sociable and peaceful, the people gathered are most certainly marginalized, whether by employers who forbid them to stay at “home” on their day off, or by the government “hawker control teams” who patrol in order to prevent, or at least limit, the amahs from “hawking home cooking or other goods from home” (Law 2002, 1637). In some groups there will often be someone with an acoustic guitar, who plays while the others sing in chorus. Typically they will sing Christian songs of faith; certainly not protest songs, and certainly not punk songs. On a hot and busy Saturday afternoon sometime in 1995, I stole a pirated copy of the Titanic soundtrack from a Chinese street hawker, casually brushing it from his flatbed cart and hiding it by my side as I shuffled past on the crowded pavement. It wasn’t a CD I wanted, and I have no idea why I did it, only that I could and so I did. Perhaps it was a way of testing the limits of my own deviousness, seeing if I could get away with it. Back at home I hid it in a drawer in my bedroom. I needed a way to profitably pass it on, but who could I possibly know that would enjoy Celine Dion’s sentimental, middlebrow schmaltz? 57

58 • Warrick Harniess (Wilson 2014). I went into the kitchen. “Aida, do you want to buy the Titanic soundtrack from me?” While my parents were out, I sold it to my family’s amah for HK$100 of her limited disposable income, so she could listen to it on her day off with friends. It was an entrepreneurial act of rent-seeking that befitted my privileged place in Hong Kong’s classist culture of vulture capitalism. However unsure of myself I may have felt as an awkward teenager, I was unconsciously asserting my status as a young man who knew his place in society. Getting into punk as a teenager in the mid-1990s was easy for me. Punk was cooler than it had ever been before, conferring “status—symbolic power . . . both cultural and social capital, and  .  .  . a clear potential route to economic capital” for its leading lights (Wilson 2014, 93). The politics of art and taste have much to teach us about prejudice, and in the same way that double standards exist to favour in-groups and ostracize out-groups, so too are they prevalent in our attitudes towards pop-culture fads and fashions. Sentimental schmaltz a la Celine Dion is very often the throwaway music of the globally disenfranchised, while punk—“anger’s schmaltz” (Wilson 2014, 125)—is subversive, “nearly always a term of approval” (Wilson 2014, 126), the perfect subcultural testing ground on which the young and relatively fortunate can learn the boundaries of their intellect, social aptitude, and relational desires for control, affection and self-determination (Schutz 1958). Perhaps it’s that I’ve been watching too much of The Wire, but I see it that this is how punk came to save me from becoming just another careless young capitalist in the same way that, say, a boxing gym in a Baltimore project might save a young black man from an early, violent death at the hands of a street corner drug gang. For me, punk was safe, neutral territory; a sanctuary from which to hone what I’ve learned are crucial professional skills. My experience is not unique. Punk is a gateway drug for many young people to an enlightened state of mind—a belief system that favours practice over theory and passion over qualification, and that encourages the critical questioning of everything as a method for productively engaging with a turbulent world. *** Punk is the personal expression of uniqueness that comes from the experiences of growing up in touch with our human ability to reason and ask questions. —Greg Graffin, PhD, author, singer, lecturer Steve Albini claims that “every significant life experience I have had I owe . . . to the Ramones” (Dunn 2016, 32), and I have similarly concocted a neat memorial to narrate my conversion to punk, a eureka moment from which I never looked back. The birthplace of punk for me is the west side of Hong Kong Island, somewhere between industrial Wong Chuk Hang and residential Aberdeen. In the early summer months we played football during PE lessons, under a sweetly humid cloud belched from the British American Tobacco factory that loomed over the threadbare pitch. After one such session, at the back of the bus

Punk Entrepreneurship • 59 returning us to our school up the road, my friend Jamie played me Green Day’s 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours on his Walkman. I wasn’t that impressed, but I was intrigued—it sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before. Soon after, I heard Pennywise, Propagandhi and NOFX—roughly in that order—and pretty much instantly rejected heavy metal and indie rock in favour of fast, melodic, American punk. Not long after I had sold the Titanic CD to Aida, I got rid of many records that I later did regret selling (including Iron Maiden, My Bloody Valentine and scores of death metal albums), but such is the price of seeing the light. The epicentre of our new punk world was the Warehouse youth club, a former police station built in the mid-nineteenth century at the beginning of the British colonial era, located at the top of an impossibly steep hill above Aberdeen. The windowless holding jail block was converted into a band rehearsal room. It smelled, not unpleasantly, of mild damp and ancient floor polish and it is one of the most evocative scents of my adolescence (I went back for the first time in 15 years in 2014, and it still smells the same). The Warehouse had a sleepy timelessness; it was truly a refuge from the social and academic pressures of the hustle and bustle below. Playing in bands and writing songs took on a new urgency and meaning for me personally. I’d already been writing for two years, but I now had a template within which to practice, one that my bandmates understood and revered; importantly, and unlike heavy metal, it was a template that I was just about proficient enough to apply. As a 16to 19-year-old I gave myself, unequivocally and absolutely, an education that blended the academic, applied and technical in a way that school never could. I am not suggesting that school was a waste of time, but if I took A Levels in English literature, history and economics/business studies (which I did), then I may as well have taken an AS Level in punk rock (far more useful than AS General Studies, a mandatory requirement). Punk rock was my moral and spiritual awakening. Through practice, I learned how to critically ask questions about the world around me, that appeared ever more corrupt and hypocritical the more I read and saw. Playing and writing music with others I learned how to collaborate creatively and express my thoughts in a structured way, with the aim of evoking an emotional response from a target audience. We organized and promoted our own gigs, recorded and distributed our music, and engaged in friendly but serious competition with the other bands with whom we performed. We didn’t so much work as a team to realize a goal set by others (for example, a manager) as much as we bonded as a group who set forth a collective vision together. In 1998, Fugazi came to Hong Kong and played two shows, at our school auditorium and in Kowloon Park. I interviewed Ian MacKaye for my fanzine, and went to dinner with the band. It was a kind of field study, an opportunity to learn, however fleetingly, from the best. In a recent response to an interviewer’s argument that “DIY punk matters, it empowers individuals . . . and communities, and at the global level it challenges corporate-led globalisation”, MacKaye said, “those tenets on why punk matters are so obvious to me that they don’t even need to be spoken. It’s like something

60 • Warrick Harniess we breathe” (Dunn 2016, 1). But it wasn’t obvious or guaranteed when I was younger (as I suspect it isn’t for those who are discovering punk for the first time today), and that is part of its (trans)formative power. The process of conversion works precisely because the knowledge and values that seem so obvious and natural post-conversion are so alien and unknown prior to it. Fundamentally, this punk conversion experience has the same life-changing impact as a truly excellent learning experience that appeals to all the senses. Playing punk rock as a teenager was my first meaningful attempt at bootstrapping entrepreneurship, in which I learned by doing, making iterative improvements from one crudely crafted song to the next, and building an audience gig by gig. I frequently call upon the knowledge I gained from my A Level studies to inform my work today, but in a somewhat detached way that seems fitting for an educational experience that was purely cognitive. In contrast, my punk rock education was truly holistic—an active learning experience of body, mind and spirit—and I feel and remember it, emotionally, to my core even today. These days I hear and sing punk rock songs in the same way, I imagine, as the amahs in downtown Hong Kong on Sundays sing religious songs of praise—they comfort me, reassure me, affirm my identity as an individual and a group member with specific values and world view. The songs are merely token expressions of a deeper faith and mindset. This mindset has helped me to interpret my career-related observations and experiences, and has influenced the development of my professional interests. As an entrepreneur I am concerned about the corporatization of capitalism, meaning what Stiglitz calls “government munificence” towards large organizations that leads to the creation of “laws that make the marketplace less competitive” (Stiglitz 2013, 48). As an independent consultant and freelance lecturer working in higher education I am also actively engaged in the debate around the consumerization of higher education, which broadly refers to the extent to which HE institutions have become more consumer-oriented as a competitive strategy, and thus more accountable to the market segments that most utilize their services. The corporatization of capitalism is a salient feature of the state-controlled free market, and it exacerbates one of the greatest challenges the developed world faces—the growing inequality of wealth distribution. I firmly believe that higher education is a key tool for reversing this worrying trend, but that the industry’s ability to make a more meaningful contribution in this regard is hampered by its current state as a “pseudo-market” (Williams 2013, 13). I believe it is time for a “big bang” of deregulation in higher education.

It’s Not a Living, It’s a Life Laissez-faire mi amour, c’est la vie Shall I return to shore or swim back out to sea? —Tom Waits, “Everything Goes To Hell”

Punk Entrepreneurship • 61 In 2004 I made the decision to make London my home. My parents are teachers, and in 1984 took a calculated risk and left Thatcher’s Britain to make a better living abroad, first in Germany with the British Army, and later working for a private education provider in Hong Kong. Returning to the UK, I had very little idea about what I would do beyond forming a band. I spread my bets, borrowed £8,000 from NatWest to fund a Master’s in American Studies at King’s College London, and got a part-time job with Edexcel, the awarding body that had very recently been acquired by Pearson, the FTSE 100 company that was in the process of reorienting all its operations towards learning and education. The contrast in my experiences could not have been greater. In class seminars we derided the “pyramid racket” of late capitalism (Pynchon 2013, 163), and during the rest of the week I made entry-level contributions to the introduction of online marking of GCSE and A Level qualifications that Edexcel was pioneering in the UK following an injection of corporate capital from its new parent company. Both of these experiences showed me how little agency the supposed beneficiaries—the students—had at two different stages of an education system that held such sway over the immediate future direction of their lives. While studying for my Master’s I dimly perceived the powerful effects of what I now recognize as a collective confirmation bias, what Kahneman calls “what you see is all there is” (Kahneman 2011, 86)—the instinct to seek out evidence that confirms a particular opinion while neglecting, whether wilfully or unconsciously, information that contradicts or negates the validity of that opinion. Regardless of the coherence of the scholarly arguments to which we were exposed against modern capitalism, the effect was to preach the importance of critical thinking within the confines of a distinct tautology. Meanwhile, at work I found myself in the middle of a battle between two opposing ideologies. The move to online marking would have commercial efficiency benefits for Edexcel and Pearson, a fact that the assessment community used to inform their main argument against this substantial change—that profit was sought at the expense of high-quality marking. Though profit was unarguably a motive, they were demonstrably wrong about the impact on the quality of the marking. The process of dividing students’ scripts into question “items” and anonymously allocating them to markers ensured that an individual expert never marked a script in its entirety. This introduced a level of objectivity that was never possible when a single marker marked a script from cover to cover: natural biases inevitably led to a more lenient or harsher application of the marking standard depending on how favourably a marker viewed a student’s exam question responses, or simply their name, handwriting or turn of phrase. I toed the party line for the change to online marking convincingly because I believed in it, but it struck me as odd how unaccountable both the awarding body and the marking community were to students and parents. Between my studies and my job, it began to occur to me that large organizations operating with impunity in relatively uncompetitive

62 • Warrick Harniess circumstances, regardless of whether they were in the public or private sector, had very little cause to respond to the wants or needs of the individual “end users” of their products and services. This point was hammered home when the global financial system came “perilously close” to failing in 2008 (Luyendijk 2015, 33). The financial crisis did little in the immediate aftermath to affect my material wellbeing, but it had an enormous effect on my psyche. Walking through the City of London in the late summer sunshine on September 15, 2008, I picked up the Evening Standard from a vendor in Broadgate Circle and pored with grim fascination over the pictures of Lehman Brothers employees leaving the bankrupt bank’s Canary Wharf offices, carrying their possessions in cardboard boxes. It took me years to understand, at least vaguely, how “global trade would have ceased to function” had the financial system crashed absolutely. At the time, I simply realized how little I knew about how the world works. The media was abuzz with talk of the consequences of “moral hazard”, or “what happens when risk takers are shielded from the consequences of failure” (Sorkin 2009, 33). But moral hazard does not only describe a willingness to take excessive risks with other people’s money; it can also describe a systemic cultural arrogance towards customers and consumers from organizations that benefit from government munificence in the shape of guaranteed subsidies, and regulatory policies that encourage “status competition” (Marginson 2011, 422) between institutions and support the pursuit of “timeless power and prestige . . . as an end in itself ” (Marginson 2011, 422). As I reflected on what I wanted from life and a career, it gradually came into view for me that charges of “moral hazard” could be levelled at the industry in which I had chosen to make my career—education. How was my punk rock belief system going to deal with that? *** We stand paralysed, the corporate godhead demands a sacrifice. —J Church, “Picture This” The UK’s higher education system is a £17.5 billion export industry with global reach and impact (HM Government 2013). This valuation reflects the measure of its transformational power not only for British people but also for those from other countries who eschew what is likely to be a cheaper education in their home countries in order to receive a British education. The very fact that home and international students alike are prepared to make such a significant investment reflects a hard truth: that the education they seek is part of a wider “customer journey” (Brown 2009) towards improved employment prospects. This is not to say that education is not “important in and of itself ” (Williams 2013, 18), but in a globalized and ever more populous world facing significant resource constraints, this purpose diminishes in importance in relation to a primary goal of preparing young people and upskilling others for employment. In other words, helping

Punk Entrepreneurship • 63 them to become more productive contributors to society, with the self-awareness, communication, and creative and critical problem-solving skills to innovate and create wealth and new jobs, or manage complex tasks requiring the input of many people, or reflect knowledgeably and thoughtfully on past and present human achievement, the better to inspire and lead positive change. The goal of better preparing people for employment does not imply a “paucity of intellectual purpose” in higher education today (Williams 2013, 5); rather, the pursuit of “enlightenment, knowledge and understanding” are deployed in service of a more pragmatic purpose—generating economic activity to create wealth—than days of yore when people were less connected to one another by communications platforms, and competition between people was less intense by virtue of a much smaller global population and geographical distance that had not yet been circumvented by the arrival of the internet. In terms of a vision of purpose, education has “gone punk”; young people have it instilled in them at school that they should be pragmatically proactive in terms of how they approach their education as a stepping stone to employment, and there is considerable consensus about this: “student protesters, academics, politicians and commentators all appear to agree that HE is essential for employability and is therefore a prerequisite for social mobility and social justice” (Williams 2013, 4). It is in the way that the system works, however, that HE falls short of its purpose. The importance of education in the service of improved employment prospects is underscored by present-day stagnation in the UK economy and what this bodes in terms of quality, security and stability of life for the so-called Millennial Generation. According to a recent report by the Resolution Foundation, millennials are “at risk of becoming the first ever generation to record lower lifetime earnings than their predecessors”, spending “an average of £44,000 more on rent in their 20s than baby boomers did”, and put at a further disadvantage by wealth redistribution policies that “entail a £1.7 billion reduction in the incomes of millennials (who will be aged 20–39 in 2020–21) contrasted with a net £1.2 billion increase in the incomes of baby boomers (aged 55–74 in 2020–21)” (Gardiner 2016). These statistics, while not a foregone conclusion, point to just how at risk the youngest generation in the labour market today is of being so utterly shortchanged by the continued political and economic decisions of older generations. In political, economic and academic corridors of power the debate continues to rage about whether a slightly more or less privatized HE sector would best deliver on its collective mission to contribute to the betterment of society and the growth of local economies. The debate is never adequately resolved because the crux of the problem is that while knowledge, that “unique claim of higher education” (Marginson 2011, 414), is arguably “almost a pure public good” (Marginson 2011, 416), the dissemination process is not: Entry into education institutions . . . can be restricted to some, and others can be excluded; and since the places of admission are generally given,

64 • Warrick Harniess admission to or consumption by some necessarily means reduction in the consumption levels of others. (Tilak 2008, 452) The logical outcome of such a dichotomous system is a quasi-market that produces “semi- or quasi-public goods” (Tilak 2008, 451). Nowhere is this paradigm more apparent than in the UK, where “universities are neither free to charge whatever the market will support nor to attract as many students as they feel able” (Williams 2013, 13). Accordingly, much of the competition among institutions is focused on factors that deliver little direct benefit to individuals or, indeed, to the public good: “institutional prestige, selection on to high-demand programmes and research excellence” (Marginson 2014). As Marginson notes, the “larger enemy of the public good and public sphere is not the economic market but the status hierarchy” (Marginson 2011, 429). This well captures the moral hazard endemic to the sector. If the HE pseudo-market is the problem, the solution must logically be to either reform it or abolish it. In fact, since the 1980s, the HE system has constantly been in the process of being cautiously reformed towards making it more commercial under the strict guidance of the state, beginning with the 1988 Education Act that decreed that “instead of universities and colleges receiving unconditional direct public subsidies as had been the case since the creation of the University Grants Committee in 1918, they were to be treated as suppliers of services under contract to the state and other purchasers of their services” (Williams 2016, 134). Today, this commercialization manifests most evidently in a creeping increase of tuition fees and pressure on universities to do more to respect students’ consumer rights in terms of customer care. Accordingly, the Quality Assurance Code emphasizes administrative precision in service of the awarding of a qualification over the quality of the educational product (meaning the coherence and relevance of curricula, the passion and energy of teaching and coaching delivery, and the clarity and appeal of materials and courseware). The Quality Code insists that “Higher Education is not a passive process” (Chapter B5, 7), but its dense, procedural language invites its supplicants to use it as a checklist for meeting homogenous standards. Its guidance emphasizes the overbearing responsibility of institutions in service of students, who can be forgiven for lapsing into passivity. A senior professor at a well-regarded London business school succinctly summarized a challenge many academics face when teaching, saying to me in conversation that “it seems the more a student pays for a course, the more passive their attitude is towards their studies. They expect to be able to sit back and have you [the academic] simply lecture at them”. The shortcomings of the system can be measured in the regularity of the laments, from a variety of public and private bodies with a stake in the HE system, that “young people are inadequately equipped with the soft skills and knowledge needed to make a smooth transition from education

Punk Entrepreneurship • 65 to the workplace” (BCC 2014) and “business-university customer relationships are often underdeveloped, with both sides frequently citing difficulty in brokering relationships with each other” (CBI 2013). Ultimately, this cautious reform serves only the system itself, while those who should benefit from higher education—including students, local economies and, indeed, the academy— stand paralyzed in its midst. The answer is to do something more radical that would encourage the same kind of “creative destruction” (Schumpeter 1942) that punk first waged in the 1970s on a music industry that had become too selfabsorbed and self-serving. Deregulation, allowing a competitive HE market to blossom, would enable HE institutions to build competitive advantage around the processes that enable them to deliver on their core purpose—the creation and effective distribution and utilization of knowledge. Introducing a truly free market in higher education in the UK is a revolutionary challenge. Proponents of the pseudo-market status quo currently in place (including backers of incremental reform towards both more or less privatization) are unlikely to ever endorse true consumerization, because to do so would be to bite the hand that really feeds—the government munificence that maintains the equilibrium of an uncompetitive sector in which all institutions are effectively guaranteed custom and therefore income. True consumerization would force institutions to create consistently excellent educational experiences that give students what they need at this particular stage of the customer journey or risk losing market share to competitors, or indeed going out of business altogether. It would enable HE institutions to price their programmes competitively, based on market valuations by end users, both individual (students) and collective (employers), encouraging customers to make informed decisions about the courses they take before they take out loans or commit their hard-earned money. True consumerization does not mean pandering to students to make it easier to achieve a qualification under a misguided sense of providing greater pastoral care that in reality only serves to undermine the reputation of a particular educational programme or institution; rather, it means to give students the knowledge and skills needed to gain employment and continue to develop as individuals, via memorable and engaging teaching and clear and illuminating materials and courseware. Higher education should not be a mandatory slog to employment, nor should it be a rite of passage to nowhere in particular. It should be a fundamentally life-changing experience that is priced accordingly, consciously purchased, and that helps the individual to build a better life for oneself. Returning to my earlier rhetorical question about how my punk belief system should deal with a red-blooded endorsement of the marketization of higher education, I have thought long and hard about whether I have “sold out”. My conclusion is: not at all. Wilson states that “anti-conformist impulses are the octane of consumerism” and “thus there is . . . a conservative vibration in the heartbeat of rock ‘n’ roll rebellion” (Wilson 2013, 126). Punk is less a fight against capitalism than it is, like the process of creative destruction it embodies,

66 • Warrick Harniess an “essential fact” of it (Schumpeter 1942, 83), a struggle within perhaps but a phenomenon of market democracy nonetheless that helps push it forward. It is no surprise that punk scenes often emerge in locales just as they are making the shift away from totalitarianism, from Russia and Eastern Europe, to China and Indonesia (for specific examples, see Dunn 2016, 61–95). Punk is, in a sense, the “underbelly narrative” of capitalism, and punks are often, to paraphrase H. L. Mencken, the greatest agitators for change to a political and economic system in a particular country because they are deeply committed to the principles so closely associated with market democracy—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. DIY punk practices also share commonalities with lean entrepreneurship methodologies, and many of the most recognizable punk elder statesmen, particularly in the United States, share to some degree the same libertarian values of self-reliance and risk-taking as the most successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, from Larry Livermore of Lookout! Records (“I knew it was idiotic to gamble what little I had on such an uncertain venture [a record label], but what was the point of money, I kept asking myself, if I didn’t put it to use doing something I loved?” [Livermore 2015, 18]) to Mike Burkett of NOFX (“Punk in Drublic eventually went gold, selling . . . more than a million worldwide without any help from radio, mainstream press, or MTV. From there we were able to build a career where we never had to answer to anybody” [NOFX and Alulis 2016, 244]), to Ian MacKaye of Dischord Records (“People would say ‘that’s weird that you like this band, they’re on a major label,’ but it didn’t matter to us. What I gleaned from them was self-definition; that you could do whatever you want to do. And so we did” [Dunn 2016, 139]).1 This is unsurprising, because people who self-identify as punk are often, like the technology entrepreneurs who are so visibly championed today, paragons of creative and critical thinking and action. These are the very skills that should be at the heart of all higher education programmes. Punk Entrepreneurship Of course, I have an agenda here. Why else connect punk and entrepreneurship so brazenly in service of a policy position? Are my own experiences really so universal as to warrant this? Broadly, I think they are. In this concluding section, I summarize my answers to three questions: 1. Why punk? Why is punk meaningful in the context of entrepreneurship? 2. Why entrepreneurship? Why is entrepreneurship a good way to teach young people the skills and mindset needed for gainful employment? 3. Why the free market? Why might deregulation of the UK’s higher education pseudo-market create better conditions for the advancement of entrepreneurship as a staple of degree programmes?

Punk Entrepreneurship • 67 Why Punk? No such thing as spare time No such thing as free time No such thing as down time All you got is life time Go! —Henry Rollins, “Shine”

Punk, as a concept, has proven to be remarkably resilient and flexible. Unlike other subcultures—the beats, hippies, mods and rockers, dance and rave—punk has grown beyond its roots in music, fashion and specific locales to become something with universal appeal and subtext (see the breadth of perspectives represented in this volume, for example). When you call something “punk”, people get it. It doesn’t matter that in chat room forums people still debate what is or isn’t punk, nor that it has been thoroughly appropriated as a marketing tool; if anything, this is evidence of its elasticity and power. More importantly, for historical and deep-rooted reasons, punk is a philosophy that resonates strongly with young people that they need not outgrow. Why is it that punk has endured where other fads have fizzled and faded? Punk, like many subcultural narratives, follows a well-established story trope— ”overcoming the monster” (Booker 2004, 22). It is a trope that has “profound symbolic significance in the inner life of mankind” (Booker 2004, 22), in which a protagonist fights, against the odds, to defeat a more powerful adversary. The narrative mapping is straightforward—a disenfranchised group with a subcultural identity kicks and screams against the dominant mainstream culture to fight for access to resources. But it is its success in winning some of these battles and producing tangible results that has given punk long-lasting legitimacy. Punk’s winning strategy was to go beyond oppositional activism to co-opting the mainstream’s means of production, in much the same way that “terrorism derives its ideology in reaction to the raison d’etre of the dominant constitutional order, at the same time negating and rejecting that form’s unique ideology but mimicking the form’s structural characteristics” (Bobbitt 2008, 26). As a grassroots musical phenomenon in the 1970s and ’80s, punks established nodes of entrepreneurial activity at all stages of the supply chain, from performance venues to booking agents, from record labels to record pressing plants, from distribution companies to retail outlets and media. Individuals became successful—wealthy and influential—without seeming to have to betray their principles or identity, perhaps because the DIY approach was (or at least appeared to be) “more collaborative than competitive” among members of the community (Smith and Gillet 2014, 19). They embodied the anti-adage of “if you can’t join them, beat them”. It is a stance that has emotional resonance and is a proven modus operandi. It might also be argued that if entrepreneurship is the grassroots means of waging creative destruction against established

68 • Warrick Harniess business models, then to be an entrepreneur is to be punk, regardless of one’s choice of music, fashion or role models. Why Entrepreneurship? There wasn’t anybody that was going to do it for you. You had to make it happen. —Ian MacKaye, punk entrepreneur

When I reflect on my education to date there are some things that I wish I had been explicitly taught earlier and more frequently in life. Summarily, these are how to think radically about innovative ways to contribute to the world in a measurably useful way; how to experiment with doing this and to learn from practice; and how to see things more keenly from other peoples’ perspectives, particularly with a view to understanding whether my efforts to contribute to the world might make a difference. These are hard lessons to teach young people, with their limited world experience and difficulty in understanding their own feelings and behaviour, let alone those of other people. Upon reflection, I began to learn many of these lessons from writing and playing punk rock when I was a teenager, but I had little clue at the time and I would well have benefitted from more sustained and varied application. When I was 31, struggling still to understand the causes and consequences of the financial crisis, I did an MBA and so began a journey towards being conscious of the skills and mindset needed to contribute meaningfully to the world. I believe that I began this conscious journey far too late in life (and I certainly do not think that an MBA is necessary). The skills and mindset needed are a blend of “hard” and “soft” knowledge, all of which have been championed in, among other places, academic and policy papers, the education media, and employment-oriented conferences (see, for example, the Higher Education Academy’s revised “Pedagogy for Employability” report, 2012). These “hard” skills include the abilities to write a coherent and engaging presentation using a simple narrative structure that articulates premise, rationale and desired outcome for a practical project; design and conduct basic ethnographic research; build a crude prototype or blueprint of an idea using preferred tools (whether writing computer code, crafting an object or writing an outline); create a plan of work with tasks divided among individual group members; and create a simple financial budget. By consistently practicing and refining these technical skills, young people begin to develop the all-important “soft” skills of empathetic communication, assertive collaboration and bold creative and critical thinking. Together, these skills serve to help build confidence and resilience, and the selfawareness to recognize that one has a far greater chance of achieving success and measurably contributing to the world if they are able to demonstrably take ownership for their efforts.

Punk Entrepreneurship • 69 I believe that the practice of entrepreneurship is the most holistic way of teaching the fundamentals of critical employment skills in an engaging way that resonates with young people, because “a startup is the largest endeavour over which you can have definite mastery. You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world” (Thiel and Masters 2014, 81). I would go as far as to argue that Enterprise Creation should be a core Applied GCSE and AS Level (or vocational equivalent), and a required, disciplinary-agnostic module in all undergraduate degree programmes. Not all students will go on to be entrepreneurs, and nor should they, but they will pragmatically learn how to connect, at an early stage in their careers, the desire for professional autonomy with mastery of a subject or technical skill, and harness this understanding towards a specific purpose with personal meaning. Why the Free Market? Never take nothin’ don’t belong to me Everything’s paid for, nothing’s free. —Lucinda Williams, “I Lost It”

A free market system, if it’s good for anything, effectively uses pricing to match supply and demand. Acceptable price points are found by virtue of a complex psychological dance between sellers and buyers, influenced by context and the nature of the product or service that is for sale. Assuming that buyers are protected by consumer rights laws, prohibiting underhanded sales and marketing tactics that would otherwise proliferate under the auspices of caveat emptor—the “buyer beware” principle (Luyendijk 2015, 106)—sellers will strive to “deliver the value promised by their value proposition” at a price at which customers “perceive this value” (Kotler and Keller 2009, 77). There are certainly factors that can decrease a buyer’s price sensitivity and allow for greater opportunity on the part of a seller to conceivably overcharge. These factors include the ease with which the value of similar products or services can be compared, and the perceived associated benefits that a product or service will deliver beyond its immediate scope (Nagle et al. 2011), both of which are relevant in the context of selection of higher education products. But different prices for similar products or services give people pause for thought and invite them to research further the reasons why one product is priced higher than another. In the context of selection of higher education products I firmly believe that this can be no bad thing. The freedom to “mark to market” the prices of their learning programmes, allowing for the opportunity to significantly grow a main revenue stream, might encourage HE institutions to prioritize building competitive advantage around the inputs and processes by which they develop these learning programmes over and above research prestige. Broadly, this would involve hiring talent, at a

70 • Warrick Harniess premium commensurate with their proven experience and capabilities, to create and deliver programmes and resources that meet the needs and expectations of students and employers. As the endorsement of employers and alumni would influence the price at which learning programmes can be sold, demonstrably proving the efficacy of these programmes would be of utmost importance, with ramifications for both providers and consumers. Students would be expected to engage wholeheartedly with the programme or risk expulsion; HE institutions would likely put even greater emphasis than they currently do on staff and student recruitment standards, and on the kinds of programmes that they develop. Given the effectiveness of entrepreneurship as a subject through which to teach essential employability skills and help develop a professional mindset, as articulated in the previous section, I believe greater deregulation in the HE sector would help to move entrepreneurship from the margins of the curriculum to centre stage. My experience as an undergraduate was relatively cheap by today’s standards and, like Williams, “I did not draw a connection between loans and future debt”, “I did not see my time at university as inevitably leading to employment”, and I chose to study American Studies “simply because it interested me” (Williams 2013, 1). Though I was, in the words of one of my A Level teachers, “academically sound”, by today’s standards of hyper-competitive labour markets, high levels of unemployment for young people, and low levels of economic growth, I was staggeringly naïve. It’s not that I was not “old or wise enough to make sensible decisions about where to study” (Williams 2013, 11), but I was not equipped to make future-focused decisions about what to study or why I should study it. We should not be shielded from the free market when we’re young, only to have it sprung upon us when we embark upon a career. Rather, we should grapple with it, even if we don’t want to wholeheartedly join the capitalist corps. Looking back, this is what my punk entrepreneurship education has taught me, and I believe that this is an essential lesson for all young people at a similar age and stage of development. Note 1. I am aware that ascribing “libertarian values” to people as diverse as Larry Livermore, Mike Burkett and Ian MacKaye is contentious. I do not personally know them, nor have I ever had the opportunity to discuss these ideas with them. They may well take umbrage with my views in this regard as too, I expect, will others! But like MacKaye, I “think of punk rock as a free space” (O’Connor 2008, 8); it is not aligned with any one ideology or political position. As I articulate in the section titled “Punk Entrepreneurship”, I believe punk’s practical malleability is part of its staying power. Punk means different, contradictory things to different people, and as such defining “punk” is a wicked issue—it will never be satisfactorily resolved. I make no apologies for my perspective that punk is a byproduct of capitalistic systems and that, therefore, the entrepreneurial activities of its proponents can be interpreted accordingly. Inevitably, other people will disagree and I celebrate that as democratic tradition. Coincidentally, I also acknowledge that “entrepreneurship” is perhaps as nebulous a term as “punk”. Suffice it to say, I believe that entrepreneurship is fundamentally about assessing and reconciling risk and reward. In some

Punk Entrepreneurship • 71 cases, this may take the form of establishing a business venture in the pursuit of profit. In other circumstances it may be about consciously pursuing an activity that could be loss-making from a monetary perspective, but that is considered worthwhile because of the enjoyment, satisfaction and/or learning opportunities it brings.

References Boas, Taylor C., and Jordan Gans-Morse. 2009. “Neoliberalism: From New Liberal Philosophy to Anti-Liberal Slogan.” Studies in Comparative International Development 44: 137–161. doi:10.1007/s12116-009-9040-5. Bobbitt, Philip. 2008. Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century. London: Allen Lane. Booker, Christopher. 2004. The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. London: Continuum. British Chambers of Commerce. 2014. A Business Plan for Britain. Accessed January 25, 2017. www. britishchambers.org.uk/2014%20BCC%20Business%20manifesto.pdf. Brown, Tim. 2009. Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation. New York: HarperCollins. CBI. 2013. Tomorrow’s Growth: New Routes to Higher Skills. Accessed January 25, 2017. www.cbi. org.uk/media/2178879/tomorrow_s_growth.pdf. Dunn, Kevin. 2016. Global Punk: Resistance and Rebellion in Everyday Life. New York: Bloomsbury. Gardiner, Laura. 2016. “Stagnation Generation: The Case for Renewing the Intergenerational Contract.” Resolution Foundation. Accessed January 25, 2017. www.intergencommission.org/. Graffin, Greg. 2002. A Punk Manifesto. Accessed January 25, 2017. www.allidoispunk.com/about/ greg-graffin-a-punk-manifesto/. HM Government. 2013. International Education: Global Growth and Prosperity. Accessed January 25, 2017. www.gov.uk/government/publications/international-education-strategy-globalgrowth-and-prosperity. Kahneman, Daniel. 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow. London: Penguin Books. Kotler, Philip, and Kevin L. Keller. 2009. A Framework for Marketing Management, 4th edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. Law, Lisa. 2002. “Defying Disappearance: Cosmopolitan Public Spaces in Hong Kong.” Urban Studies 39: 1625–1645. doi:10.1080/00420980220151691. Livermore, Larry. 2015. How to Ru(i)n a Record Label: The Story of Lookout Records. Don Giovanni Records. Luyendijk, Joris. 2015. Swimming With Sharks: My Journey Into the World of the Bankers. London: Guardian Books and Faber and Faber. Marginson, Simon. 2011. “Higher Education and Public Good.” Higher Education Quarterly 65: 411–433. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2273.2011.00496.x Marginson, Simon. April 10, 2014. “There’s Still No Such Thing as a Higher Education Market.” TES Online. Accessed January 25, 2017. www.timeshighereducation.com/comment/opinion/ theres-still-no-such-thing-as-a-higher-education-market/2012541.article. Nagle, Thomas T., John E. Hogan, and Joseph Zale. 2011. The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing: A Guide to Growing More Profitably, 5th edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. NOFX, and Alulis, J. 2016. The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories. Boston: Da Capo Press. O’Connor, Alan. 2008. Punk Record Labels and the Struggle for Autonomy. Plymouth: Lexington Books. Pegg, Ann, Jeff Waldock, Sonia Hendy-Isaac, and Ruth Lawton. 2012. “Pedagogy for Employability.” Higher Education Academy. Accessed January 25, 2017. www.heacademy.ac.uk/system/files/ pedagogy_for_employability_update_2012.pdf. Pynchon, Thomas. 2013. Bleeding Edge. London: Jonathan Cape. QAA. 2012. The Quality Code, Part B: Assuring and Enhancing Academic Quality. Accessed January 25, 2017. www.qaa.ac.uk/assuring-standards-and-quality/the-quality-code/quality-codepart-b. Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1942. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 3rd edition. New York: Harper and Brothers. Schutz, William C. 1958. FIRO: A Three Dimensional Theory of Interpersonal Behavior. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.

72 • Warrick Harniess Smith, Gareth D., and Alex Gillett. 2014. “Creativities, Innovation, and Networks in Garage Punk Rock: A Case Study of the Eruptörs.” Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts 4: 9–24. Sorkin, Andrew R. 2009. Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street. London: Penguin Books. Stiglitz, Joseph E. 2013. The Price of Inequality. London: Penguin Books. Thiel, Peter, and Blake Masters. 2014. Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future. London: Virgin Books. Tilak, Janidhyala B. G. 2008. “Higher Education: A Public Good or a Commodity for Trade?” Prospects 38: 449–466. doi:10.1007/s11125-009-9093-2. Trivers, Robert. 2013. Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others. London: Penguin Books. Williams, Gareth. 2016. “Higher Education: Public Good or Private Commodity?” London Review of Education 14: 131–142. doi:10.18546/LRE.14.1.12. Williams, Joanna. 2013. Consuming Higher Education: Why Learning Can’t Be Bought. New York: Bloomsbury. Wilson, Carl. 2014. Let’s Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste. New York: Bloomsbury.

6

Just Go and Do It: A Blockchain Technology “Live Project” for Nascent Music Entrepreneurs MARCUS O’DAIR AND ZULEIKA BEAVEN

The philosophy from the beginning was you don’t have to know how to do it, you just have to figure out what to do next. And it’s ok to make a mistake, if you guess wrong what to do next, you step back and you try to take the appropriate step. And it worked. To the extent that it worked, it worked! —Jay Clem, Cryptic Corporation 76–82 The Theory of Obscurity: a film about The Residents. —Directed by Don Hardy. 2016

Introduction: Punk as DIY This chapter outlines a live project at Middlesex University, the institution at which we both teach. The aim of the project is to promote entrepreneurial learning (Pittaway and Cope 2007), with a focus on learning through action and the co-creation of knowledge as representative of punk pedagogy (Torrez 2012). We go on to outline this project in detail, as well as to examine the parallels between blockchain technology, which is central to the project, and punk. We begin, however, by framing punk in terms of its do-it-yourself (DIY) ethos rather than as musical genre. While tensions between punk and the academy may at first glance seem considerable, punk is now taught as a genre in many popular music programmes, including the one at Middlesex University. Punk has also been the subject of a great deal of academic writing, for instance by Hebdige (1988), Reddington (2007) and Laing (2015), as well as noteworthy grey literature by, among others, Savage (2005), Marcus (2001) and, on post-punk, Reynolds (2005). Despite its “year zero” rhetoric, Reynolds states, punk was not particularly radical from a musical perspective when compared to the post-punk that emerged between 1978 and 1984 (2005, xv). That debate is beyond the scope of this chapter. We cite it here because it seems a useful point of contrast with an area in which

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74 • Marcus O’Dair and Zuleika Beaven punk (and, indeed, some post-punk1) was undoubtedly radical: its insistence on independent means of production (Laing 2015). Characteristic of punk—particularly British punk, according to Laing—was a do-it-yourself attitude “which refused to rely on the institutions of the established music industry, whether record company or music press” (2015, 24). This do-it-yourself approach is typically assumed to refer primarily to playing music: “This is a chord, this is another, this is a third. Now start a band”, as Sideburns fanzine famously declared (1977, n.p.). Yet that same DIY ethos could apply equally to writing about and recording and distributing that music (Smith and Gillett 2015; Savage 2005; Laing 2015). True, not all punks have been insistent on independence: some of the most prominent punk bands, among them The Clash and The Sex Pistols, signed to major labels, while even some “indie” record labels used major labels for distribution. On the other side of the Atlantic, The Ramones worked with a major label, while Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys had periods “flirting with labels that had links to majors” (O’Connor 2008, 3). Bestley (2014) has suggested that punk’s do-it-yourself rhetoric was often little more than a naïve ambition, while Furness (2012, 14) states that it is a mistake to conflate punk with “100% pure authentic resistance to the culture industry/mainstream/system”. Even so, as Laing suggests, an emphasis on independence can be considered fundamental to punk. Furness insists that punk is defined, as much as anything, by “a participatory, “bottom up” view of culture . . . a broader “Do It Yourself ” counterculture” (10). Gordon (2012) also regards this DIY approach as integral to punk. Today, the “indie” act signed to a major label is so commonplace that the obvious contradiction is often ignored. But, as Hesmondhalgh (1999) writes, “indie” was originally characterized by a new relationship between creativity and commerce, a means of reconciling the commercial nature of pop with the goal of artistic autonomy for musicians. We note not only the transformations associated with punk entrepreneurship, but its place as a mechanism for creative control. Laing, focusing on the UK, divides punk labels into two types. First there were the small-scale “Xerox” labels, a term Laing borrows from Desperate Bicycles, whose Refill label could be considered to epitomize the phenomenon. Their track “Handlebars” can be read as a manifesto for this approach, featuring as it did the words: “It was easy, it was cheap; go and do it!” Also representative is the Spiral Scratch EP by Buzzcocks, released on the band’s own New Hormones label and financed by borrowing money from family and friends. As Savage (2005) notes, “the implications of Spiral Scratch were enormous . . . what was so perfect about the Buzzcocks’ EP was that its aesthetics were perfectly combined with the means of production” (297). It was not only these two acts: Dale (2008) argues against the tendency to “reify” Buzzcocks and Desperate Bicycles as proponents of DIY, noting significant antecedents and continuations of the DIY impetus, most notably the anarcho-punk group Crass.

Just Go and Do It • 75 Second, Laing continues, there existed a number of more substantial punk labels, including Step Forward Records, Factory and Fast Product. While “Xerox” label records were sold by hand or via mail order, these larger labels, hoping to make a national impact, required proper distribution. The fees taken by distributors, however, would cut the profit margin for the bands themselves. Some signed with major labels for manufacture and distribution. Others signed up to alternative distributors including Pinnacle and Spartan, or with The Cartel, the new distribution network that emerged from the Rough Trade shop and label. By working with other independent record stores, The Cartel allowed small labels such as Factory and 2-Tone to sell their releases across the UK. To set up The Cartel as an alternative network of distribution was, as Hesmondhalgh (1999) has suggested, a considerable achievement; the same could be said of Crass, who sold a reported 250,000 copies of their self-released Stations of the Crass album (Dale 2008). We suggest that both the “Xerox” labels, and distributors such as The Cartel that serviced the more substantial punk labels, can also be considered highly entrepreneurial. That might sound like sacrilege, but only if we make two assumptions: first, that entrepreneurs are necessarily motivated primary by profit; and second that entrepreneurs are born rather than made. Punk as Enterprise: Countering Dominant Discourses What, if punk can be considered entrepreneurial, do we mean by entrepreneurship? The dominant discourse of enterprise, of the over-riding profit motive and of contribution and value measured in monetary terms, emanates from study in the academy initiated by economists, dating back at least to the entrepreneurship theorist and economist Joseph Schumpeter in the early twentieth century. Within music, we see this in the dominance of the narrative around acts like 50 Cent and Jay-Z, or the early career of figures like Richard Branson; in the popular imagination, the music entrepreneur is not just wealthy but, through some personality trait, somehow destined for wealth. The dominant discourse of entrepreneurship has its critics. Ogbor (2000) is among those to question the conflation of value with profit and the associated ideological agenda of much enterprise research, critiquing both a focus on male entrepreneurs and the assumption that business growth is the key to success. Rentschler (2002) is another to question the focus on profit, instead defining entrepreneurship as creating value for society by bringing together unique combinations of resources to exploit opportunities in an environment of change (46). In fact, as Bessant and Tidd (2007) propose, there are fundamentally different types of entrepreneur; and punk business approaches, allowing for the questioning of that term as one necessarily associated with neoliberal values, fit with the idea that the main motivation for cultural entrepreneurs may be the pursuit of artistic practice (Ball 2003; Ellmeier 2003; Brown 2004; Beaven 2013).

76 • Marcus O’Dair and Zuleika Beaven Despite such shifts in the lens of entrepreneurship studies, the discourse of the entrepreneur as motivated by profit, and of the entrepreneur’s value as quantified in monetary terms, lingers in the media and popular imagination. As Swedberg (2000) notes, economists still have something of an ideological monopoly on the topic. The Schumpterian perspective, rooted in economics, still pervades much research (Herbert and Link 2009) and underpins a neoliberal agenda that has become associated with entrepreneurship. And yet the understanding and study of the entrepreneur within the academy has moved from one in which economic function was the most important determinant, through several decades of considering enterprise as a question of personality and innate traits, to a behavioural perspective (Cope 2005). This significant shift in the understanding of entrepreneurship, one that allows us to place the practice under consideration in a punk context, began with Gartner (1988) and his landmark paper “ ‘Who Is An Entrepreneur?’ Is the Wrong Question”. A great deal of subsequent research has been focused on entrepreneurial behaviours as determinants of entrepreneurship, rather than a hunt for the “entrepreneurial personality” or a fixed set of traits that are present in entrepreneurs from birth. Entrepreneurship, Gartner argued simply, is the creation of new organizations, rather than some special state of being. Anyone, in other words, can act entrepreneurially, as this is a social process (Warren 2005; Anderson 2005; Katz and Green 2007; Kim and Aldrich 2005). The behavioural perspective allows for a sense of becoming entrepreneurial, when individuals respond to context and create new realities. This becoming may be pragmatic, and may be driven by a need to behave entrepreneurially in order to meet some goal other than profit, such as creative practice (Ball 2003; Beaven 2013). Viewed from this Gartnerian perspective, punk entrepreneurs are the creators of new realities. When Desperate Bicycles issued their DIY rallying cry, they were not concerned about making a profit, or whether or not they had the requisite personality traits to make a record. The whole point was that anyone could “just go and do it”—and on a small scale from which they were unlikely to become wealthy. The same can be said of more recent punk acts: as Drakopoulou Dodd (2014) has pointed out in her study of Rancid, punk bands can create independent musical and related creative enterprises from the margins of the music industry, and can thus be considered to represent “marginal, alternative entrepreneurship” (165). Anarcho-punk, as epitomized by Crass, was “fundamentally disinterested in profit, privileging the political musical message over self-interest” (Gordon 2012, 111), and punk, more broadly, opened up “a new popular cultural economy based on subsistence rather than profit” (Brabazon 2012, 168). Rough Trade, meanwhile, was set up on socialist principles inspired by time founder Geoff Travis had spent on a kibbutz (Young 2006). Staff were paid equal wages, and decisions were reached by committee, even if the “brown rice” image of never-ending meetings is something of a caricature (Young 2006, 72). The Cartel, which grew out of Rough Trade, began

Just Go and Do It • 77 with a similar ideology; it can be considered a specific and highly politicized attempt to forge a completely new path for the music industry (Ogg 2009, iv), an attempt by Rough Trade to control its destiny in the marketing and distribution of recorded music as well as in origination (Laing 2015, 30). From a Gartnerian perspective, both Crass and Geoff Travis can be considered entrepreneurial, in that they were creating new realities. This, we suggest, is the key point about punk record labels in relation to entrepreneurship: many labels were formed out of necessity and a desire to make music, not by “born entrepreneurs” looking for a gap in the market and a means of maximizing profit. Writing of the UK scene in 1976 and 1977, Savage (2005) points out that punk was actively discouraged, if not banned—by the music industry, the media, the politicians and the general public—with perhaps unexpected results: This resulted in an underground distribution and production network which turned necessity into a virtue: it was easy and cheap, go and do it. These ideals of access . . . have become one of Punk’s enduring legacies . . . doing it all yourself—making, producing and releasing your own record/ fanzine/book/film . . . became the hidden positive to punk’s much-flaunted negative, a practical decentralisation with infinite possibilities. (Savage 2005, xv) Focusing on American bands of the late 1970s and early 1980s, O’Connor (2008) makes a similar point: the vast majority of bands never signed to major labels, or even to small labels with relationships with major labels. “For them, doing it yourself was not a choice but a necessity. The music industry was mostly not interested” (2). In part as a consequence of this sense of entrepreneurship born out of necessity, punk blurred the line between creativity and entrepreneurship. Burnard (2012) maintains that entrepreneurship is a form of creativity, a view supported in the specific context of punk by Smith and Gillett (2015). While it may be perceived that there is a potential conflict between creative and entrepreneurial aims, Bilton argues convincingly in his 2007 text Management and Creativity that they can co-exist: the opposition of “suits” and “creatives” is a myth. The highest profile, and most contested, example of such co-existence is perhaps Malcolm McLaren (Savage 2005, 314), whose self-declared “creative management” is exemplified by ambitious schemes such as the film The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. Rather than McLaren, the sense of enterprise as creative practice is perhaps best epitomized by the “pop-group-posing-as-corporation strategy” (Reynolds 2005, 248), as represented by Public Image Ltd—conceived, in direct contrast to The Sex Pistols, as “an organisation free from manager’s interference” (Dudanski 2013, 150)—and The Residents. With the intention of achieving “complete cultural autonomy” (Reynolds 2005, 248), The Residents

78 • Marcus O’Dair and Zuleika Beaven developed the notion of enterprise as creative practice, running their own label and making their own artwork and films. The blurring of lines between creativity and entrepreneurship is also evident in the various punk and post-punk musicians who ran labels: Daniel Miller at Mute, Jerry Dammers at 2-Tone, Throbbing Gristle at Industrial, Crass at Crass Records and, slightly later, Derek Birkett at One Little Indian. While Laing (2015) suggests that the DIY ethic was particularly a phenomenon of UK punk, a list of equivalent American labels would include SST and Dischord. In defining at least some punks as entrepreneurs, then, we argue for two significant and inter-related points: that entrepreneurship can be born out of context and necessity to change realities; and that motivation and intent can be drawn from a desire to support creative practice and achieve creative control, rather than to make money. Many punk entrepreneurs exist well outside the dominant neoliberal discourse, but they are no less entrepreneurial for that. Enterprise Pedagogy as Punk Pedagogy In order to support creative practice, this “just go and do it” approach requires entrepreneurial learning, defined by Pittaway and Cope (2007) as “learning that occurs during the new venture creation process”. While acknowledging, as they do, that the definition is fairly narrow in certain respects, for example focusing exclusively on new ventures, we consider it useful in that it conveys a sense of learning through action—through “just going and doing it”. This brings us back to our topic of punk pedagogy, and its relevance to music students. Smith and Gillett (2015) see the value of their case study of The Eruptörs, for instance, as lying in its potential for use in higher education: “to provide discussion points regarding practice and conceptualisation of students’ own creative projects, and positioning these as viable, collaborative entrepreneurial projects” (21). Resonating with our suggestion that enterprise need not be conflated with the pursuit of profit, it is noteworthy that The Eruptörs self-identify as entrepreneurial despite the fact that the band “is not a money-making project” (Smith and Gillett 2015, 11). Since the turn of the millennium, we can detect two shifts in entrepreneurship education. First, enterprise is no longer taught only in business schools. The subject is widely offered to students studying arts and humanities, and seen as important in preparing students for careers in the creative industries (DCMS 2006; Rae 2004; Carey and Naudin 2006; Penaluna and Penaluna 2009; Beckman 2007). With this comes the understanding of a wider definition of entrepreneurial practice and recognition of entrepreneurship in a range of contexts. Hindle (2007) calls, from within a business school, for the subject to be taught in other disciplines. More recently, Young (2014) calls for enterprise education in universities to extend to “all areas of faculty and study” (6). Cross-campus entrepreneurship is becoming established. As entrepreneurship

Just Go and Do It • 79 spreads across the campus, critical discussion of its place intensifies. Torrez (2012) assumes that the tendency in universities towards generating “entrepreneurial scholars” is part of “the corporate university”, and that the pressure on academics “to pursue an entrepreneurial trajectory” is opposed to “the belief that university education should emerge from intentional forms of critical pedagogy” (133–4). We draw on alternative discourses of enterprise to argue that it is not only innovative but supports critical engagement—that there is, in other words, nothing fundamentally “unpunk” about enterprise pedagogy. The other, related, shift is in how entrepreneurship is taught. The intention with our own live project, which we outline in greater detail later, is to recreate as closely as possible the “learn as you go” process of venture creation, with an emphasis on active (Chickering and Gamson 1987), experiential (Kolb 1984), heuristic (Depaepe et al. 2010) and entrepreneurial learning (Dalley and Hamilton 2000; Rae 2000; Rae and Carswell 2000; Deakins and Freel 1998; Cope and Watts 2000; Gibb 1997). Historically, the desire for experiential learning in an environment as close as possible to “real world” enterprise led initially to an emphasis on simulation: see for instance Pittaway and Cope (2007) and Tan and Ng (2006). Yet simulation in an artificial context also had limitations (Pittaway and Cope 2006), and there has been a more recent trend to move “beyond simulation” (Beaven and St George 2007). Beaven and St George argue for an approach that promotes active learning not by simulation but by using live, real-world projects that offer “genuine pressures and crises” (2). Live projects, for instance, can help develop collaborative and participatory skills, enrich the student learning experience, develop enterprise skills and significantly increase employability in a sector with precarious employment (Sheffield School of Architecture 2013). Enterprise teaching, then, is moving beyond preparing business plans, a feature of the planning approach prevalent in many business schools and MBA programmes that had transferred to some enterprise education. Jones and Penaluna (2013) note the business plan is losing credibility outside academia and argue it should not be central to enterprise education. Punk to Cypherpunk: A Blockchain Technology Live Project for Nascent Music Entrepreneurs We move, for the final section of this chapter, to a case study in which we begin to put some of these principles into practice: a live project with Popular Music and Music Business & Arts Management students at Middlesex University. While the project is only in its early stages, we believe it embodies some of the attitudes towards punk and enterprise pedagogy outlined earlier. The project makes use of blockchain technology. The authors have discussed the way in which blockchain technology works, and its potential impact on the music industries, elsewhere (O’Dair et al. 2016). For the purposes of this chapter, it is sufficient to say only that blockchain technology—the “blocks” of confirmed

80 • Marcus O’Dair and Zuleika Beaven transactions that form a chronologically linked “chain”—emerged as the technological foundations of bitcoin, a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system” (Nakamoto 2008) or cryptocurrency (digital currency whose security is guaranteed through cryptography). However, multiple use cases have subsequently emerged. First, the functionality of the bitcoin blockchain was extended by using bitcoins to represent other assets; then there emerged other cryptocurrencies that run on their own blockchains entirely. For those who see punk as strictly historically situated in the mid- to late 1970s—and Crass themselves declared punk dead in 1978—the leap to bitcoin, first outlined in 2008 and launched early the following year, might seem jarring.2 Yet we have already suggested that punk can be understood as DIY ethos as much as musical genre, and certainly the “DIY lifestyle”, embodied in, as well as pre-dating, punk, has continued after what is usually considered punk’s heyday, in “cultures of resistance” including New Age travellers, rave and anti-road protestors (McKay 1996). Savage (2005) is among those to point out that the punk notion of access, one of its enduring legacies, has “since been expanded by the Internet” (xv). As regards the specific case of blockchain technology, the fact that bitcoin mining—the “proof of work” process that powers the network—is at least theoretically open to anyone represents a lowering of the barriers to entry that has clear echoes of punk, even if, in reality, mining is now dominated by “mining pools” rather than individuals. The lack of a central authority so fundamental to bitcoin, where consensus is achieved without requiring a trusted intermediary by means of a distributed (rather than centralized) ledger, is reminiscent of the collective decision-making process at Rough Trade. That this ledger is visible to all reflects a transparency in business dealings also evident in punk and post-punk. One example of this phenomenon is Middlesex University’s Visiting Professor in Music, Daniel Miller, who self-released a single—“T.V.O.D.”/“Warm Leatherette”—in 1978 under the name The Normal. Having included his home address on the record, Miller began receiving demos in the post, and a label— Mute—was born. A second example of the drive towards demystification of the process of production is “Skank Bloc Bologna”, the debut single by Scritti Politti. Released on their own St Pancras label, with help from Rough Trade, the single came in a sleeve that detailed the complete costs for recording, mastering, pressing and so on, together with contact details for companies offering these services. Third, we might think of Buzzcocks listing which take of each song they had used, and the number of overdubs required, on the cover of Spiral Scratch. Though the analogy is not perfect, the parallels between blockchain technology and punk remain striking: just as punk favours “horizontal”, rather than “hierarchical” networks (Dunn 2016, 105), blockchain technology provides “a new way to implement trusted transactions without trusted intermediaries” (Mougayar 2016, xxiii; our emphasis). Indeed, early users of bitcoin were actually known as “cypherpunks”—activists who advocate the use of cryptography to achieve privacy in an electronic age (Hughes 1993).

Just Go and Do It • 81 Scholars including Bheemaiah (2015) and Barre (2015) have suggested that business schools need to teach about blockchain technology because of its disruptive potential. Like entrepreneurship, however, we believe blockchain technology needs to be taught beyond business schools, in our case to students studying Popular Music as well as Music Business & Arts Management (questioning the division between artist and entrepreneur, and between creativity and management, being a key part of legacy of punk). This in part represents our desire to ensure that the curriculum remains current; given its disruptive potential, blockchain technology also provides a broader opportunity to re-conceive—and to de-mystify—the music industries. We have suggested elsewhere (O’Dair et al. 2016) that claims for disintermediation in the music industries as a result of blockchain technology have been overstated, yet it remains a useful exercise for those studying the music industries to imagine the value chain stripped right back to artist and consumer, and from that blank canvas to then work through the intermediaries that might be required in between. Such an approach is very much indebted to punk, one contribution of which was “rendering visible through its DIY philosophy the previously mystified mechanics of music participation, consumption and participation” (Gordon 2012, 106). We introduced blockchain technology into the curriculum for Popular Music and Music Business & Arts Management students in the 2015–16 academic year: the potential impact of the technology on the music industries was critically examined in scheduled lectures and at a symposium that took place on campus. In that academic year, we also held four extracurricular “music on the blockchain” workshops. It was felt that keeping the workshops optional— and un-assessed—would help to make them a “safe space” in which to “fail”, particularly given the risks inherent in working with nascent technology. With the informed consent of participants, these workshops were recorded and subsequently transcribed. There were four staff involved in the workshops: two (the co-authors of this paper) came from a music or music/creative industries enterprise background, while the other two, David Neilson and Sukhvinder Hara, both had a background in computer science. We attempted to adopt a punk (or cypherpunk) pedagogy in the sense defined by Torrez (2012): a move away from viewing teachers as owners of knowledge and students as empty receptacles into which knowledge is poured, towards “reciprocity between teacher and learner” (133). A working definition of punk pedagogy, Torrez states, would be “a space where the teacher-learner hierarchy is disavowed and the normative discourse of traditional education is dissembled” (136). Punk is wholeheartedly opposed, Torrez suggests, to the idea of experts. Although the lecturers members involved in the workshops did (hopefully) bring with us a certain amount of useful knowledge, we did not present ourselves as experts, instead being open about the fact that we were learning about this constantly developing technology, and its implications, as

82 • Marcus O’Dair and Zuleika Beaven we went along. The two lecturers from computer science, meanwhile, were learning about the music industries. The following exchange demonstrates this sense of co-constructing knowledge in the workshops, with students, music staff and computer science staff all learning together about potential applications of blockchain technology: Student:

Music lecturer: Computer science lecturer 1: Computer science lecturer 2: Student: Computer science lecturer 2: Music lecturer:

The only concern I’m having is about micropayments. So if we wrote a song together and took 50 percent each, I wrote the music, you wrote the lyrics, but it turned out you’d actually stolen the lyrics from her [points to another student in the room] or something, what would happen then? The payments because they’re on this blockchain, can’t be changed. So what would happen there? Interesting. You register your lyrics first, but there have been disputes with big artist . . . ? It’s not been tested . . . Surely PRS and all that can . . . What’s PRS? Collection society  .  .  . those services would sit on top of this. But I think about 13 percent goes on collection. This could be frictionless . . .

Not all the students involved in our project share a desire to bypass established channels; though some have shown an interest in re-appropriating the means of production, others see an ongoing role for labels and performance rights organizations. Blockchain technology can be seen to embody punk’s move away from centralized power towards peer production and peer-to-peer networks, and some of our students saw the technology in such a light: as “really in the artist’s favour . . . The label would still get a percentage of it but not so much at all anymore. Ten percent which in the end, probably, is the way it should be”. Others saw the technology as having the potential to help emerging artists in the live sector: Student 1:

Music lecturer 1: Student 2:

I think it’s interesting in relation to live music. Mainly small venues, independent artists. I think it would really help them. How would it work there? If I came to a gig, would I pay . . . I suppose I could buy tickets on the blockchain in advance? The venues having to pay the artists at all, just anything, something . . .

Just Go and Do It • 83 Student 1:

Music lecturer 2:

Student: Music lecturer 2: Student 3: Computer science lecturer: Student 2: Student 1:

Making venues pay artists. Small venues no longer having to pay to host live music. So even though this comes up, it doesn’t cause small venues to pay artists. Maybe this is partly where the “fair trade” concept that Imogen [Heap] has talked about comes in.3 You’re then a fair trade venue . . . Venues might start wanting to be part of it . . . At the moment, if you go to a gig, you don’t know . . . We’ve done gigs where they don’t pay you. It doesn’t bother us but some people it does, people trying to make money off it. Would it stop people selling tickets at inflated prices? No. In the long term, increased transparency will make people who aren’t in the music industry more aware of how little artists are actually paid.

Other students, however, were resistant to the apparent potential of blockchain technology for disintermediation and DIY approaches in the music industries: Student:

I think it’s important doing this to actually create a partnership with the labels, so it doesn’t seem like it’s created to push the labels out. They’re still going to be so important. There’s going to come a time with an artist, if they grow, there’s no way an artist can do everything himself. If they become big, it’s too much. So the labels won’t lose their value. So it has to be done the right way, so the labels—if the labels feel they’re getting pushed out, they might not want to get involved with it. It feels more an attack than an actual partnership.

One possibility we discussed was working with the Mycelia project spearheaded by the singer, songwriter and producer Imogen Heap, one of a number of initiatives exploring the potential of blockchain technology for the music industries. Mycelia aims “to empower a fair, sustainable and vibrant music industry ecosystem involving all online music interaction services” using blockchain technology (Mycelia for Music n.d.). Heap’s vision for Mycelia includes “mushrooms”, or services, that can operate for profit yet still embody the collaborative ethos of Rough Trade or Crass: I see the music and the database as the source and the mushrooms as the services that live above ground . . . As in nature, that which is taxing on the system withers and dies and that which is giving back thrives. (Heap 2016)

84 • Marcus O’Dair and Zuleika Beaven As our project evolved, however, we decided, at least for the initial stages, not to restrict ourselves to developing Mycelia “mushrooms” which, at the time of writing, remain a work in progress for Mycelia more broadly. After four workshops, covering the fundamentals of blockchain technology and potential applications, we decided to “get our hands dirty” by uploading a piece of music to a blockchain. We decided, in other words, to “just go and do it”. Music lecturer 2:

Student 1:

Student 2: Music lecturer 1:

Student 1: Music lecturer 1:

Music lecturer 2:

Shall we just try it? Put some whistling on the blockchain, learn from what goes wrong? Maybe starting with a mushroom is too complicated—I feel we need to learn from experience [. . .] I think we have several good ideas but we should start with something small . . . get our hands dirty a bit. I’m confused exactly what a mushroom is. I understood everything about the blockchain the other day but I don’t understand what a mushroom is. So if you compare it to the moment, the mushroom is the label? It could be. But it could also be the album design company. I think you’d have many . . . Or someone doing label services. People you cut in. I got it. And what are you guys wanting to do? Or you don’t know? We spoke about several ideas but lots of people were saying they were confused . . . We don’t know if we’ll develop one or multiple ones. We start, have a go? See what goes right and wrong, learn from that?

The workshops have continued in the 2016–17 academic year. In October 2016, students uploaded music—and other creative content, including a review of the Primavera festival—on the Ascribe website, developed by BigchainDB, in order to create a permanent link between themselves, as artist, and their work. As we write, the students, split into two teams, are competing to raise money—in cryptocurrency—for a music release using blockchain technology, one group pursuing a “tip jar” model, the other new forms of crowdfunding. With the intention of promoting cross-industry innovation (Vullings and Heleven 2015), each team also includes postgraduate students from the business school on the MSc Innovation programme; music students are also shortly to pitch to Computer Science students in the hope of involving them in the project as well.

Just Go and Do It • 85 Conclusion By drawing on punk notions of DIY, and changes in enterprise pedagogy since Gartner, we hope to move away from the notion that entrepreneurs are born rather than made, with the Romantic corollary that those without such traits may as well concern themselves with “pure art” (as if such a thing existed). Instead, we have outlined how we are using a live project to encourage a number of students—studying Popular Music as well as Music Business & Arts Management at Middlesex University—to engage with blockchain technology, as well as broader questions ranging from securing intellectual property to identifying new revenue streams for musicians. Our contention is that all musicians, and thus all music students, can be entrepreneurial—and that, given the likelihood that our graduates may be selfemployed or employed in small and medium enterprises and micro-businesses, they may need to be so. Yet this is not to assume that they should be motivated primarily, even at all, by profit; as with Crass and The Cartel, entrepreneurship may be a means of operating commercially with an alternative ideology. Punk shows that entrepreneurship can flourish alongside non-corporate, even overtly anti-corporate, ideals, and that it can be a means of achieving creative autonomy. Many punks, and punk scholars, may despise the notion of punk as entrepreneurial. We suggest that this is because of an enduring assumption that enterprise is fundamentally neoliberal and primarily concerned with profit— an assumption we have challenged. We have also shown that, far from being in conflict, entrepreneurship and management can co-exist with creativity—indeed, they can be seen as an extension of creative practice. Rather than recognizing a clear division between creativity and enterprise or management, our project involved both Popular Music and Music Business and Arts Management students, just as musicians— Daniel Miller, Jerry Dammers, Crass and others—founded punk and post-punk record labels. It is notable that there are artists at the forefront of the application of blockchain technology for music, notably Imogen Heap and the cellist Zoe Keating. We hope that our live project will provide real-world experiential learning: “for enterprise” rather than “about enterprise”. Although there is cause for optimism in the prediction by the World Economic Forum (2015) that 10 percent of global gross domestic product will be stored on blockchains by 2025, it is also true that blockchain technology in general still faces significant challenges, relating both to the technology itself and to its widespread adoption. Yet even if blockchain technology never fulfils its promise, we believe there is considerable value in the live project—in promoting transferable skills and encouraging students to self-identify as entrepreneurs. Since the workshops are not assessed, we hope they can offer a safe place in which to “fail”—and, more importantly, that they can help students conceive of a definition of “success” in entrepreneurship

86 • Marcus O’Dair and Zuleika Beaven that is not based on profit. Instead of standing aside for “born entrepreneurs” with particular “traits”, and assuming that entrepreneurship is only for those driven by financial rewards, the lesson of punk is that anyone can just go and do it. Notes 1. McKay (1996, 75) suggests that it was in the post-punk era that the political thrust of punk was “more keenly developed and deeply explored”. 2. Other cryptocurrencies, such as ether, used on the Ethereum blockchain, have emerged even more recently. Our focus here is bitcoin, since that is the currency we are using in the initial stages of our live project, but the project as a whole is blockchain agnostic. 3. Heap (2016, 2) states her intention to create “a fair trading and bustling creative music industry ecosystem”.

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Just Go and Do It • 87 Dale, P. 2008. “It Was Easy, It Was Cheap, So What?: Reconsidering the DIY Principle of Punk and Indie Music.” Popular Music History 3, 2: 171–193. Dalley, J., and B. Hamilton. 2000. “Knowledge, Context and Learning in the Small Business.” International Small Business Journal 18, 3: 51–59. DCMS. 2006. The Role of Higher and Further Education: Developing Entrepreneurship for the Creative Industries. Accessed June 30, 2016. http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/7624/2/dcms_enterprise_ and_he.pdf. Deakins, D., and M. Freel. 1998. “Entrepreneurial Learning and the Growth Process in SMEs.” Learning Organisation 5, 3: 144–155. Delmolino, K., M. Arnett, A. Kosba, A. Miller, and E. Shi. 2015. “Step By Step Towards Creating a Safe Smart Contract: Lessons and Insights From a Cryptocurrency Lab.” IACR Cryptology E-Print Archive. Accessed June 13, 2016. http://eprint.iacr.org/2015/460.pdf. Depaepe, F., E. De Corte, and L. Verschaffel. 2010. “Teachers’ Metacognitive and Heuristic Approaches to Word Problem Solving: Analysis and Impact on Students’ Beliefs and Performances.” ZDM 42, 2: 205–218. Drakopoulou Dodd, S. 2014. “Roots Radical—Place, Power and Practice in Punk Entrepreneurship.” Entrepreneurship & Regional Development: An International Journal 26, 1–2: 165–205. Dudanski, R. 2013. Squat City Rocks: Proto-Punk and Beyond. Dunn, K. 2016. Global Punk: Resistance and Rebellion in Everyday Life. London: Bloomsbury. Ellmeier, A. 2003. “Cultural Entrepreneurialism: On the Changing Relationship Between the Arts, Culture and Employments’.” International Journal of Cultural Policy 9, 1: 3–16. Furness, Zack. 2012. “Attempted Education and Righteous Accusations: An Introduction to Punkademics.” In Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower, edited by Zack Furness. Brooklyn, NY: Minor Compositions. Gartner, W. B. 1988. “ ‘Who Is an Entrepreneur?’ Is the Wrong Question.” American Journal of Small Business 13, 1: 11–32. Gibb, A. 1997. “Small Firms’ Training and Competetiveness: Building on the Small Business as Learning Organisation.” International Small Business Journal 15, 3: 13–29. Gordon, A. 2012. “Building Recording Studios Whilst Bradford Burned: DIY Punk Ethics in a Field of Force.” In Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower, edited by Zack Furness. Brooklyn, NY: Minor Compositions. Heap, I. 2016. “What Blockchain Can Do for the Music Industry.” Demos Quarterly 8. http:// quarterly.demos.co.uk/article/issue-8/music-and-blockchain/. Accessed June 30, 2016. Hebdige, D. 1988 (first published 1979). Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge. Herbert, R., and A. Link. 2009. A History of Entrepreneurship. London: Routledge. Hesmondhalgh, D. 1999. “Indie: The Institutional Politics and Aesthetics of a Popular Music Genre.” Cultural Studies 13, 1: 34–61. Hindle, K. 2007. “Teaching Entrepreneurship in University: From the Wrong Building to the Right Philosophy.” In Handbook of Research in Entrepreneurship Education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Hughes, E. 1993. A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto. Accessed June 13, 2016. www.activism.net/cypherpunk/ manifesto.html. Jones, C., and A. Penaluna. 2013. “Moving Beyond the Business Plan in Enterprise Education.” Education and Training 55, 8/9: 804–814. Katz, J., and R. Green. 2007. Entrepreneurial Small Business. New York: McGraw-Hill. Kim, P., and H. Aldrich. 2005. Social Capital and Entrepreneurship. Boston: Now. Kolb, D. A. 1984. Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Laing, Dave. 2015 (first published 1985). One Chord Wonders: Power and Meaning in Punk Rock. Oakland: PM Press. Marcus, Greil. 2001 (first published 1989). Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. London: Faber. McKay, George. 1996. Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance Since the Sixties. London: Verso. Mougayar, W. 2016. The Business Blockchain: Promise, Practice and Applications of the Next Internet Technology. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Mycelia for Music. No date. Accessed January 27, 2017. http://myceliaformusic.org. Nakamoto, S. 2008. Bitcoin: A Peer-to-peer Electronic Cash System. Accessed March 21, 2016. bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf.

88 • Marcus O’Dair and Zuleika Beaven O’Connor, A. 2008. Punk Record Labels and the Struggle for Autonomy: The Emergence Of DIY. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. O’Dair, Marcus, Z. Beaven, D. Neilson, P. Pacifico, and R. Osborne. 2016. Music on the Blockchain Report. Middlesex University. Accessed July 7, 2016. www.mdx.ac.uk/__data/assets/ pdf_file/0026/230696/Music-On-The-Blockchain.pdf. Ogbor, J. 2000. “Mythicizing and Reification in Entrepreneurial Discourse.” Journal of Management Studies 35, 5: 605–635. Ogg, A. 2009. Independence Days: The Story of UK Independent Record Labels. London: Cherry Red. Penaluna, A., and K. Penaluna. 2009. “Assessing Creativity: Drawing From the Experience of the UK’s Creative Design Educators.” Education + Training 51, 8/9: 718–732. Pittaway, L., and J. Cope. 2006. “Simulating Entrepreneurial Learning: Integrating Experiential Learning and Collaborative Approaches to Learning.” HCGE Working Paper. Pittaway, L., and J. Cope. 2007. “Simulating Entrepreneurial Learning: Integrating Experiential and Collaborative Approaches to Learning.” Management Learning 38, 2: 211–233. Rae, D. 2000. “Understanding Entrepreneurial Learning: A Question of How?” International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research 6, 3: 145–159. Rae, D. 2004. “Entrepreneurial Learning: A Practical Model From the Creative Industries.” Education + Training 46, 8/9: 492–500. Rae, D., and M. Carswell. 2000. “Using a Life-story Approach in Researching Entrepreneurial Learning: The Development of a Conceptual Model and Its Implications in the Design of Learning Experiences.” Education and Training 42, 4/5: 220–227. Reddington, Helen. 2007. The Lost Women of Rock Music: Female Musicians of the Punk Era. Aldershot: Ashgate. Rentschler, R. 2002. The Entrepreneurial Arts Leader: Cultural Policy, Change and Reinvention. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Reynolds, Simon. 2005. Rip It Up and Start Again: Post-Punk 1978–1984. London: Faber. Savage, J. 2005 (first published 1991). England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock. London: Faber and Faber. Sheffield School of Architecture. 2013. A Handbook for Live Projects. Accessed June 24, 2016. www. sheffield.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.304156!/file/Live_Projects_Handbook_Med_Single.pdf. Smith, Gareth D., and Alex Gillett. 2015. “Creativities, Innovation, and Networks in Garage Punk Rock: A Case Study of the Eruptörs.” Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts 4, 1: 9–24. Swedberg, R. 2000. “Different Social Perspectives on Entrepreneurship.” In Entrepreneurship, edited by R. Swedberg. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tan, S. S., and C.K.F. Ng. 2006. “A Problem-Based Learning Approach to Entrepreneurship Education.” Education + Training 48, 6: 416–428. The Theory of Obscurity: A Film About the Residents. Dir. Don Hardy. Film Movement LLC, 2015. Film. Torrez, Estrella. 2012. “Punk Pedagogy: Education for Liberation and Love.” In Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower, edited by Zack Furness. Brooklyn, NY: Minor Compositions. Vullings, R., and M. Heleven. 2015. Not Invented Here: Cross-Industry Innovation. Amsterdam: BIS. Warren, L. 2005. “Images of Entrepreneurship: Still Searching for a Hero?” International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation 6, 4: 221–229. World Economic Forum. 2015. Deep Shift: Technology, Tipping Points and Societal Impact Survey Report. Accessed June 13, 2016. www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GAC15_Technological_ Tipping_Points_ report_2015.pdf. Young, D. 2014. Enterprise for All: The Relevance of Enterprise in Education. Accessed June 30, 2016. www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/338749/Enterprise forAll-lowres-200614.pdf. Young, R. 2006. Rough Trade. London: Black Dog.

Part II Punk Teaching and Teaching Punk

7

“Don’t Know Much About History, and We Don’t Care!” Teaching Punk Rock History JOHN DOUGAN

[Johnny Rotten] this malevolent, third generation child of rock ‘n’ roll is the Sex Pistols’ lead singer. The band play exciting, hard, basic punk rock. But more than that, John is the elected generalissimo of a new cultural movement scything through the grass roots disenchantment with the present state of mainstream rock. —Caroline Coon 1988: The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion (1977) Fuck the glory days. —Modern Life is War, “Fuck the Sex Pistols” (2007)

I was perhaps the person most surprised when my proposal for a new course on “The History of Punk Rock” was accepted. Changes in higher education curricula indicated that this manner of study did not fit in the “workforce development” model of the new business-oriented, corporate university. My impetus to create such a course originated in 2004 while teaching a somewhat similar class for US students at King’s College London titled, “Roots, Rock, Reggae: The Cultural Politics of British Punk Rock and Reggae Music”. Although I could not prohibit anyone from taking the class, I decided that, prior to registering, I would meet with students individually to discuss why they were taking it, what they hoped to learn, and what, if anything, they knew about punk rock. In all of these pre-registration meetings not one student exhibited anything less than intense enthusiasm. But, not long after the class began, some of the enthusiasm began to evaporate. This chapter examines the terrors and pleasures of teaching a part of rock music history that is deeply felt yet mostly misunderstood—not just by students but instructors as well. Therein notions of consensus history and canonicity are undone by the reality that what is definitively “punk” depends on when and where you entered the discussion, and the postmodernist impulse of valuing a multiplicity of cultural arrangements for an understanding, albeit uneasy, of punk rock’s inherent opposition to be musically and culturally circumscribed. 91

92 • John Dougan “Awesome” That was the word I most often heard from students when it was announced I would be offering an upper division elective,1 somewhat problematically titled “The History of Punk Rock” (the use of the definite article is heavily freighted with an implied certainty that my approach to the topic would be in some manner definitive—which was not the case). I, too, was excited by the response, tempered only by the reality that “The History of Punk Rock”, to many of them, sounded more like fun than real academic work. My methodology was straightforward and simple: teach a combination lecture/seminar that built its narrative upon chronological linearity, explored the genre’s development and, ultimately, would springboard into discussions of cultural geography, race, gender, class, generational conflict, youth subcultures, the business of punk rock and the roles authenticity plays in the creation and commodification of the music. All of this would be done by interrogating the complex relationships among performers, audiences (often one and the same) and the music business. I divided the course, though not equally, into three parts. First, pre-punk influences: mid-’60s American garage rock, teds, mods, skinheads, the British Invasion, Glam and Pub Rock, the etymology of the word “punk” as both adjective and noun, and its use in rock journalism. Part two concentrated on the so-called first wave of US and UK punk with an admittedly predictable focus on New York and London, but also the punk diaspora and its rippling effect in the “faraway towns” (Manchester, Leeds, Cleveland, Minneapolis, among others). Part three emphasized post-punk and new wave as well as various second- (and third-)wave sub-genres (e.g., hardcore, anarcho-punk, no wave, riot grrrl), concluding with the rise of grunge, the multiplatinum pop punk bands of the mid- to late ’90s and a rather perfunctory summation on “the state of punk today”. Resisting an historical path of least resistance by populating this history solely with musicians, I wanted to introduce my students to a diverse cohort of participants: garage rock historian and guitarist Lenny Kaye, CBGB’s owner Hilly Kristal, Rough Trade record shop and label chief Geoff Travis, photographer Roberta Bayley, Roxy nightclub owner Andy Czezowski, clothing designer Vivienne Westwood, journalist Caroline Coon, X-Ray Spex singer Poly Styrene, filmmaker/DJ Don Letts, graphic artist Jamie Reid, Punk magazine co-founder John Holmstrom, Sniffin’ Glue fanzine publisher Mark Perry and BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel (among many, many others), all of whom made valuable contributions to the creation of a multivalent punk aesthetic. There was a required listening component and, along with numerous articles and essays, two primary texts: Gillian McCain and Legs McNeil’s Please Kill Me and John Robb’s Punk Rock: An Oral History. Both of these, regrettably, went mostly unread. Although I was at this time (the late ’00s) in the vernacular of punk, an “old fart” (I was 21 the year the first Ramones album was released), I possessed the enthusiasm and naiveté to think such a task could be accomplished over the course of a semester. Reality, as it so often does, forcefully intruded to remind

Teaching Punk Rock History • 93 me that this would not be the case—there was simply not enough time to cover adequately all of the material. Worse still, for a number of students the class was, sadly, no longer awesome. Or as one student sheepishly confided to me midway through the term, this was simply way more than she wanted to learn about punk rock. A less generous person might use that last statement to bang on at length about student apathy; it is, after all, a course in punk rock, a chance to study something a bit different, of personal interest or curiosity, not some boring curricular requirement. And while the challenges in teaching this course were, at times, significant, placing the lion’s share of the blame on the students would be unfair. I would rather begin by admitting my own pedagogical shortcomings, some of them the result of me assuming I would be teaching students who were, to varying degrees, as stimulated and curious about the subject as me. However, before I do that, some context is important.

Punk Rock History Versus the Neoliberal University I am employed in the Department of Recording Industry, housed within the College of Media and Entertainment (formerly Mass Communication) at a large public university in the American South. Our department currently enrolls approximately 1,100 students in three concentrations (Music Business, Audio Production and Commercial Songwriting). The majority of these students come from working-class backgrounds and slightly more than a third are first-generation university students. I refer to them as students. However, increasingly deans and department chairs, deeply committed to economic neoliberalism and its place in higher education (or vice versa), have embraced the semantic shift that now classifies them as “customers”. This crass, reductive appellation is “premised upon unsustainable growth and unsecured debt, and government abandonment of its responsibilities, [and] is the human equivalent of strip-mining. It is a wholesale mortgage of the future in exchange for fleeting short terms gains” (Kreuter 2014). As faculty, we are no longer expected to “teach students” but to “train workers”, and in doing so, reformulate curriculum at the behest of administrators who, in consultation with marketing and branding “experts”, business leaders and, in some instances, the customers themselves, decide what skills will best equip graduates searching for gainful employment. However, as anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the music industry in the post-Napster era knows, the number of graduates in any music industry program far exceeds the number of available jobs (Jones 2017; Morrow et al. 2017). Although faculty are paid lip service from bureaucrats who claim that an appreciation of history, along with developing students’ critical thinking and writing skills, are fundamentally important to the university experience, I and others perceive that their disdain for this manner of higher education, as well as that of the customers is, at times, palpable. From the students’ perspective, that is not surprising insofar as they have received little in the way of prior instruction

94 • John Dougan and have limited, or non-existent, skills. As Jessica A. Schwartz notes, this pedagogical model, one that has diminished the role of the humanities and creative arts, “reward[s] intellectual entrepreneurs, technological innovators and competition, and imagines higher education as a business investment, rather than a right in which a burgeoning adult can intellectually rebel, lost in an ‘unproductive’ train of thought” (2015, 146). The result is a widening divide between what one of my colleagues simplistically refers to as “thinking” classes (what I teach), and “doing” classes (what he teaches). The latter are reckoned to be more valuable than the former because, it is assumed, “doing” classes are mainstays of job preparedness, whereas “thinking” classes are mere intellectual frivolity. And, as this class was an elective, some students treated it with similar indifference. After all, how was a class on punk rock going to help them get a job? Defining higher education so narrowly and instrumentally places a course on punk rock (and, by extension, popular music studies as a multi-disciplinary field that incorporates contributions from the humanities and social sciences) in a precarious position. No longer can it be assumed to be a necessary part of a curriculum. It has perhaps always been a struggle encouraging young undergraduates that an important part of their education is the privilege of intellectual exploration, of understanding not simply how to do things, but why they do them, and what impact it will have on the various communities in which they work and live. Higher education is about understanding history and its rhetoric, textual analysis, understanding the nuances of race, class, ethnicity and gender identity—a complex, imbricated world of popular (sometimes radical) art and commerce. This is a world that, according to Greil Marcus, gives its participants the opportunity to invent yourself to the point of stupidity, [to] give yourself a ridiculous new name, [to] appear in public in absurd clothes, [to] sing songs based on nursery rhymes or catchphrases or advertising slogans, and [to] do it for money, renown, to lift yourself up, to escape the life you were born to, to escape the poverty, the racism, the killing strictures of a life that you were raised to accept as fate, to make yourself a new person not only in the eyes of the world, but finally in your own eyes too. (2014, 18) My fear is that this message is getting lost and, in the future popular music studies, as part of a comprehensive music industry education, will be marginalized or vanish entirely as the champions of the new “corporate university” wield more power, and classrooms increasingly become what Henry Giroux calls “intellectual dead zones” (Giroux 2010, cited in Dines 2015, 134). The social and political conservatism undergirding neo-liberalism is wary of creative, progressive, free-thinking students who understand that any country’s popular music history is a door that opens to a greater, more nuanced understanding

Teaching Punk Rock History • 95 of social, cultural and political realities. At its best, popular music speaks to the heart of democratic expression—attacking stereotypes, questioning conventional wisdom and challenging authority. These attributes should, I would argue, belong in every music industry curriculum. My desire to teach this course, despite my personal left-leaning politics, was not solely predicated on refuting the neoliberal agenda, nor was it to teach punk rock history as a means of radicalizing students to take arms against a sea of troubles—or so I thought. It was not until later that I became cognizant my approach to the subject matter was, at the very least, implicitly influenced by proponents of critical pedagogy such as Paulo Freire and Henry Giroux, and while my familiarity with the former’s seminal treatise Pedagogy of the Oppressed was hardly definitive, I, too, believed in the intellectual import of such Freireanisms as the “correct method lies in dialogue”, and “liberating education consists in acts of cognition, and transferals of information” (Freire 2000, 67, 79). These aphorisms, I felt, formed a particularly apt pedagogical foundation for teaching punk rock history. The History That We Make Today! As much as I appreciated punk’s cultural prerogative, wherein “combinations of people, places, cultural practices, social relationships, art and ideas that coconstitute punk are rife with possibilities” (Furness 2012, 10), this was, first and foremost, a history class. This may strike some readers as delimited and quotidian, but it reflected the learning objectives of the majority of my students, whom I will describe in more detail momentarily. My plan, however, was not to reify a metanarrative (punk rock by its very oppositional nature, and constantly revised canon, resists such attempts at unanimity or, as proto-punks the MC5 asserted in 1969, “Let me be who I am/And let me kick out the jams”), nor was it to value rote memorization over context and reduce the course to a chronological assemblage of details. Calling on my background in American Studies I chose to incorporate American literary critic Van Wyck Brooks’s notion of a “useable past”, and combine it with historian Michael Galgano’s assertion that establishing historical memory requires the systematic reconstruction of human actions and events, ordered chronologically or topically and firmly rooted in evidence . . . [and] depends upon the acquisition of knowledge that is both broad and deep, incorporating facts, principles, theories, ideas, practices, and methods. (2007) What I neglected to take into consideration was how much a still evolving punk rock canon would collide headlong with students’ limited knowledge

96 • John Dougan of the subject, which often lacked a nuanced historical perspective and reduced the idea of punk to a set of mostly media-inspired (i.e. film, television and commercial advertising) sonic, political and sartorial clichés. When assigned to write a brief definition of punk due at our second meeting, before we had discussed or listened to anything in class, most described the music’s principal sonic characteristics in Ramones-like terms: “loud guitars”, “fast-paced”, “easy to play”, “based on three or four power chords”, “little or no soloing” and songs that are “short, fast, and simple”. Punk recordings were “cheaply made” and “barely produced”, in all ways sonically inferior to “classic rock” records and unconcerned with attaining commercial success (not necessarily true of the Ramones or many other bands associated with nascent punk scene at New York’s CBGB). During class discussions and in the aforementioned writing assignment the majority of students agreed that the political ideologies embedded in punk rock, irrespective of its geographic origins, were generally described as left wing (greatly problematized upon learning of Johnny Ramone’s strident right-wing conservatism), advocating anarchy (which nearly all of them viewed as synonymous with chaos rather than a discrete political philosophy), and defiantly working class, but also regarded as “nihilistic”. When asked to describe a punk rocker’s general appearance, most imagined someone resembling Exploited’s Wattie Buchan or Rancid’s Lars Frederickson—mowhawked, tattooed, and pierced, wearing a British punk band’s T-shirt—a look popularized on British postcards in the 1980s by so-called postcard punk, Matt Belgrano (www.Gettyimages.com). It is not that these gestures were not to some degree “punk”; rather, it was that, in sum, this became the students’ de facto authenticating strategy. Where I had erred was in overlooking simple, generationally shaped perceptions: the punk rock I had been exposed to in the mid- to late 1970s was, ostensibly, a subcultural designation often angrily at odds with mainstream culture, whereas theirs was an iteration that signaled the triumph of commodification that, first noted by the Clash “turn[ed] rebellion into money” (Strummer and Jones 1978). Representations of punk on American television and film in the late 1970s and early 1980s depicted it as a moral panic (not unlike Hollywood’s attempts at linking rock ‘n’ roll with juvenile delinquency in the 1950s) that, along with posing a serious threat to middle and upper classes’ propriety, inevitably led its easily duped individuals into a netherworld of social dysfunction and delinquency, culminating in either imprisonment or, in a worst case scenario, death.2 My students, however, had grown up with punk as deeply entrenched in mainstream popular culture. They were the children of the American shopping mall–based retail chain Hot Topic, which specializes in punk/goth clothing and accessories, and the punk rock/hip-hop traveling music festival Vans Warped Tour (named after the skateboard shoe manufacturer Vans); they heard NOFX songs on popular American teen/young adult shows like One Tree Hill, saw Sonic Youth on the Gilmore Girls, or had bands like the Cramps, Clash, Sex Pistols and Stiff

Teaching Punk Rock History • 97 Little Fingers name-checked on the early-aughts young adult ensemble drama set in California’s Orange County, The O.C. Thus, [B]y the 1990s, dissident youth subcultures were far less able to arouse moral panics despite an accelerated pace of style innovation. In the 2000s, subcultural style is worth less because a succession of subcultures has been commodified in past decades. “Subculture” has become a billion-dollar industry. Bare skin, odd piercings, and blue jeans are not a source of moral panics these days: they often help to create new market opportunities. (Clark 2004, 227) This is not to cynically argue that the manner in which I was exposed to punk rock was fundamentally purer or more authentic than the manner in which my students encountered punk, with the false piety common among older punks who unfairly dismiss later generations’ “first contact” punk narratives as mere simulacra (“Oh, your first punk show was Green Day, was it? Well, mine was the Ramones in 1977!”) (Sofianos et al. 2015, 218). Yet, as a popular music historian, it was important to me to be mindful of how diverse “first contact” narratives create history or, more accurately, histories. Simply put, the moment a person is introduced to and transformed by punk rock, and the media aiding and abetting said transformation, is where their history begins—their own, private “year zero”. John Robb, writing in the book many of my students neglected to read, notes that this particularization was endemic to punk from its outset: Everyone decided what punk was for them. There were endless arguments about what we were fighting for, what we should be wearing on our feet, what we should listen to, and how we were going to change the fucking world. (2006, 3) The course’s leitmotif, therefore, was to disabuse the students of such rigidly held notions and constructs. I wanted them to not see and hear punk rock as musically and ideologically static, but rather as capacious, complex and variegated. In the end, I wanted them to be comfortable with the assertion that at its best, and sometimes its worst, punk rock was, like the title of Don Letts’s documentary, “an attitude” or, better still, in the words of Minutemen founder, the late d.boon it was, truly, “whatever we made it to be”. Canonicity and Organization Notwithstanding such postmodern epistemology, my most pressing concern was organizing the material into a coherent whole and, in doing so, confronting the vexatious and problematic notion of a punk rock canon. Some might

98 • John Dougan argue that a canon by its very definition needs to be expertly or institutionally codified, whether by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, academics, musicians or music journalists and the journals that employ them (the writers and editors of Mojo and Rolling Stone being prime examples of this approach) in a flexible taxonomy that “embraces value, exemplification, authority, and a sense of temporal continuity (timelessness)” (Shuker 2016, 107).3 In my research on blues record collectors, historians and critics as creators of discourse and canons, I theorized canon formation to be a discourse of power reinforcing the values of the canonizers (Dougan 2001). Canonicity is reified by the creation of a hierarchy of “founding fathers” (e.g., in punk rock that grouping would doubtlessly include the Ramones, Sex Pistols, Clash and the Damned) and the placing of other performers into a hermeneutical circle that seeks to fit discrete elements into a complete whole. But canon formation begs simple, crucial questions: who and what gets in? And, if canon formation has to remain faithful to a musical tradition, what are the essential qualities needed for one to be included in that tradition? Although not a punk himself, T. S. Eliot argued that canons are not immune from influence from within, that an artist and their attendant works’ meaning and significance often changed with every addition to the canon. “No poet, no artist of any art, has complete meaning alone”, he wrote in 1920. “You must set [the artist] for contrast and comparison, among the dead as a principal or aesthetic, not merely historical criticism” (Dougan 2001, 197). This process historicizes (or “heroicizes”) contributions made by lesser-known punk artists who remain stylistically faithful to the tradition (i.e., sound) of the genre’s seminal figures. But digital era postmodernity and the ease and ubiquity of social media allows music consumers to create hyperindividualized, micro-canons (e.g., an iTunes library, a streaming audio playlist or, for some, a record collection) free from the purported tyranny of consensus history and the cultural stranglehold of other canonizers. Ann Powers, writing well over a decade ago, contends that this has always been the case due to the fact that “would-be canonizers, and every fan is one, can’t even agree on basic criteria” (1999). However, my need for a structure was not meant as a mandate for the students to genuflect at the altar of some inviolate grouping of names, dates, recordings and song titles, but as a means of stressing the importance of the people who, to varying degrees, helped shaped this amorphous entity known as punk rock while at the same time wedding them and their work to salient social, political and cultural contexts. To paraphrase Powers, I was not challenging them to a shouting match about greatness, but was proposing a canon in order to regulate the din. In doing so I was also attempting to use canonization to critique punk historiography while simultaneously appraising punk narratives whose inelastic structures were little more than explicitly ideological hagiographies. Although nearly all of my students had been exposed to punk rock in some manner prior to the course, their received knowledge varied greatly and

Teaching Punk Rock History • 99 resided in three categories. The minority of the class fell, somewhat appropriately, under a designation I deemed “hardcore”, their brains crammed full of arcane details, pledging an unwavering allegiance to a pure, yet inchoate, purity of sound and vision that “remain[s] exclusive only for so long as [it] remain[s] unknown or inaccessible to the majority” (Muggleton 2002, 64). As for the others, I grouped them, somewhat uncreatively, into two types: “sort of know” and “never heard of ”. The former might recognize a song or two by bands putatively regarded as canonical such as the Ramones, Sex Pistols and the Clash, and maybe a second- or third-generation band like Green Day, but did not know Joe Strummer from Johnny Rotten or that, at the time, three of the four original Ramones were dead. I should note that bands that fell under the designation of pop-punk, like Green Day, were loathed by the hardcore students; to them, mainstream success negatively marked such bands as “inauthentic”, or, more commonly, “sell-outs”. As for the latter group, well, “never heard of ” is a fairly self-evident designation. To them nearly everything was brand new and, as a result, a few of them experienced sustained epiphanies that quickly turned into intense enthusiasm—always a gratifying experience (as a teacher I am far less interested in “preaching to the choir” and far more interested in facilitating and witnessing inspirational discoveries). Others, however, reacted with near palpable disdain—furrowed brows and near-audible eye rolling; they were learning too much about punk rock. One thing was abundantly clear—irrespective of the grouping in which the students resided, all of them had gaps, some significant, in their knowledge of not just punk rock but also punk rock’s connective musical and cultural tissue. There were gaps in my knowledge too—just not as many. The gaps or blind spots in my knowledge spoke to punk’s heterogeneous nature—that punk’s diversity, be it sonically, sartorially or politically, was its strength and, as such, made it virtually impossible for anyone with a knowledge base deemed authoritative to fail to fully appreciate all of the genre’s participants and nuances. In order to separate punk from its various influences, I chose a variation on Nicholas Rombes’s view that punk was the product of a specific and unique set of artistic, cultural, and economic forces at work in the US in general and New York City in particular (though, unlike Rombes, I included the UK in general and London in particular) in the early to mid-1970s, and that no matter how far back we reach to look for punk antecedents, it is only in the 1970s that the movement became fully articulated in music, comics, and the underground—and eventually mainstream—press. (2005, 28–29) With this in mind, I was convinced that, whatever approach I took, my students needed to learn about the centrality of the Ramones to this narrative—and

100 • John Dougan to know them by names both real and pseudonymous. In a career spanning 22 years, 15 records and 2,263 gigs (of which I attended 15), the Ramones created the sonic grammar that, for better and for worse, became the musical template for nearly every band even obliquely described as punk. Yet, despite the ubiquity of “Blitzkrieg Bop” echoing throughout sports stadiums or used in commercial advertising, they remain, at least as far as my students were concerned, somewhat invisible. Equally important was that the band’s gestation be seen in relation to the violence, crime and financial insolvency that plagued New York City in the mid-1970s, creating the dystopian backdrop against which their version of rock music, soon to be christened punk, could be heard and, ultimately, flourish, along with that of the other bands who formed the punk cohort at CBGB. And while I chose not to mythologize the Ramones as punk’s inventors, I instead stressed how they “codified it effectively—its stance, sound and attitude, its rebellion and rejection of popular music conventions” (Gilmore 2016, 44). Intriguingly, slightly more than midway through the term a majority of the students heard the Ramones as the only “real” punk band to emerge from this scene, whereas Patti Smith, Blondie, Talking Heads, Television, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids were not considered punk per se, but punk by association. As one student noted, “they were at the right place at the right time and while they’re not punk rock, punk rock gave them the chance to be heard”— an observation that, tantalizingly, destabilizes one canon and replaces it with another, and sees punk as a unique approach to rock music rather than an indurate, static subgenre. Perhaps we were getting somewhere—or was the class simply devolving into a game of “punk/not a punk?” Similarly, the existence of the Sex Pistols, the Damned and the Clash become more sharply drawn in relation to England’s long, hot summer of 1976 and its attendant racial tensions, high unemployment and striking trade unionists. It was a time when “apocalypse was in the air and the rhetoric of punk was drenched in apocalypse: the stock imagery of crisis and sudden change” (Hebdige 1979, 27). To some of my students, situating this music and these musicians in specific sociopolitical contexts was intensely frustrating, and the looks on some of their faces told the tale. If the organizational and contextual choices I made were obvious, pedantic even, it is a charge to which I plead nolo contendere. Any time one approaches popular music history by employing a methodology that seems to round up the usual suspects, skepticism and criticism are inevitable. Marc Bayard, who taught a punk rock history class at Tufts University, claims that he did so partly to “dispel the misrepresentation of punk to students with little or no knowledge of what this scene really contains or has to offer” (1999, 11). He asserts that punk has suffered greatly from media-fostered stereotypes as well as those of us in academia who are guilty of over-emphasizing the importance of the Sex Pistols (to the exclusion of whom he never makes

Teaching Punk Rock History • 101 clear) cluttering up the world with “dozens and dozens of lousy academic and pop music histories . . . about them”. Roger Sabin echoes this sentiment writing that the history of punk and its attendant canon have been organized around too many top-down BBC documentaries . . . [focusing on] pogoing with Malcolm [McLaren] at some legendary Sex Pistols concert in London. [Punk rock is] about how the movement was lived by tens of thousands of teenagers all over the country and the bands they loved. (2007) This statement reiterates something Sabin wrote years earlier in the collection Punk Rock, So What! where he notes that what problematizes the debate over punk is that, too often, those writing and re-writing the genre’s narrative, in an effort to reify a consensus history, use fundamentally unsound criteria: This is not to say that outstanding analyses do not exist; they do. It is simply that overall the consideration of punk has been hamstrung by two things: the narrowness of the frame of reference (how many more times must we hear the Sex Pistols story?), and the pressure to romanticize (usually equating with seeing punk as a form of nostalgia). The aggregate result of this has been to solidify our notions of what went on during punk into a kind of orthodoxy—i.e. whenever we approach a new piece of writing on the subject, we think we already know what it meant. (Sabin 1999, 2) This “narrowness of the frame of reference” that Sabin mentions, remains as much a part of contemporary punk rock history as it did when he wrote those words 18 years ago. The year-long 2016 celebration Punk London, (un)ironically backed by former London mayor, Tory MP and Brexit proponent Boris Johnson, and subsidized by the UK’s Heritage Lottery Fund, firmly situates punk in the capital and places the Sex Pistols and the Damned at the heart of the story. This shop-worn metanarrative elides any significant discussion of bands and fans in the faraway towns (and from other countries, for example, the Saints from Brisbane, Australia) and the contributions of women to the socalled year-zero of punk. An attempt to rectify the latter issue was made by Slits guitarist Viv Albertine who, appearing at a Punk 1976–1978 event at the British Library in 2016, defaced a placard by replacing references to the Sex Pistols with her former band’s name along with scribbling in the question “What about the women?” Not content with mere graffiti, lingerie entrepreneur Joe Corré, the son of the late Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren and his partner, clothing designer and punk-era fashionista Vivienne Westwood, publicly burned his collection of

102 • John Dougan punk clothing and memorabilia estimated to be worth £5 million, in late 2016. Doing so articulated both [the] depth of his disgust at how complete punk’s commodification by the mainstream has now become and his anger at how a genuine moment of political and social rupture has been rendered meaningless by the deadening hand of the heritage industry. (O’Hagan 2016) As noted by Guardian writer Sean O’Hagan, himself not a supporter of Punk London, images and ephemera proliferate on a programme of punk nostalgia that consigns that subversive moment to the museum like dada and other cultural outbursts before it. Punk London is conclusive proof, if needed, of the French thinker Guy Debord’s assertion that consumer capitalism drains authentic lived experience of meaning. (2016) In theory, I see the validity of both sides in this debate. It is easy, and maybe a little lazy, to fall back on a Ramones-Pistols-Clash holy trinity approach to punk, foregrounding their contributions instead of, say, Wire, or Crass, or X-Ray Spex (all of whom are required listening in my class). To Bayard, Sabin and perhaps to many reading this, the Sex Pistols story is old news, but to a classroom of Millennials it represents an historical moment that has slipped far below the horizon of recognition. So when I screen Julian Temple’s The Filth and the Fury, Don Letts’s slightly sanitized Clash biography From Westway to the World or Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields’s fascinating Ramones documentary End of the Century, the result is overwhelmingly successful, leading to animated discussions of youth subcultures, punk as moral panic, DIY culture, the relationship between performer and audience, punk’s cultural intertextuality and, as it relates specifically to the Clash, how the exaggerated militancy of punk’s musical “year zero” mentality (“No Elvis/Beatles/or the Rolling Stones/ in 1977” barked Joe Strummer in the Clash song “1977”) morphed into the “anything goes” aesthetic of albums like London Calling or Sandinista. Studying the Past and the Present: History’s Not Bunk! So, by constructing a punk rock Mount Rushmore I, too, had become part of the problem. I was guilty of further calcifying an already rigid orthodoxy of punk rock history, which begs the question: why (or how) would anyone teaching a class such as this not, to some degree, do the same? I am sure there are interesting arguments to the contrary but, running the risk of being glibly

Teaching Punk Rock History • 103 dismissed as closed-minded, I remain at best skeptical, at worst unconvinced. After all, how can the teaching of popular music history be problematized or demythologized without demonstrating how an “accepted” version of history was constructed in the first place? The challenge is not to treat earlier historical constructions as inviolable (after all, punk is not) but to proceed in a manner in which “conventions need to be questioned, accepted truths challenged, rules bent and broken, voices raised” (Bestley 2015, 123). Earlier I mentioned that among my goals for this course was to teach a history of punk rock that was considerably more than merely a chronological assemblage of facts. I am, however, a believer in the importance of comprehending and remembering factual information. Dismiss it as rote memorization if you will, yet I reject such a facile, pejorative description. As with any pedagogical tool, overuse limits it efficacy; however, in concert with contextual analysis, the ability of students to remember important names, dates, places, song titles and so forth becomes a valuable asset in the development of their analytical skills. To that end, I have used exams and listening quizzes as methods of reinforcing the importance of this ability and as ways of not-so-gently encouraging students to keep up with the reading and required listening, as well as paying attention in class. The unpleasant truth, as it relates to the study of popular music history, or any manner of history for that matter, is that students frequently dislike and do not see the value in learning and remembering such essential details, dismissing them as boring, useless trivia. Trivia, by definition, is information both insignificant and obscure. Knowing the names of each one of the Sex Pistols, the title of their only LP, and the year it was released is hardly insignificant or obscure, but some students see it as no different than my expecting them to know Johnny Rotten’s birthday (January 31, 1956) or his astrological sign (Aquarius). I will admit to walking a fine line here because of my own obsession with this level of detail and the absurd notion that nearly everyone shares my zeal. As one who grew up in the analog era, the accumulation of data stored in the cranial hard drive otherwise known as the limbic system of the medial temporal lobe, and the ability to recall said data, was how I, as a rock critic and record collector, quite unfairly, separated real fans from dilettantes and poseurs. As Matthew Bannister notes in his insightful essay on indie guitar rock, canonism and white masculinities, men often negotiate the terrain of popular culture in such a manner because it provides them with “a sense of belonging, while at the same time distancing them from more direct forms of social engagement”. Using the male characters in Nick Hornby’s novels Fever Pitch (1994) and High Fidelity (1996) as examples, Bannister illustrates how these men find “comfort in the world of statistics” and “safety within this numerical, mathematical world”. Such is the grammar of homosocial bonding wherein enumeration often supplants theorization. It is a world in which male subjectivity is foregrounded by a need for statistical standardization, a “world of pure achievement” (Bannister 2006, 90). This is

104 • John Dougan a strategy that I now understand as a form of “insider” discourse—mastering a corpus of factual information that excludes outsiders and represents a masculinist inclination towards systematicity and organization. This often blocks female entrance, or values information that, for women, “[is] of little use in navigating the terrains of social intercourse” (Straw 1997, 5). But what once was considered an enviable skill is now regarded as a complete waste of time. In the digital age there is no need to remember as much because one can simply look it up and hope that the source is accurate (some of my students do this constantly during class partly to answer questions from the reading they did not do, and to fact-check me). These are not the misgivings of a Luddite; I love that as my limbic system ages and occasionally crashes, I can easily look up what I need and reboot the system. However, I become irritable when students exhibit a conspicuous lack of interest in what I consider to be fairly rudimentary knowledge of rock history. As a colleague of mine noted, with tongue firmly planted in cheek: “They want to work in the music industry, but they don’t want to learn any music history. They’ll make great major label executives”. In the analog era, a convincing argument could be made that such gaps in knowledge were the result of a dearth of source materials and lack of widespread availability. It was simply harder and more time consuming to acquire information and doing so was the province of nerds such as myself who were, for a time, employed as rock critics/journalists. But, as I tell my students from day one, since the digital era allows for instantaneous access to information, there is simply no excuse for not knowing. Unfamiliar with a band? Look it up! Go to a site like Allmusic.com, where even the most obscure punk bands have biographies and discographies (I know—I wrote dozens of them). Some students do, yet others are far less eager to do the necessary work—it is simply not awesome. The obvious irony here is that despite a surfeit of readily available information and music, sometimes both are ignored as merely noise. My charge to my students was simple: people made punk rock—musicians, fans, graphic artists, filmmakers, writers and zine publishers, clothing designers, club owners, independent record store owners and the occasional farsighted major label record executive; and all of us are responsible for knowing, and in some instances, celebrating, what they did, how they did it and what it means. Nearly all of the students I have quoted in this class believed in what Greil Marcus argues is punk rock’s irreducible essence: “a desire to change the world, a desire that begins with the demand to live not as an object of history but as a subject of history—to live as if something actually depended on one’s actions” (1998, 3–4). As far as I am concerned, to this end it is worth remembering names, dates, albums and song titles. In fact, that is the least we can do. To reiterate something I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter—this class is an elective, one of many upper division electives a student can take to fulfil their graduation requirements. Because of the specificity of the title I

Teaching Punk Rock History • 105 have to assume that everyone enrolled, irrespective of their prior knowledge or personal motivation, really wants to be there. There are, however, moments when their interest and desire to learn could be called into question. Case in point: during one class, after a brief listening quiz that took all of 10 minutes, I told the students that the remainder of the time would be spent discussing London in 1976, the Notting Hill Carnival riot (which led to Joe Strummer and Mick Jones penning the Clash song “White Riot”), and understanding the difference between anarchy as a political ideology and chaos as, well, chaos! A Thames Television report of the Notting Hill riot I had downloaded from YouTube (1976) was interrupted by a technical glitch. As I hunkered down behind the lectern to fix the problem, four students in the back of the room snuck out. Since there were only 25 students enrolled, their absence was conspicuous. Complaining and finger-pointing is far too easy. I consider myself incredibly lucky to teach this course. And despite the previous story (for the record, I discussed the incident with the students privately and they were contrite and apologetic), it is a lot of fun, I look forward to it. That I struggle to make it better, more interesting, and more relevant are good problems to have. That I have students who tell me how much they loved hearing Television, the Mekons, Gang of Four, Crass, Throbbing Gristle or the Slits for the first time is, along with being incredibly gratifying, confirmation that punk music and culture, in all their myriad manifestations, retain their extraordinary value. That I can’t make everyone as enthusiastic as I am, or appreciate the bands I love, or understand the importance of historical context, or care that important names, dates, albums and song titles need to be remembered, is exasperating, but motivational as well. What I hope my students keep with them, even the ones that have learned more than they wanted to, is that punk rock is like a stone hurled into a pool of still water, creating waves that, at their outermost, seem faint, but are no less influential or worthy of consideration. With that in mind, and with a little more skill and patience on my part, eventually, we will all find our way back to “awesome”. Postscript This chapter began as a presentation to the US chapter of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music in 2011. Since then, I have taught “The History of Punk Rock” a total of three times—the number it takes, I think, for one to begin getting comfortable with a course. Some things have changed for the better; some problematic issues remain, frustratingly, the same. Overall, however, the course has improved, as has my ability to reach students and impress upon them that Marcus’s claim to live as a subject rather than an object of history is, now, more relevant and important than ever. The last time I taught the class, a student slipped a note under my office door at the end of the semester; part of her note read: “The History of Punk Rock won’t land me a dream

106 • John Dougan salary, but you opened my eyes to music as an art to appreciate. For that you are worth all three years of tuition it took to get to your class”. What this says to me is that, ultimately, the binaries born of the neoliberal discourse in higher education (i.e., thinking vs. doing, skills-based employability vs. learning for the sake of learning) are completely and utterly false. That the rhetoric of the corporate university is used to reinforce such allegedly impermeable boundaries is further evidence of the fatuity of this discourse. Increasingly, efforts to vocationalize degree programs are being met with resistance from faculty and students (especially those in the fine arts and humanities) who understand that higher education does not function exclusively as a form of workforce development. Although the tension between “thinking and doing” will not disappear, at least not in the short term, this tension can be managed even as universities create more fast-track undergraduate and graduate degree programs all the while emphasizing “value education” (Billeaux and Kahle 2015). Clearly, a course on punk rock history stands far outside the parameters of such academic reductionism (and its attendant anti-intellectualism) but, because of punk’s inherently oppositional nature, challenges the efforts of neoliberal education’s standardized, business-friendly model. As Schwartz notes, “Moreover, [this] opposition has been a constant, and it has been in pursuit of what many educational reformers, along the lines of John Dewey, believe is the ultimate goal of education: democracy” (Schwartz 2015, 150). So, when I receive such positive affirmation from a student, I can only think: Punk’s not dead. And now I’m sure.

Notes 1. This denotes a course for third- and fourth-year undergraduate students that counts towards a required total of upper division hours but does not fulfil any other specific degree requirements. 2. On American television the two most infamous examples of punk as moral panic were on the popular police drama Chips (1977–1983) and the investigative medical series Quincy M.E. (1976– 1983). The former aired an episode on January 31, 1982, titled “Battle of the Bands” wherein a punk named Pain thuggishly and violently attempts to sabotage a “battle of the bands” contest eventually won by a “new wave” Blondie-style band called Snow Pink. A December 1, 1982, episode of Quincy M.E. titled “Next Stop, Nowhere” featured, yet again, a thuggish, violent punk rock band called Mayhem (no relation to the Norwegian black metal band). The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) description of the episode reads: “Quincy takes a look into the world of punk rock, a music that he believes may have contributed to the death of a teenage boy”. Both of these episodes were doubtlessly influenced by the 1982 low-budget exploitation film Class of 1984, wherein a new teacher at an inner-city high school wages a violent battle against a gang of punks. 3. In keeping with Shuker’s appraisal of canonizers and their canons, Rolling Stone recently (issue number 1259, 21 April 2016) contributed to the taxonomical debate with yet another “authoritative” list—in this instance, “The 40 Greatest Punk Albums of All Time”. The seven writers surveyed placed, unsurprisingly, the Ramones debut first, followed by the Clash’s debut, and Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols third. Of the 40 recordings listed, 17 were from the 1970s (although I would contend that Funhouse by the Stooges and the first New York Dolls album should have been elided as pre-punk), 16 from the 1980s, five from the 1990s and only two released since 2000: 2003’s Fever to Tell by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and 2014’s Deep Fantasy by White Lung.

Teaching Punk Rock History • 107 References Bannister, Matthew. 2006. “ ‘Loaded’: Indie Guitar Rock, Canonism, White Masculinities.” Popular Music 25, 1, 77–95. Bayard, Marc. 1999. “Introduction.” In The Philosophy of Punk: More Than Noise! edited by Craig O’Hara. San Francisco: AK Press. Bestley, Russ. 2015. “(I Want Some) Demystification: Deconstructing Punk.” Punk & Post-Punk 4, 2&3, 117–127. Billeaux, Michael, and Tricia Kahle. 2015. “Resisting the Corporate University.” Jacobin. www. jacobinmag.com/2015/09/graduate-workers-university-missouri-mizzou-scott-walkerwisconsin-unions-labor/. Clark, Dylan. 2004. “The Death and Life of Punk, the Last Subculture.” In Post-Subcultures Reader, edited by David Muggleton and Rupert Weinzierl. London: Bloomsbury Academic Press. Dines, Mike. 2015. “Reflections on the Peripheral: Punk, Pedagogy and the Domestication of the Radical.” Punk & Post-Punk 4, 2&3, 129–140. Dougan, John. 2001. Two Steps From the Blues: Creating Discourse and Constructing Canons in Blues Criticism. PhD dissertation, College of William and Mary. Print. Dougan, John. 2006. “Objects of Desire: Canon Formation in Blues Record Collecting.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 18, 1, 40–65. Freire, Paulo. 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition. London: Bloomsbury Academic Press. Furness, Zack (Ed.). 2012. “Introduction: Attempted Education and Righteous Accusations.” In Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower. Brooklyn, NY, Minor Compositions. Galgano, Michael J. 2007. “Liberal Learning and the History Major.” American Historical Association. www.historians.org/jobs-and-professional-development/statements-standards-and-guidelinesof-the-discipline/liberal-learning-and-the-history-major. Gilmore, Mikal. 2016. “The Curse of the Ramones: How a Band of Misfits Launched Punk Rock.” Rolling Stone. April 21. Giroux, Henry. 2010. Rethinking Education as the Practice of Freedom: Paulo Freire and the Promise of Critical Pedagogy. www.truth-out.org/archive/item/87456:rethinking-education-as-thepractice-of-freedom-paulo-freire-and-the-promise-of-critical-pedagogy. Hebdige, Dick. 1979. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. New York: Methuen. Jones, Michael. 2017. “Teaching Music Industry in Challenging Times: Addressing the Neoliberal Employability Agenda in Higher Education at a Time of Music-Industrial Turbulence.” In The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music Education, edited by Gareth Dylan Smith, Zack Moir, Matt Brennan, Shara Rambarran, and Phil Kirkman, 341–354. Abingdon, Routledge. Kreuter, Nate. 2014. “Customer Mentality.” Inside Higher Ed, www.insidehighered.com/ views/2014/02/27/essay-critiques-how-student-customer-idea-erodes-key-values-highereducation. Marcus, Greil. 1998. Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Marcus, Greil. 2014. The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Morrow, Guy, Emily Gilfillan, Iqbal Barkat, and Phillis Sakinofsky. 2017. “Popular Music Entrepreneurship in Higher Education: Facilitating Group Creativity and Spin-off Formation Through Internship Programmes.” In The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music Education, edited by Gareth Dylan Smith, Zack Moir, Matt Brennan, Shara Rambarran, and Phil Kirkman, 328–340. Abingdon: Routledge. Muggleton, David. 2002. Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style. London: Bloomsbury Academic Press. O’Hagan, Sean. 2016. “Has It Really Come to This—Punk as Heritage Culture?” Guardian. March 16. Powers, Ann. 1999. “In Rock’s Canon, Anyone and Everyone.” New York Times. December 26. Robb, John. 2006. Punk Rock: An Oral History. London: Ebury Press. Rombes, Nicholas. 2005. Ramones. London and New York: Continuum. Sabin, Roger (Ed.). 1999. “Introduction.” In Punk Rock: So What! London: Routledge. Sabin, Roger (Ed.). 2007. “Introduction.” In Hitsville UK: Punk in the Faraway Towns, edited by Russ Bestley, booklet published in conjunction with the exhibition Hitsville UK at the Millais Gallery, Southampton, England, April 12–May 26, 2007. Schwartz, Jessica A. 2015. “Listening in Circles: Punk Pedagogy and the Decline of Western Music Education.” Punk & Post-Punk 4, 2&3, 141–158.

108 • John Dougan Shuker, Roy. 2016. Understanding Popular Music Culture, 5th edition. London: Routledge. Sofianos, Lisa, Robin Ryde, and Charlie Waterhouse. 2015. The Truth of Revolution, Brother: An Exploration of Punk Philosophy, 2nd edition. London: Situation Press. Straw, Will. 1997. “Sizing up Record Collections: Gender and Connoisseurship in Rock Music Culture.” In Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender, edited by Sheila Whiteley. New York: Routledge. Strummer, Joe, and Mick Jones. 1978. “(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais.” The Clash. Recording. Thames Television. 1976. Notting Hill Riot. https://youtu.be/MCda7RDY9JM.

8

“Here We Are Now, Educate Us”: The Punk Attitude, Tenets and Lens of Student-Driven Learning RYLAN KAFARA

Introducing The History of Punk In 2010, 40 years after the English translation of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed was published, Henry A. Giroux lamented on the website Truthout as to the state of mainstream educational institutions in the United States. The article, titled “Lessons to Be Learned from Paulo Freire as Education Is Being Taken Over by the Mega Rich”, asserted that Freire’s focus on critical thinking and engagement was more important than ever (Giroux 2010). Giroux had explained the reasoning behind this assertion in his 2006 book, On Critical Pedagogy. The work detailed how no divide existed between the university and the corporate world, that sessional workers replaced tenured faculty, and how the learning process was now similar to the fulfilment of a business contract (Giroux 2006). In 2014’s Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education, Giroux explicitly framed these changes as consequences of the university being susceptible to neoliberalism as the driving ideology of our era, meaning the “death of the university as a center of critique, vital source of civic education, and crucial public good” (Giroux 2014, 16). Music educator Randall Allsup concurs, arguing “market forces are rapidly reshaping relationships between teachers, students and their forms of study” (Allsup 2015, 251). If traditional higher education has become so intrinsically connected to the free market that learning becomes a commodity, what avenues exist to develop critical thinking, and resist what Freire called the banking system of education? The History of Punk began with the aim of creating such an avenue. It is an ongoing, free course started in May 2012 in Edmonton, Canada. The idea to begin the course came with the realization that the networks and knowledge I built during my MA in history should continue to grow and be shared. This happened at an opportune time; an autonomous learning collective had recently formed called the Edmonton Free School. It offered free seminars, reading groups and events open to anyone interested on topics ranging from Karl Marx to zombies. The Edmonton Free School’s organizers believed The 109

110 • Rylan Kafara History of Punk was a good match for the ethos behind the collective, which was creating an informal space to share skills, interests and knowledge. The History of Punk launched as a course offered by the Edmonton Free School. My own involvement with the collective was restricted largely to teaching The History of Punk, as the free school did not thrive for long, with the main organizers moved on to other cities and projects. The History of Punk, however, continues on as a free and accessible learning opportunity in Edmonton. The course provides a way for like-minded people within and outside of the academy to examine issues such as inequality, racism and environmentalism through punk music, culture and activism. Its aim is to create opportunities for critical thinking, and then share this approach within Edmonton’s local punk community and on social media. Evoking and enacting the punk attitude, and through what I call the “punk lens” in teaching the course, my hope is to circumvent or at least mitigate the tendency towards a banking system of education, a hierarchal form of learning based on the assumption that the teacher holds all the knowledge, which they “deposit” in the student like a bank transaction (Freire 2000). Such a vision of education can be identified within official, increasingly normative understandings of the university’s purpose, which focus on its role in fulfilling the needs of employers and business, and thus upholding a nation’s prowess in the global economy. Instead of treating learning like financial planning, The History of Punk seeks to open people up to inquisitiveness, different perspectives and the importance of their own ideas. This is predicated on Freire’s view of learning. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire outlined the role of education in reacting against conformity, and in taking thoughtful action against oppression. Aspects of the punk movement were driven by creativity and a rejection of the status quo (Rombes 2009), and as such this drive within punk paralleled Freire’s outlook. Indeed, the punk attitude (and lens) and Freire’s perspectives on education share a similar framework for thinking critically and engaging with the world. This view is the foundation for The History of Punk. When Freire wrote his work, there were many barriers facing those whose interest in learning did not match societal qualifications for access to education. This remains the case today. Cost, admission requirements, age and personal challenges can all present barriers to participating in formal education settings. The History of Punk offers a means of resistance to these educational barriers. Crucially, it also offers opportunities for learning outside of mainstream institutions. Neoliberal policies and concurrent societal expectations demean the value of the humanities and social sciences while placing importance on preparation for joining the professional workforce upon graduation (Collini 2012). Higher education becomes a vocational training school for a society that has long viewed university as a gateway to the middle and upper classes (Geiger 2015). As such, students may be required to take courses related to professionalization rather than critical thinking. This results in a system where, as Giroux

“Here We Are Now, Educate Us” • 111 asserts, “students are basically consumers and faculty providers of a saleable commodity such as a credential or a set of workplace skills” (Giroux 2014, 17). In this neoliberal climate, chances to excel in other academic areas are limited, especially considering the heavy workload in vocational disciplines. Once students graduate and find sustainable employment, they may look for leisure opportunities that align with their interests and outlook, and where they can cultivate critical thinking. The History of Punk participants do this, and make connections between their own academic backgrounds and expertise and the issues engaged with on the course. For instance, a student trained in biological science used her knowledge of divergent and convergent evolution to analyze how punk developed since the 1970s, and to assess whether it shares traits with earlier musical forms such as folk. This fosters an interdisciplinary learning environment where everyone shares their own areas of expertise. Additionally, it facilitates “a fair, just, and inclusive curricula that represents multiple and alternative perspectives and knowledge” (Robertson et al. 2015, xx). Creating a safe learning environment for resisting neoliberal doctrine and supporting alternative outlooks is important, as sharing viewpoints oppositional to dominant ideology within mainstream institutional settings can be met with reprisal. This was the case for a The History of Punk student, an Iranian electrical engineer, who was working in Alberta’s oil industry in 2013. After an oil sands tour, he shared his opinions with colleagues. Dissenting from the expected attitude, he expressed his dismay at the environmental destruction that had resulted from the industry. This was met with deflective, demeaning and dismissive retorts from coworkers. As he related in a subsequent The History of Punk class, the student was disappointed by the mindset, social conditioning and general culture of the oilfield, where it was tacitly accepted that unsustainable resource extraction was driving livelihoods, and was thereby beyond reproach. The workers were talented and adept in their field, but chose to continue to operate within a system that was plainly doing damage to the world. As Saskia Sassen recently argued in her work Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy, for the past 30 years, a system of accumulation and concentration has created “shrinking economies in much of the world, escalating destructions of the biosphere all over the globe, and the reemergence of extreme forms of poverty and brutalization where we thought they had been eliminated” (Sassen 2014, 12). This “decaying” late capitalist system puts critical thinkers at odds with its structure and makes it challenging to effect change within it (Malott and Peña 2004). By speaking out against the destruction and its acceptance, the student was unconsciously heeding Freire’s warning not to be trapped in “circles of certainty” (Freire 2000, 38). Freire placed this certainty within sectarianism, a limiting view which was “an obstacle to the emancipation of mankind”. The sectarian does not budge from their “truth”. This restrictive viewpoint lacks a conscientização (critical consciousness), and thereby inhibits any constructive

112 • Rylan Kafara reaction against conformity. Freire was writing for the radical, who, rather than suffering from “an absence of doubt” like the sectarian, was someone “not afraid to meet the people or to enter into a dialogue with them” (Freire 2000, 39). This student was not afraid to do exactly that, and The History of Punk provided him with an additional forum for doing so. In Richard Shaull’s foreword to Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he finished by outlining how education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the “practice of freedom”, the way in which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world. (Shaull in Freire 2000, 34) Conformity to the system creates large cohorts influenced by social and educational conditioning, which the aforementioned electrical engineer experienced to his detriment. The History of Punk aims to do the opposite, allowing people the opportunity to engage with issues in a group learning setting where nobody has to agree. This chapter explains how the pedagogical approach of a student-driven, non-hierarchical course was developed through the tenets and the historiography of, and an attitude related to, punk. It must be acknowledged that “punk” is a nebulous term, and this piece primarily engages with punk’s North American manifestations. Although Freire did not originally write in relation to a North American context, his conversations with Highlander Folk School cofounder Myles Horton demonstrated the applicability of Freire’s ideas (Bell et al. 1990). This chapter shows that taking professional knowledge from various disciplines and critical perspectives, and engaging with them in a risk-free learning environment, allows for the positive exchange of ideas between students and teachers. Additionally, this chapter discusses the use of social media platforms and community radio in making the ideas and information of the class as accessible as possible. Finally, it argues that utilizing a punk framework as the foundation for this engagement creates a form of conscientizacao helping to resist neoliberalism’s influence on education. “I Won’t Open Letter Bombs for You:” Choosing the Attitude for Participatory Learning The year 1970, when Pedagogy of the Oppressed was first published in English, marked the beginning of the decade associated with the start of the punk movement (Savage 2001; McNeil and McCain 1996). In the United States, punk was, in part, a reaction to political and cultural developments. Perhaps not surprisingly, in hindsight, the end of the 1970s was the period when neoliberalism

“Here We Are Now, Educate Us” • 113 began (Harvey 2005). The United States’ economic and industrial might weakened with the rise of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a group of countries controlling a significant amount of the world’s oil reserves and production. Additionally, the US auto industry declined, the country was defeated in the Vietnam War and US President Nixon resigned. This all shook the country’s myth of exceptionalism—that it was a City on the Hill, setting an example for the rest of the world. As Godfrey Hodgson explained, “the balance of power was shifting, from working Americans to their corporate masters, from ordinary Americans to the very rich, and from the center Left to the far Right” (Hodgson 2009, xi). Concurrently, the participants of the 1960s counterculture became major consumers of mainstream culture. Popular musicians lived lifestyles far removed from the everyday, consumers embraced the music of people who played the perfect guitar solo, flew across the world in private planes and had legions of fans fawning at their every move. In other words, fans were connecting to a fantasy allowing them to escape their reality. Just as punk resisted the professionalization and “celebritization” of the music industry, The History of Punk aims to take the same approach of amateurism in resisting the credentialism of formal education. By the mid-1970s, in the midst of the embrace of escapism, bands such as Talking Heads, the Ramones, the Patti Smith Group and Television had converged on New York City music venue, CBGB. CBGB stood for “Country, Bluegrass, Blues, and Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers” (McNeil and McCain 1996). CBGB is where punk was nurtured initially. Richard Hell, a member of the band Television, believed that a vital element of rock and roll (for the term punk was yet to emerge as a definitional category) was “the knowledge you invent yourself ” Heylin 2008, 18). It was his band that convinced CBGB owner Hilly Kristal to let early punks perform there (McNeil and McCain 1996). According to Lenny Kaye from the Patti Smith Group, “each of the bands at CBGB was like a little idea” (Heylin 2008, 12). In response to the excesses of mainstream culture, some musicians and artists adopted a style of musical performance stressing passion over talent as a reactionary counterpoint to ostentatiously virtuosic performance norms that had become dominant (Rombes 2009). “Punk” categorized many different artists that were diverse musically, yet were each forged in conscious opposition to the mainstream. As such, punks were bound by the same reactionary ethos in which an attitude of creativity and participation was established. As for who was participating, assumptions can be made for the punk community being composed entirely of straight white men and women. Certainly, any examination of the CBGB scene needs to include Lester Bangs’s “White Noise Supremacists” (Bangs 1979). Thankfully, however, as the punk network developed in North America into the 1980s and beyond, the milieu became much more diverse. The establishment of a space for those who felt rejected by mainstream society resulted in a mélange of races, voices, messages, outlooks and ideas (Duncombe 1997; Duncombe and Tremblay 2011). Often, the

114 • Rylan Kafara perspectives represented were at stark odds with societal norms, or were at the very least unnoticed or unaccepted by the mainstream. This ranged from not buying into the consumer culture that was embraced as the United States moved into the Reagan era, to being a member of a marginalized group within society, such as among racial and sexual minorities (O’Hara 1999). Punks’ political and ideological beliefs spanned the spectrum; notable participants were Republicans, like Johnny Ramone, and many identified with the far right. Bands such as Washington DC’s Bad Brains performed alongside Vancouver’s DOA, even though the former’s members were Rastafari and the latter was fronted by Joey “Shithead” Keithley, a staunch atheist (Keithley 2011). Certainly, ideological differences divided the punk community. Yet, participating in the punk scene meant engaging with and not avoiding these differences. Such engagement highlighted social cleavage, as those marginalized in the community fought for freedom of expression and an equal voice. Reflecting on the tensions within the community, Bad Brains member Darryl Jenifer stated: Here we were black homeboys checking out Rock & Roll and vice versa. It’s all just music now, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be, all about open-mindness. There was a lot of separatism back in the day. By checking each other’s cultures out, barriers and stereotypes are broken down. And that’s what we need. (Blush 2001, 117) That inquisitiveness and inclusiveness neither came easily then, nor today. It is an ongoing process that requires constant critical thinking and self-awareness. It also needs input from others, especially those who do not share your views, or are willing to question them. Historically, not everyone in the punk community got along. Not everyone had the same opportunities, or was treated fairly. While women often participated, it was not until the Riot Grrrl scene formed in the 1990s that women achieved a somewhat equal footing to men, or at least carved out a scene of their own. Even then, the shift only applied to a few women, with the majority still excluded (for struggles of women in the UK, see Reddington 2012; for California female punks, see Gonzales 2016). However, it is important to maintain a critical consciousness in engaging with society’s contradictions, both in the mainstream and the underground. Maintaining this is key to how The History of Punk tries to address the banking system of education, social issues and the narrowing of accessibility to information and ideas in media. This resistance was guided by punk tenets, as outlined by Craig O’Hara (1999). He traced the development of punk philosophy and how it extends outside of music. He highlighted: To those “involved” in the scene, (more than going to gigs and purchasing records) punk becomes something else and something more. It becomes

“Here We Are Now, Educate Us” • 115 a community and a real avenue for shaping ideas and making changes both personal and in the world. (O’Hara 1999, 12) Towards a Punk Community If The History of Punk was going to be such a community, other punk traits would be instrumental in its framework. These traits included ignoring hierarchy, everyone participating in the best way that suited them, encouraging the do-it-yourself (DIY) ethic and ensuring the course was accessible to all. Ideally, in the classroom instructors and students would be indistinguishable from each other. Everyone there could learn from everyone else, and develop their own critical consciousness through participation. Ruth Wright explained how a more informal but critical approach “to music education could be seen as furthering inclusion and social justice” (2010, 276). This aligns with the lack of hierarchy fundamental to many punk shows, with performers going into the audience, and audience members jumping on stage (O’Hara 1999). The notion of performances, and education, negotiating formality and hierarchy is nothing new, and was even behind the founding of musical gatherings like the Winnipeg Folk Festival. This extends through time and place, and stresses continuity rather than divisions. For instance, the first The History of Punk class focused on tracing the origin of punk and considering if punk could be defined. We explored how many punk tenets were not limited to one geographical area, or a single time period. Participation, as opposed to passive consumption of information, was also fundamental in the formation of The History of Punk course. From its inception, its goal was to encourage discussion of ideas. The desire to learn, exchange knowledge and participate in a like-minded community was important; a student’s background, station in life and academic standing were not (Wright 2010; McPherson and Welch 2012). The joke about learning three chords and starting a band was not just humour, but indicative of the idea that a little initial knowledge could be developed, through a willingness to participate and collaborate, into something much greater. The spirit of that idea underpinned the open, participatory pedagogy of The History of Punk, and if someone did not know much about a topic, they were encouraged to take an approach that applied their existing knowledge, however limited, or an interest that they were already confident discussing and exploring, and pursue and develop a greater understanding from there with the support of the group. Perhaps they did not have experience of writing essays, but instead wrote poetry, drew pictures or published fanzines. Encouraging these alternative outlets grounded students’ interest in the course and gave them a starting point to approach various topics. This aligns with the Scandinavian folk school, or folkbildning tradition, of empowerment through voluntary or self-education, through which learners

116 • Rylan Kafara engage through their own cultural and local lens (Söderman 2011). As such, The History of Punk participants designed their own learning activities. One student created a video on environmental protest and punk. Another student responded to a discussion on the relationship between folk and punk musics by drawing on her scientific knowledge of divergent and convergent evolution. In both cases, by using other skills, interests and knowledge, The History of Punk community as a whole broadened its understanding of myriad issues and ideas. Reaching out to people who were interested in learning and sharing their own knowledge was essential in widening participation. Advertising was done through word of mouth, email and social media. When it came to planning classes, input from students was vital. The course was designed to be collaborative in both content and form, and non-hierarchical. For instance, the flow of each class depended on the class’s knowledge of the issue under discussion. For example, a lesson might commence with an introductory background lecture to ensure a shared level of knowledge. In addition, the location of each class was discussed. Again, depending on the topic, a classroom was often ideal for a lecture or sessions requiring the use of technology. Alternatively, many fully seminar-based classes were held as a learning circle outside. While collaboration was essential from the beginning, the first several classes were grounded in my research areas. This meant the classes explored issues and music communities from North America and secondarily from Eastern Europe during the Cold War. After the first semester, however, the course became much more student-driven. The class itself, then, was also amateur, but that was part of the point. Indeed, it was a work in progress, based on shared interest, which itself was a process of learning. This idea of amateurism, of course, is very much in the spirit of the folkbildning tradition and the Highlander Folk School. Central to the formation of the course was punk’s do-it-yourself (DIY) ethic (Dale 2012), as mentioned earlier, which sought to overcome barriers to activity and participation in culture through the creation of alternative spaces and channels. Since mainstream music institutions, such as successful venues, record labels, magazines and radio stations, excluded punk, participants created their own, developing a network that built a translocal milieu. It was centered on the music originating in each local area, and when linked together, created a medium for alternative voices that better embodied their grievances, identities and lifestyles. Shows were held at community halls, or venues desperate for business. Bands started their own labels, and fanzines highlighted local scenes (see Azerrad 2001). Radio shows like Maximum Rocknroll hit the airwaves as well. It was transmitted throughout the punk network, including being broadcast on Edmonton’s community and University of Alberta campus FM radio station, CJSR 88.5, in the early 1980s. In the DIY spirit, on September 22, 2014, The History of Punk became a weekly program on CJSR (an independent radio station based in Edmonton), which widened participation and accessibility.

“Here We Are Now, Educate Us” • 117 Some segments mirrored specific classes, while others included course participants and local bands as guest hosts, giving them the opportunity to curate radio lectures on topics of interest. Not only did participants create lectures, they gained first-hand experience in community radio and broadcasting. The reasoning behind this is simple: if the DIY ethic could resonate throughout so many facets of the music industry, why could it not do the same in education? Not restricting participation based upon age was important too. All-age venues increased access for youth in punk communities. Adopting this in The History of Punk meant anyone could attend class, regardless of age. For students familiar with the traditional classroom setting (students all the same age, one teacher in a role of authority), this offered an alternative learning environment. This “horizontal” approach towards age also extended to socioeconomic status. Making The History of Punk completely free meant anyone could attend. Not only did students of all ages participate, but so did marginalized members of the community (unemployed, homeless, transgender and people with mental wellness challenges). Each student came to class with knowledge, but by engaging with different ideas, being open to questioning beliefs or even listening to bands they had earlier dismissed, everyone developed their critical consciousness. Thus, each time participants engaged with someone of a different age, opinion or value system, and questioned their own beliefs in connection, they were doing what Freire argued was essential to “transform concrete, objective reality” (Freire 2000, 39). In other words, participants used learning as subversion against oppression, and as an aid in people’s freedom. Furthermore, by creating a punk framework as an approach to this learning, and utilizing ethics such as making The History of Punk allages and all-welcome, the course was inherently in opposition to the learning structure that brings the next generation of society into conformity with and through the traditional system. In The Philosophy of Punk, O’Hara channeled Freire in his explanation of punk’s resistance to hegemony. As he outlined, punk questions authority, not only looking and sounding different, but by questioning prevailing modes of thought. The nonconformist does not rely on others to determine his or her own reality. The questioning of conformity involves the questioning of authority as well. (O’Hara 1999, 28) As mentioned earlier, open-mindedness and inclusiveness were fundamental to The History of Punk. This was because the course always tried to reflect the punk attitude. Creating a local template for learning, capacity building and skill development in a risk-free environment is a long-term process, but can be reproduced anywhere there is a group of people that shares an interest in learning and an attitude of openness and inclusiveness.

118 • Rylan Kafara

Figure 8.1 Paula Guerra lecturing at The History of Punk class on 8 February 2017 in Edmonton

“Punk Is Whatever We Made It to Be”: Learning About Punk, Learning Through Punk The History of Punk uses both punk as a topic and as a learning method. The course examines music from the past, and experiences it first-hand. It engages with primary sources such as interviews and fanzines while also conducting interviews and publishing its own fanzines. It reflects back on punk history, and connects to contemporary issues. Finally, it takes lessons from the communication network before the internet and updates them for punk education in a digital world. As this layered process plays out, participants learn from punk, and through punk. Music is a source of learning. For example, songs written during the US Civil Rights Era, or, more recently, the Idle No More movement in Canada, give the listener access to their own interpretations of perceived thoughts and feelings

“Here We Are Now, Educate Us” • 119 of the time.1 For example, Phil Ochs’s “Here’s to the State of Mississippi” and Rellik’s “Idle No More” both allow listeners to create meaning and learn about past and contemporary issues. This is not done by only reflecting meaning from lyrics, or by stopping analysis at what was explicitly sung. Instead, as Stuart Hall argued when he explained the “constructionist approach”, “it is not the material world which conveys meaning: it is the language system or whatever system we are using to represent our concepts” (Hall 1997, 25). For instance, Rellik’s “Idle No More” enables the listener to hear an Edmonton musician singing about an Indigenous protest movement, from the perspective of one participant in a particular place. Listening creates an opportunity to construct meaning of the social, cultural and political contexts of the music. Engaging with music this way further exposes listeners to alternative history narratives, and wrestle with perspectives outside mainstream curricula. While not the only example, punk is a perfect example of this. It can be a point of engagement with different issues, places and eras. This engagement shapes punk pedagogy, and highlights how lyrics address important issues (Robertson et al. 2015). Punk songs can do this, for example the Clash’s “Career Opportunities” from its 1977 self-titled album highlighted the economic prospects and feelings of youth in England at the time. The band then changed the lyrics “I don’t wanna go fighting in the tropical heat” to “I don’t wanna die fighting in the Falklands strait” when performing the song in 1982 during the Falklands conflict. Again, this emphasizes a concern of the time. In this case, it was about going to fight and die in a war with which the Clash disagreed. Though the course utilizes music from the past to examine issues, it also engages with contemporary music first-hand. For example, on the August 8, 2016, edition of the radio show, Josh Gibson from Edmonton punk band A New Rhetoric performed “The Origin Spirit and Intent”, a song that highlights Indigenous issues in Canada. Listeners heard the song, as well as thoughts from its writer on what it meant and why the concerns it raised were important. Then, on September 28, 2016, Gibson, a The History of Punk course participant, performed the song again in class and discussed why he wrote it, and why Indigenous history and culture needed to be a stronger part of the Canadian education system. Gibson was joined by an Indigenous member of the Edmonton punk band Paroxysm, who also spoke on the same issue. Before the class was held, links to readings and music were posted online so participants were prepared to discuss the topic (see class description, readings and playlist in the appendix). Reading lists for many of the classes included primary sources, such as the Berkeley, California–based fanzine Maximum Rocknroll, which encouraged punks from different local scenes to write reports for the fanzine. In the November 1986 edition of Maximum Rocknroll, for instance, the “Czechoslovakian Scene Report” revealed challenges facing the punk community in Prague.

120 • Rylan Kafara It was written by Lük Haas, who was visiting Prague from France (Haas gave an address in France for correspondence with Maximum Rocknroll readers, as well as contact information for punks he met in Prague). The narrative Haas gave was a bleak one; those in the Prague punk community faced a divided scene declining in membership, to an estimate of roughly 200. Haas also highlighted police brutality, mandatory military service and the inability of Czech punks to leave the country: There are a lot of problems with the YB (General Security Police), who systematically control the punks, prohibiting concerts, and acting brutal (knocking them down, tearing out earrings, shaving hair, etc.) Punks are driven to the police station, beaten, photographed, card indexed, and sometimes even sent to psychiatric hospitals. Czech punks are very pessimistic and have nothing to hope for in this country. (Haas 1986) For people studying the scene report 30 years later, Haas’s scene report offers a glimpse into a specific community at a certain time and from a particular perspective. For a nuanced understanding of topics such as the Prague punk community in the mid-1980s, wider subjects such as punk in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, or youth culture in general, such glimpses have been an essential part of The History of Punk since its inception. It is also useful to examine academic punk sources from particular periods. Alastair Gordon’s recent monograph, Crass Reflections (2016), is a perfect example. It reveals what punk-related research was like before the internet, when information was not as accessible. Such a source is useful for comparisons to research arguments and methodology today, and for adding another historiographical layer to the understanding of how punk developed over time (Gordon 2016). Alongside studying earlier punk music and engaging with contemporary songs first-hand, The History of Punk created its own sources as well. Three fanzines have been published to date. The first two mirrored specific class topics, and the third, published in June 2016, was an exercise in collaboration. The May 2016 edition of the class was organized as a fanzine workshop, with participants working together to create the fanzine. Locally focused, it included articles, interviews, art and a script from an edition of the radio show. In this respect, The History of Punk not only draws from the historiography of global punk, but participates in its writing. Punk songs and sources are used to examine wider issues. For instance, the second The History of Punk class, held on May 19, 2012, examined the Vancouver punk scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The characteristics of the Canadian city’s music community were discussed, from local bands, venues and fanzines to record labels, stores and distribution networks. From there, we looked at how these elements helped develop the regional scene and benefitted

“Here We Are Now, Educate Us” • 121 participants. Indeed, Vancouver had a community supported by alternative institutions. Focusing on the Vancouver scene gave the class the opportunity to discuss how these participants and institutions reacted to community member, musician and activist Gerald Hannah being arrested and tried for crimes while a member of Direct Action. This group carried out a series of attacks against property in 1982, before being captured by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on January 20, 1983. Hannah was a member of the Subhumans, a band with poignant songs expressing political and social concerns, including the power of the mainstream media (“Death to the Sickoids”), misogyny (“Slave to My Dick”) and extremism (“Firing Squad”). The class on Vancouver punk used the Subhumans’ music and Hannah’s later acts with Direct Action as a gateway into the concerns of the early 1980s counterculture. This gave students, just like it did for me when I originally undertook the research, examples of how issues like environmentalism, feminism and militarism were important points of activism in Canada at the time, as they are today. This topic provided students with an opportunity to engage with the history of the translocal punk scene and wider historical themes. As the instructor, this course gives me the chance to learn about teaching. Before, I was familiar with basic teaching principles, but I had never taught a course. I began engaging with the content in a new way. From the beginning of The History of Punk until now, I have needed to be aware of how the other participants react to topics, and what insights they have on issues. At first, I had notions of encouraging the tenets of punk in the classroom, but was unsure of how that would actually play out. Would it really be a horizontal, studentdriven learning environment where everyone feels welcome, and their interests and skills are valued? Would learning about punk and learning through punk both happen concurrently? I quickly learned that this is a process, and that “student” and “teacher” become interchangeable terms as the community develops the course together. Through this process, the course allows me to move from theory into practice, and work within an ethical framework based on an approach that blends punk and critical pedagogy. As I continue to develop my teaching practice, I remain in line with my beliefs and understanding of punk responsibility. The History of Punk’s approach to social media is focused on accessibility and inclusion. First, ahead of each class, a blog post is published with course material, including readings and a playlist of music related to the topic (see Appendix). This adds another layer of engagement to the learning process. By posting the syllabus online, people facing barriers such as schedule conflicts or not living in Edmonton still have the opportunity to engage with the material. Blog posts also create an archive of the course. Since people have a range of social media preferences, The History of Punk is on numerous platforms, mirroring the blog. Posts share information on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr. This creates another horizontal layer of participation, with (now) famous bands reminiscing

122 • Rylan Kafara

Figure 8.2 Two members of Jr. Gone Wild, Dove Brown (left) and Mike McDonald

about their first show or record review in a fanzine posted on The History of Punk Twitter page. After posting Los Angeles fanzine Flipside’s review of the Offspring’s debut single, a member of the band, Kevin “Noodles” Wasserman, shared the post, relating, “that’s one of the only reviews we can quote almost verbatim. Thanks for posting that.—N”. By posting such material, an online archive of old fanzines, photos and other information is now digital. For the people who access it, they may be seeing it for the first time in decades, or for the very first time. For example, an Edmonton scene report from November 1985 written by SNFU’s Kendall “Mr. Chi Pig” Chinn was scanned and posted online. One comment on Facebook read, “thanks for letting me re-read this from 30 years ago. I still listen to [1980s Edmonton punk band] Down Syndrome’s 7”. The Punk Lens: A Summary of The History of Punk The History of Punk provides a critical lens through which to examine contemporary issues. For example, the class on September 30, 2012, covered the plight of Pussy Riot in Russia, the “re-education” of punks by authorities in Indonesia, repression of Goths in Uzbekistan and the murder of Emos in Iraq. Thankfully, no one participating in class that day faced re-education in Indonesia, a process inflicted on youth by the state reminiscent of what Michel Foucault referred to as panoptic discipline (Foucault 1977). Examining Indonesia’s effort to reintegrate punks back into conventional society, however, meant we could connect our understanding of Edmonton issues and place them in a wider context examining power, authority, surveillance and violence.

“Here We Are Now, Educate Us” • 123 Additionally, The History of Punk often has a local focus compared and contrasted to other geographical locations, times, issues and events. This, as Giroux pointed out in “Lessons to be Learned”, was also vital for Freire’s form of pedagogy (Giroux 2010). A more contemporary and local pedagogical example is Chris Anderson’s article on changes he made to course assignments. A professor in the Native Studies faculty at the University of Alberta, Anderson argues that engaging students in discourse analysis by including local and primary sources in research essays gives them stronger critical thinking skills. By researching local examples of issues, students have a better understanding of concepts such as white privilege and racism (Anderson 2012). The History of Punk addressed wider issues through the local as well. For instance, we held a class on Idle No More during the height of the movement. Along with several students who consistently attend, the topic drew new participants who were interested in engaging with the movement in an educational context. The class was organized as a sharing circle, and everyone took turns talking about Idle No More from their respective perspectives. It was placed in the wider lineage of protest movements and activism in other grassroots communities. The class also helped participants frame contemporary events in their historical context. On the eve of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s visit to Edmonton in March 2014, a class was held to give students the opportunity to engage with the legacy of Canada’s Indian Residential School System. Not only did it expose students to the country’s dark colonial past, it prepared them to participate in an event addressing the consequences of that history. This was another goal of the course: to utilize punk as an approach or strategy for learning about other events, issues and ideas. Punk offers a critical pedagogical lens to examine issues. If you can find platforms offering points of engagement, it may lead people to pursue further learning in topics related to punk. It is important to take these local contexts—whether Alberta or Indonesia—and think about how they relate to forms of power and systems of oppression. With the ability to access more information than ever before, it is also arguably easier to limit sources through which people make sense of the world. Rapid technological development, coupled with a concentration of media outlets, is redefining conventional journalism. Bias in the news, on blogs and on social media makes closing one’s mind off to dissenting opinion easier. People can have their existing beliefs and assumptions reinforced by others who perceive things in the same way. Critical thinking, challenging viewpoints and knowledge production are replaced by “alternative facts” in our post-truth era (Frankfurt 2005; Graham 2017). In response, The History of Punk aims to raise critical consciousness and to challenge steadfast beliefs. It is important for people to move out of their educational comfort zone and enable themselves to think about issues differently. This may mean a topic falls outside of the status quo or the conventional narrative, but the punk attitude, at its foundation, exists to react to exactly that.

124 • Rylan Kafara

Figure 8.3 Poster by The History of Punk participant Paul “Spyder” Yardley Jones

“Here We Are Now, Educate Us” • 125 The Process of Punk Pedagogy in Practice The History of Punk is an example of punk pedagogy in practice. It utilizes the tenets of punk in its structure and application. Participation is more important than skill, social standing or academic accomplishment. The classes are free, everyone gets an A+ and any other potential barriers to learning are mitigated as much as possible. Everyone is welcome in class, and to contribute to their own and other people’s learning. The course has run for five years now (as of spring 2017), and has grown from a series of lectures to a community of people learning together in classrooms, on the radio and on social media. While The History of Punk represents my own pedagogical learning and participation in Edmonton’s local punk community, it has developed to the point where classes, radio shows and digital posts can happen without me. Just as punk was a reaction to social, cultural and political issues of the mid-1970s, the class reacts to problems in our education system and in wider society. It serves as an example of education not designed to position people into compliance with late capitalism, but instead to help them learn how to address its impact and work towards social change. The notion that an amateur learner can contribute ideas, just as an inexperienced musician can perform songs, is key. The History of Punk focuses on punk topics, examines punk music and uses punk sources so class participants are learning about punk, through punk. It is also a way of approaching external topics through a “punk lens” to situate learning. Ultimately, it is a potential framework for engagement with the world, and an opportunity to develop an attitude of critical consciousness, for teacher and learner alike. Note 1. Idle No More is a resurgence of Indigenous culture and activism. Started in December 2012, it is a grassroots movement addressing ongoing colonialism in Canada and around the world (Klein 2013).

References Allsup, Randall. 2015. “The Eclipse of a Higher Education or Problems Preparing Artists in a Merchantile World.” Music Education Research 17, 3: 251–261. Anderson, Chris. 2012. “Critical Studies in the Classroom: Exploring ‘The Local’ Using Primary Evidence.” International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies 4, 1: 67–78. Azerrad, Michael. 2001. Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes From the Indie Underground 1981– 1991. New York: Little, Brown. Bangs, Lester. 1979. “The White Noise Supremacists.” Village Voice. April 30. Bell, Brenda, John Gaventa, and John Peters (Eds.). 1990. We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Bennett, Andy, and Richard A. Peterson (Eds.). 2004. Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Blush, Steven. 2001. American Hardcore: A Tribal History. Los Angeles: Feral House. Collini, Stefan. 2012. What Are Universities For? London: Penguin Books.

126 • Rylan Kafara Dale, Pete. 2012. Anyone Can Do It: Empowerment, Tradition and the Punk Underground. Farnham: Ashgate. Duncombe, Stephen. 1997. Notes From the Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture. London: Verso. Duncombe, Stephen, and Maxwell Tremblay (Eds.). 2011. White Riot: Punk Rock and the Politics of Race. London: Verso. Foucault, Michel. 1977. Disipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage. Frankfurt, Henry G. 2005. On Bullshit. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Freire, Paulo. 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed 30th Anniversary Edition, Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New York City: Bloomsbury. Geiger, Roger L. 2015. The History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture From the Founding to World War II. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Giroux, Henry A. 2006. On Critical Pedagogy. London: Bloomsbury. Giroux, Henry A. 2010. “Lessons to Be Learned From Paulo Freire as Education Is Being Taken Over by the Mega Rich.” Truthout.org. Giroux, Henry A. 2014. Neo-Liberalism’s War on Higher Education. Toronto: Between the Lines. Gonzales, Michelle Cruz. 2016. The Spitboy Rule: Tales of an Xicana in a Female Punk Band. Oakland: PM Press. Gordon, Alastair. 2016. Crass Reflections. Portsmouth: Itchy Monkey Press. Graham, David A. 2017. “Trump’s Baseless Claim That the Media Covers Up Terror Attacks.” Atlantic. February 6, 2017. Hall, Stuart (Ed.). 1997. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage. Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haas, Lük. 1986. “Czechoslovakia Scene Report.” Maximum Rocknroll #42, Berkeley. Heylin, Clinton. 2008. Babylon’s Burning: From Punk to Grunge. New York: Penguin. Hodgson, Godfrey. 2009. The Myth of American Exceptionalism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Keithley, Joe. 2011. Telephone Interview. Klein, Naomi. 2013. “Dancing the World Into Being: A Conversation With Idle No More’s Leanne Simpson.” YES! Magazine. March 5. Malott, Curry, and Milagros Peña. 2004. Punk Rockers’ Revolution: A Pedagogy of Race, Class, and Gender. New York: Peter Lang. Marcus, Greil. 1989. Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McNeil, Legs, and Gillian McCain. 1996. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. New York: Groove Press. McPherson, Gary E., and Graham F. Welch (Eds.). 2012. The Oxford Handbook of Music Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press. O’Hara, Craig. 1999. The Philosophy of Punk: More Than Noise. San Francisco: AK Press. Reddington, Helen. 2012. The Lost Women of Rock Music: Female Musicians of the Punk Era. Sheffield: Equinox. Robertson, Scott, Martha Diaz, Priya Parmar, and Anthony J. Nocella. 2015. Rebel Music: Resistance Through Hip Hop and Punk. Charlotte: Information Age. Rombes, Nicholas. 2009. A Cultural Dictionary of Punk, 1974–1982. New York: Continuum International. Sassen, Saskia. 2014. Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Savage, Jon. 2001. England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin. Webb, Peter. 2007. Exploring the Networked Worlds of Popular Music: Milieu Cultures. New York: Routledge. Wright, Ruth (Ed.). 2010. Sociology and Music Education. Farnham: Ashgate.

“Here We Are Now, Educate Us” • 127 Appendix The History of Punk Wednesday September 28, 2016 7:30 PM, FREE Humanities 2–12, The University of Alberta, All-Ages, All-Welcome, Vegan snacks “Punk and Indigenous Issues” In this class, we are kicking off the fall term with a look at important contemporary Indigenous issues. Since 2012, the Idle No More movement has led a resurgence of Indigenous culture and activism. Taken with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action and voices like Gord Downie’s, Canadians are finally confronting the country’s legacy of oppression, and continued mistreatment of Indigenous peoples. Using punk as our starting point, or “lens,” we will examine this history, and today’s challenges. We will also discuss how education can help address both the past and its current consequences. Two guest speakers, Chris from Paroxysm, and Josh from A New Rhetoric, will share their perspectives on punk and Indigenous issues, and so can everyone else who attends. Readings “The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action” “Dancing the World into Being: A Conversation with Idle No More’s Leanne Simpson” “Gord Downie to play Secret Path shows to honour Chanie Wenjack” “Dakota Access Pipeline Company Attacks Native American Protesters with Dogs & Pepper Spray” Playlist Paroxysm—“Open Wounds Demo” A New Rhetoric—“Decolonize Now” (Live on CJSR) A New Rhetoric—“The Origin Spirit and Intent” A Tribe Called Red—“Woodcarver” Neil Young—“Indian Giver”

9

Laughing All the Way to the Stage: Pedagogies of Comedic Dissidence in Punk and Hip-Hop JESSICA A. SCHWARTZ AND SCOTT ROBERTSON

Cultivating Punk Pedagogies Punk and hip-hop both began in New York City in the late 1970s within a milieu of deindustrialization and urban blight. Punk also has roots in literature productions. Punk pioneers Patti Smith and Richard Hell were both poets who participated in the DIY printing community of 1970s New York City. The surrealist and symbolist traditions that inspired Hell and other early punks challenged and defied logic, which can be heard in their musically rendered poetry and read in zines like Hell’s Genesis: Grasp (Kane 2011). The nebulous crowd that gravitated towards music at CBGB music club in the Bowery, NYC, became “punk” through the establishment of Punk magazine, which often included instructional material on, for example, “writing your own DIY songs” (Holmstrom and Hurd 2012). Punk learning took the form of a collective pursuit of enjoyment and pleasure, which became increasingly subversive. Some of the first punk bands to be recognized in this tradition used double entendre, satire and irony to write songs that referenced both teenage pop culture and totalitarian regimes such as that of Nazi Germany. In doing so, bands and artists including the Dictators and the Ramones, and to a degree Richard Hell, inscribed their Jewish heritage alongside teenage frivolity as an expression of two forms of being infrequently discussed in schools or mainstream culture. The need to confront the horrors of World War II, together with the longing expressed through rock ‘n’ roll to move on from them, formed a dialectical public secret that found a voice in humorous songs like the Dictators’ “Master Race” (1975) and the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop” (1976). Comedic dissidence is found in these songs’ album covers that depict young Jewish men posing as teen idols— a celebration of postwar social mobility. The Dictators and the Ramones played at CBGB and were part of a scene in which discussions about art, music and culture were commonplace (Thompson 2004). Punks experimented with creativity among an audience of their peers, where the collective learned together through each other’s involvement. In this chapter, we show how such learning 128

Laughing All the Way to the Stage • 129 occurred through humour, as an invitation into the means of production of knowledge that resists codification—the laughter as a break, the collective singalong on stage and the freedom to ask questions rather than passively accept information from a TV screen, schoolmaster or lecturer. Punk shows and tours offered alternative ways of learning and laughing about identity as malleable and disposable, which is crucial when dealing with the seriousness of, for instance, discrimination and hate, like anti-Semitism, and traumas of war. In her study of hip-hop, Tricia Rose explains how critiques of power are often framed in the playful, noting that “oppressed people use language, dance, and music to mock those in power, express rage, and produce fantasies of subversion” (Rose 1994, 99). She continues to describe how these musical practices help to build and foster community resistance. Hip-hop and punk participants, as famously documented with the collaboration between Debby Harry of Blondie and Fab Five Freddy in “Rapture”, shared music and other subcultural productions and points of cultural reference (Blondie 1980). This chapter analyzes ways in which punk and hip-hop cultivate pedagogies of comedic dissidence as means to encourage collective discussions of political and social issues.1 We argue that humour is used in subversive ways to highlight the political implications in taken-for-granted aesthetics through a redistribution of the “sensible” where what is non-sense (humour) becomes “sensible” (felt in sensorial participation) but not necessarily sensical (making sense intellectually) (Rancière 2005). To demonstrate how teaching about possibilities in everyday life through expressive subcultures is necessitated because of social practices that prevent upward mobility in and from some sectors of society, we analyze the humour and messages of two bands representing “hardcore” styles of their respective genres—Dead Kennedys, a punk band formed in 1978 in San Francisco, California, and Public Enemy, a hip-hop group from Long Island, New York, that formed in 1982. These groups both use artful forms of comedic dissidence to deal with the challenges of an increasingly individualized, market-driven society in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and waning popularity of the 1960s counterculture. In considering how humour manifests and operates pedagogically in the music of these two groups that started as small-scale collectives within larger movements, we think through issues of expressive resistance to racism, classism, gendered violence and institutionalized injustices often normalized by an expanding media of pop disposability. Dead Kennedys released their first album, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, in 1979. Often noted for being a crossover hardcore band propelled by sardonic lyrics that offered a biting critique of mainstream (and specifically conservative) political platforms, Dead Kennedys inspired young punks through what we term a “pedagogy of comedic dissidence”. We draw here on Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2000) and Jacques Rancière’s Ignorant Schoolmaster (1991), both of which speak to power inequalities between students and teachers. We define “pedagogy of comedic dissidence” in terms of multiple

130 • Jessica A. Schwartz and Scott Robertson disruptions of discourses of power through humour and critique. Artful use of humour helps expose ironies in everyday life that might otherwise be more oppressive. Pedagogy of comical dissidence exposes power structures through which systemic inequalities are maintained, by unsettling normalized and dominating pedagogical modes. Dead Kennedys’ front man Jello Biafra’s musicality was characterized by disparate binaries of aggression and care, irreverence and concern, and wildness and contemplation through snotty vocals and polemical lyrics. Through live performance and the album as artwork in which songs founded in hardcore took on other styles, Dead Kennedys sounded a number of possibilities: for debate, for critical thinking and for personal growth. The cultural commentary as humorous critique invited a wide range of youth to listen, and to participate in alternative modes of education. In this chapter we contend that the cores of punk and rap transmissions are place-based (at least in the formative stages) and collective. We situate this argument within extant literature addressing humour and punk, such as Bestley’s (2013, 2014) two-part series in Punk & Post Punk, which works through the “satirical core” of punk culture. We endeavour to understand how punk and hiphop, as collective-based movements, circulate educational materials. One main argument is that, in punk and hip-hop, part of the humour comes from a taboo approach to revealing what anthropologist Michael Taussig (1999) has called the “public secret”, or that which everyone knows but that cannot be articulated. Without words to address, for example, racism or teachers’ domination over or belittlement of students’ creative capacities, young members of society learn from other modes of expression. Jokes, quips, sarcasm and comedic narrative allow them to push back, “debunking [the loftiness] of humanity” and its mediated ideals (Orwell 1945/2017). We explore particular comedic interventions into the larger sound-worlds of punk and hip-hop—such as Tom Astley’s (2016) exploration of the “ ‘dual face’ of laughter and its role in delineating both exclusionary and inclusionary identity spaces” as a symptom of humour in punk—and consider how their circulation might have afforded opportunities for further debate, social critique and activism. Moreover, as two punks inspired by both rap and punk music, we contend that engagement with particular albums can animate other subjects and make school-based lessons more engaging for students and teachers (Postman and Weingartner 1969; Snell and Söderman 2014).2 These artists play with, rather than assert, historical and categorical “facts”. Such play affords participation and critical intervention by lifting the veil on the conditions of societal normalization within structures of power (Barthes 1993). American Education and the Power of the Collective And so if our schools won’t teach us, we’ll have to teach ourselves to analyze and understand the systems of thought control. And share it with each other, never swayed by brass rings or the thought of penalty. —Chris Hannah, Propagandhi, “A People’s History of the World” (1996) from Less Talk More Rock

Laughing All the Way to the Stage • 131 As John Dewey (1951) and others have noted, the political rationale for statefunded public education is precisely to achieve and perpetuate the normative ideology and power structures of society by instilling in youth a commitment to civil participation and responsible social mores (Allsup 2016; Giroux 1989; Illich 1978). However, the US education system (among others) maintains systemic and structural inequalities with the continued use of biased measures such as standardized testing and increased privatization (Allsup 2015; Au 2009). Moreover, school spaces have become increasingly militarized and securitized, with metal detectors greeting students before teachers, and are often spaces of surveillance (Giroux 2012, 2016; Hebert 2015; Nocella 2014). Although policies vary between US states, science and mathematics are privileged over the arts and humanities nationwide. Coupled by increasing fears that education no longer leads to better jobs, individual teachers and students face demands to make subject material matter. The disparate approach to lesson content that makes some students feel distant from their education has been a long-standing problem. Education scholar Neil Postman noted this crisis in education emerging in the 1960s, which he addressed in Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969). Two years later in 1971, he co-wrote with Charles Weingartner A Soft Revolution; in this follow-up volume, he aimed to empower youth to take control of their education in the classroom. However, broader systemic failures, in which educational institutions participate as component parts of a society that continues to privilege the average (white, straight, able-bodied, 35-year-old) male, have created the conditions, sustained by neoliberal policies, in which students find their voices outside the classroom. Punk and hip-hop collectives offer critical, artistic approaches to the material of everyday life that can seem cordoned off by the schooling grammar of discrete subject matter (Niknafs and Przybylski 2017). Dewar MacLeod (2010) notes the importance of situating the emergence of punk amid the growth of neoliberalism. Neoliberal policies loosen restrictions on government interventions and social welfare programs. Individuals, rather than societies, are tasked with their own mobility, which creates more difficulties for non-wealthy, non-privileged or “normal” persons. We utilize quotes around “normal” because students during the neoliberalization of American education in the 1970s and 1980s produced specific notions of “normal” (normative) behavior and their corollaries in disruptive behaviours that were deemed to require remedial and disciplinary measures (Adams 2008). Many students often did not have alternative outlets, since after-school programs were increasingly privatized and thus out of reach for many. MacLeod discusses the trend under Reagan of increasing two-parent incomes and the crisis of masculinity that emerged around the “ideal” authority figure of President Ronald Reagan, that many youth rejected because they did not identify with the president’s presentation of patriarchal masculinity. With family units and schools shifting in composition and ideological orientation, students who felt isolated gravitated towards each other and began to collectivize, forming scenes and

132 • Jessica A. Schwartz and Scott Robertson bands wherein disenfranchised youth could work through their energy, artistic capacities and critical insight, unheard by those in authority. Hip-hop developed out of a need to be heard amid deindustrialization and neoliberal polices that upheld racialized spaces of impoverishment (Rose 1994). To counter police brutality, poverty and unequal life chances in a US capitalist democracy that promised otherwise, African American communities were forced to create their own spaces in which mobility was possible. Tricia Rose (1994), Adam Krims (2000) and Murray Forman (2002) explain the importance of place, identity and expressive dissent in hip-hop, which, like punk, became collectivized at parties and on the streets. Music, fashion, dancing and street art (graffiti) were the outer signifiers of cultural participation along with a DIY ethos (similar to that found in punk) that resisted the constraints of an increasingly specialized, racist society (Shaiken 1977; Bhagat 1990). DIY demands an alternative to specialization that favours collective discussion and sharing rather than formal education and schooling. Here, students of the streets examine and understand social problems, struggles and the beauty of life, and render their perceptions in art. Humour became a tool, a filter to challenge social constructs by making those rules and regulations more fluid, as seen with Flavor Flav’s clock necklace (discussed further, below). Flav presents an artful challenge to temporal control, and acquisition of the tools of the “ignorant master”—the schoolyard bell, the clock in front of the classroom and the grammar of 45-minute subject-matter delivery. Flav speaks to this irreverent approach to authoritative temporal divisions—“I always say, I’m clockin’, I’m clockin’. “That means I’m paying attention, so you can’t get fast on me because I know what time it is” (Johnson 2013). While examples of humour in music abound, we emphasize how, through collectivization in opposition to neoliberal inculcation at educational institutions in the 1970s and 1980s, in particular in major deindustrialized urban centers, punk and hip-hop wielded comedy as a defiant learning tool, to which young people accorded pedagogic authority (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). Unlike top-down, mass media–orientated humour—for instance Weird Al Yankovic and the movie This Is Spinal Tap (Ellis 2009)—punk and hip-hop culture members were connected to the production and consumption of their art. Younger and newer participants in the scenes could learn directly and indirectly from more established community members, in contrast to the factory-manufactured, disposable pop culture seen today in hyper-commercialized pop star “reality” shows like American Idol and The X-Factor. These shows’ relative success is contrasted by sustained reverence for punk and hip-hop legends such as Afrika Bambaataa and Alice Bag who continue to play shows and parties and to volunteer. There is a collective giving back to the communities whence these performers came, and in which communities these artists felt transformed and helped others to transform themselves. The collective nature of punk and hip-hop enables younger

Laughing All the Way to the Stage • 133 enthusiasts to see the local engagements and feel connected to movements, for instance challenging a community policy or creating a space for a party that, like in the Bronx in the 1980s, blacks could attend without being denied entrance, unlike at the clubs elsewhere in the city. Neoliberal economies often reduce people to marketized, commoditized individuals with an assumed agency that transcends society (Bourdieu 2003; Giroux 2016). A pedagogy of comedic dissidence reminds us of the entangled networks that engender and threaten to ensnare neoliberal subjects. Humour and resistance, along with other expressive modes that play with dispersals and accumulations of power, can interrupt the assumptions of the lone ranger individual (the “Reagan cowboy”3) through responding to societal pressures conditioned by intersectional gendered, racialized, classed and age-specific hierarchies on which infrastructure that produces individuated bodies and beings continues to operate. Alan Watts (2004) distinguishes the role of a king’s court jester from that of a genuine fool, the former being one whose function was not to simply make jokes, but to remind the monarch of his humanity. Similarly, a pedagogy of comedic dissidence functions to teach society about humanity and humility, sorely needed when everyone and everything becomes valuated in market terms. Understanding the historical and socio-cultural milieus of musicians offers insight into the comedic dissidence they created and which the authors have critiqued in our pedagogical practices. We cannot know the educational experiences of members of Dead Kennedys or Public Enemy; however, both bands’ music is often robustly masculine and all members are cis-gender males. Their heteronormative positions reflect, in a way, the Reagan era’s patriarchal dominion as well as the durative crisis of masculinity since the 1960s and, since at least the Cold War, the increasingly domestic and international masculinist militarization of everyday life (Abrams 1989; Regan 1994; Staples 2000). Educational material is often written and shared in language favouring male students. Multiple-choice tests, for example, are skewed to risk-taking, to which boys are enculturated to feel more comfortable (Booher-Jennings 2008). In US society, there remains the notion that boys are naturally more loud and outspoken than women. When men speak up, it is viewed positively. Male entitlement to a voice means men feel comfortable interrupting women and dominating dialogue, a trait also evidenced in school classrooms (Younger 1999). In the authors’ experiences as students and teachers we have seen that girls can be perceived as “know-it-alls” for speaking up. We therefore see democratizing potential in teaching how media representation of Dead Kennedys and Public Enemy reproduces gendered spaces of expressive engagement and learning, and how the bands’ uses of humour reorient audiences to the many types of people who participated in their productions. Importantly, these media-based performative recreations of male-oriented participatory learning occurred in

134 • Jessica A. Schwartz and Scott Robertson the mid-1980s when hardcore punk and politically nuanced rap became codified, entering into the mainstream. In addition to trends in popular culture that reflect mainstream objectification of females, music outside the classroom often reinforces male-centered educational norms and plays into pedagogical biases of what it means to “have a voice” and “be expressive” (Bannister 2006; Gilman 1898; Green 1997; McClary 1991; Smith 2015). Most crucially for our argument, the bands’ male-centered notions of humour and resistance are reproduced societally, and as such, normalize the intersections of race, gender and class that lead to the formation of judgments around how comedic dissidence sounds. In other words, when taking into account timbre, tone, associations with sex/race/age, and other markers of othering (Bradley 2012, 2015), what does a joke sound like? Ultimately, we argue for a robust critical engagement with punk and rap’s pedagogies of comedic dissidence, that asks not only about the joke and the reveal, but also which bodies and lives become unintentional objects of jokes. How are the men and women showcasing comedic relief in terms of exploitations and resistances? These questions demand that educators should be inclusive of men, women, and cis- and non-cis-gendered musicians and students.

Learning Through Laughter, Literacy and Liveness The pedagogy of comedic dissidence is important in the circulation of material within collectives, as humour helps people to collaborate without resorting to norms of domination. Challenges and tensions in complex situations remain, but interaction in artistic productions can benefit from humour and laughter that can destabilize the hierarchical fixity of information-based pedagogy. Mass media, like educational programmes, can feel alienating, and rock stars or teachers unapproachable, yet the importance of literacy and self-expression in all levels of society can hardly be overstated. Specific skills are learned in places where laughter can be inclusive and exclusionary in punk and hip-hop. The zine, the album and the live show all feature pedagogical moments that teach verbal and non-verbal literacies, such as public speaking, debate and creative writing, that in school settings are often transmitted via an approach that betrays a narrow, hierarchical conceptualization of the student-teacher relationship, or the location of “pedagogic authority” (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977, 19). Dead Kennedys: Lessons in Stylistic Satire Throughout Dead Kennedys’ career, their pedagogy of comedic dissidence critiqued institutional power structures that perpetrated sustained, systemic violence in the US and abroad. Often their critical narrative would last the duration of a song, over a foundation of hardcore punk—the driving guitar, drums and bass—incorporating influences from surf music, spaghetti western,

Laughing All the Way to the Stage • 135 psychedelic rock, garage rock and rockabilly. Jello Biafra’s biting lyrics tackled sociopolitical concerns of the late 1970s and 1980s with a distinct sense of morbid humour and satire. As noted on the Dead Kennedys website: Underpinned by an acute sense of humor, early songs such as “Let’s Lynch the Landlord”, “I Kill Children” and “Chemical Warfare” satirized the twin elements of extreme violence and conservatism that characterize much of American life. Dead Kennedys’ inflammatory name and provocative behavior attracted the attention of a number of far-right politico-religious groups. (Deadkennedys.com) The satirical style of dissidence harkens back to the 1960s and 1970s protest songs and grassroots political activism from groups such as the Fugs. Dead Kennedys’ live performances were efforts to build collectivity and community, welcoming participant proximity such as when audience members would dance on stage with Biafra. The band was strongly opposed to Reagan’s ideology and policies, and played in the 1983 Rock Against Reagan Festival in Washington, DC. Biafra ran for mayor of San Francisco in 1979 on a manifesto including rent control, public works programs, elected police and the suggestion that businessmen on Market Street wear clown suits nine to five. He came in fourth. Dead Kennedys’ mode of musical protest showcases desire for punks to enter into history through means of economics and spectacle, rather than through political force. Dead Kennedys played their first show on July 19, 1978, at Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco. From the outset their name drew controversy. Biafra has said (1991) that the band’s name was never meant to be an insult (invoking one of the country’s best-known political families), but rather a statement on the loss of the “American Dream”. The satirical stances taken by Jello often drew in young listeners desperate for provocative engagement that students rarely found in high school courses. Dead Kennedys formed their own record label, Alternative Tentacles, in 1979. Their Frankenchrist album made free-speech history when, on April 15, 1986, Biafra’s apartment was raided by police officers. The singer and others associated with Alternative Tentacles were charged in a Los Angeles courtroom with distributing pornography (“harmful matter”) to minors under the nation’s revised obscenity laws; the album included the H. R. Giger painting, Landscape #XX, which features genitalia and sex acts in a surreal, assembly-line setting. The case ended in a hung jury and was dismissed. Former L.A. deputy city attorney Michael Guarino later admitted the case was “a comedy of errors” (Rolling Stone 2017). In November 1986, the band released their final studio album, Bedtime for Democracy, which covers topics from the military industrial complex and “Reaganomics” economics policies to critiques of punk scenes.

136 • Jessica A. Schwartz and Scott Robertson Bedtime for Democracy critiques Reagan(omics) through explicit reference to the film Bedtime for Bonzo (1951), in which Reagan and a chimp perform together in a movie comedy. We read: it’s a circus—it’s all a circus! The album cover art presents a similar aesthetic to the movie art of a political cartoon. Conversely, Reagan’s social and economic policies remain no joke because they have proven central to the emergence of global marketization and policies of neoliberalism. While this album would warrant far greater attention in a longer essay, it exemplifies Dead Kennedys’ brand of satirical hardcore, which often uses irony and bitterness to provoke, believes music can wield political influence by bringing people together around specific issues, and attempts to rally audiences around those issues. Most Dead Kennedys songs include protest about one or more political issues. Dead Kennedys’ first single was “California Über Alles” (1979), in which we hear epitomic comedic dissidence, woven throughout the song’s structure. The song is an aporetic refusal of “the possibility or lack thereof for progressive political action in the late 1970s” (Thompson 2004, 39). Biafra rails against what he sees as the erosion of early hippie radical politics (Jerry Brown is the “aging hippie” who begins to embody German 1930s and ’40s fascism—happy order undergirded and subverted by the terror needed to maintain such order). Lyrics mock Jerry Brown (California state governor 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to the present) and “hippie fascism”. The title of the song alludes to the first stanza of the German national anthem, “Deutschland, Deutschland Über Alles” (“Germany, Germany above all”), although this section was removed after the Second World War. The musical introduction to the Dead Kennedys song resounds with militaristic drums, a dark, creeping, ominous bass line, and a guitar part that complements the ominous bass with a twisted surf feel. Through the influence of surf rock, we are situated in a twilight-zone space, a twisted California where the Golden State has turned bleak and convoluted. The enveloping post–Second World War and post–Vietnam War militarization of all spaces is implied through the militaristic drumming. The lyrics are a pointed, satirical attack on Governor Jerry Brown, sung from his perspective as an imaginary version of the man outlines a hippie-fascist vision of America, “I am Governor Jerry Brown/My aura smiles and never frowns/Soon I will be President”. Lyrics such as “Serpent’s egg already hatched” (a reference to a line from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar) comment on the corrosive nature of power. The chorus is a chant-like sing-along, which intimates either mob mentality or punk solidarity—or perhaps both. In the first verse, Biafra satirizes this “far-out” politician and larger power structures that will afford him presidency—a means of control—then links to his projected status as “Führer”, an unambiguous reference to Hitler and Nazism. With the repetition of the line, “Your kids will meditate in school”, the musical dynamism emphasizes the absurdity of the message. While the verses are sung with a fluid, melismatic quality, the chorus is delivered in a syllabic,

Laughing All the Way to the Stage • 137 direct manner. This musical juxtaposition affectively communicates Brown’s seemingly innocuous, hippie, “far-out” personality and the marked militaristic deployment of that personality in command. The chorus chant turns anthemic, perhaps mocking the masses. The second verse satirizes 1970s eco-progressive politics and health consciousness components of society that take a blind moral authority to their own potential for abuses of power. Again, “mellow out or you will pay” is repeated with increasing intensity, ironically threatening listeners to relax. After the second iteration of the chorus, the bridge offers a substantially new melodic difference bringing climax and closure to the form. The date, “1984”, orientates us and references George Orwell’s “big brother”, followed by a “knock, knock at your front door” that provides an onomatopoeic wordpainting rhythm. Next, we hear the lyrics, “suede-denim secret police”, which refers ironically to rounding up Californians and ridding the state of undesirable, “unhip” people. The subsequent lines, “Come quietly to the camp/You’d look nice as a drawstring lamp” reference Holocaust concentration camps, where human skin was used to create items such as lampshades. The plodding musical affect subtends the lyrics, which intimates the lies and manipulation of Jews who were led into the “showers” or gas chambers and provided a “pretty flower”, that alludes to flower children or the Jewish star of David insignia perhaps, for their “clothes”. The bridge connects the political stages of Governor Brown’s ascent to President Brown as an increasingly oppressive authoritative regime wrought through manipulative practices. In the following verse, the music speeds up while Biafra’s vocal delivery builds in intensity. He screams, “Die on organic poison gas/Serpent’s egg’s already hatched/You will croak, you little clown/When you mess with President Brown (x2)”, referencing the abuse of power of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. This is emphasized during repetition of the line “When you mess with President Brown”, as multiple voices sing together, evoking the sense of the masses supporting Biafra. The bridge cues the transformation of Brown to the president, as in the final chorus Biafra unravels, snarling and showing his true side. The musical outro returns to militaristic marching with percussion, and all sounds symbolic of California (e.g. surf guitar) are gone, revealing the sameness of power, regardless of ideology. The satire of this song exemplifies Dead Kennedys’ use of pedagogy of comedic dissidence. Film footage (Dead Kennedys 1985) shows Biafra encouraging the band’s audience to come on stage and sing along, democratizing leadership in punk fashion. Alternative Tentacles, Dead Kennedys’ label, even in name, shares this “alternative reach”. Humour, like the alternative tentacles reaching out to the audience, disrupts master narratives of leader/follower portrayed and reproduced in alienating mainstream media and conventional pedagogy, instead using humour and satire as direct means of communication. By sharing the narrative and formal progression of the song with students, we can discuss

138 • Jessica A. Schwartz and Scott Robertson the history of the “hippie” and white appropriation of black hipness in terms of rock ‘n’ roll. We can work through the fact that there is one black performer in Dead Kennedys, and discuss how the spectacle of identity invites us to consider that neither the white male figure nor the black male figure is a trope or ideal; rather, they are human collaborators. We encourage debate on the terms and sounds associated with stereotypical Californian liberalism and the “fun in the sun” attitude, as they intersect with the themes and intertextuality of the song. Public Enemy: Lessons in Temporal Organization and Contrapuntal Hype Carlton Ridenhour (Chuck D) grew up in Queens, New York, in the 1960s. His parents supplied the soul, R&B and jazz records that would inspire and inform him. From as young as five, he knew music had to be more than a pastime. Describing what this early music meant to him, Ridenhour notes, “it was an accumulation of rage, reflection, rhythm, and riot” (Ridenhour 2015). In college, at Adelphi University on Long Island, Ridenhour studied graphic design and was a school cartoonist with interests in art and culture. During his early college years, he created no music, but was consumed by it; inspired by socially conscious hip-hop songs like Brother D’s “How We Gonna Make the Black Nation Rise” (Brother D with Collective Effort 1980), Ridenhour became set on making his own music (Ridenhour 2015), leading to the formation of Public Enemy. Working at the student radio station (WBAU), he met up-andcoming hip-hop artists, including Hank Shocklee (future brainchild of the Bomb Squad) and Bill Stephney (future Def Jam executive). Ridenhour caught the attention of producer Rick Rubin (co-founder of Def Jam) after rapping over a track that Shocklee had created, “Public Enemy No. 1”. Soon Ridenhour adopted the moniker “Chuckie D” (Rolling Stone 2017), putting the pieces together to form Public Enemy, and reaching out to his old friend, William Drayton (Flavor Flav). Public Enemy released their debut album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, in 1987, featuring heavy production and a sense of anger and resistance, heightened through the absence of melody. The dynamics of Flavor Flav as “hype man” are crucial to the success of the music because he provides the dissonant (and comically dissident) counterpoint to Chuck D—adding characteristic humour in tracks such as “Miuzi Weighs a Ton”, “Terminator X Speaks with His Hands” and “Public Enemy No. 1”. In “Timebomb”, Flavor Flav begins with spoken vocals accompanied by a funky, wah-wah guitar riff. He executes his funny brand of hyping: “Yo, we gotta get stupid. Yo! We gotta let ’em know what time it is”, and displays a knack for comedy, especially when the content of the song is serious. The lyrics of “Timebomb” weave through everyday experiences from dancing, hooking up with girls and even “proper” cigarette brand choices. However, through the light-hearted rap emerge moments of tension: “I’m a MC

Laughing All the Way to the Stage • 139 Protestor—US defector. South African government wrecker. Panther power— you can feel it in my arm. Lookout y’all, I’m a timebomb. Tickin’, tockin’, all about rockin’ ”. Similar to (co-contemporary hip-hop pioneer) Grandmaster Flash in his song, “The Message” (1982), Chuck D is “close to the edge” and about to explode. Behind Chuck D’s rap, Flavor Flav escalates his hype, supporting Chuck by doubling his lyrics and staying positive. Flavor Flav’s fun backups keep Chuck D from detonating the “timebomb”. The lyrics then focus on empowerment: “All fall to the force of my swing. Like Ali, Frazer, Thriller in Manila. A pinpoint point blank microphone killer am I. No need to lie, got the Flavor Flav”. Chuck D is the militant persona, and Flavor Flav the sidekick comic relief, with gold teeth, oversized glasses and clock necklace that help visualize the jester. We read through this (pedagogy of) comedic dissidence, the musicalities of explosive male power and visions of dominance that come with it unchecked. There is a contrast between the higher pitched elocution of Flavor Flav and the lower register of Chuck D. It appears somewhat as if the humour is feminized, yet, the humour supports black masculinity, resonant of the Black Panther Party that began in 1966 and complementing the white hippie movement that also began in the mid-1960s. Public Enemy’s second album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, came out the following year and sold over 1,000,000 copies. Nation contained “Bring the Noise”, which foreshadowed Public Enemy’s knack for controversy, with Chuck D referring to Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan as a prophet. Calling rap music “CNN for black culture”, he castigated white-controlled media in “Don’t Believe the Hype”. The masculinist language of Public Enemy’s lyrics—with sexualized terms such as “bum rush” from the title of the group’s first album—arguably appears innocuous. However, the discursive production of sexism and masculine domination of musical rap (and punk) spaces is problematic, and can turn violent and dangerous. However, such gendered “pedagogical” spaces are rife with lessons about societal discrimination and intersectionality. It is perhaps instructive to reflect on Chuck D’s statement in the foreword to Rebel Music, that hip-hop is punk (Ridenhour 2015). Both genres are often considered more than music; they are ways of life: culture. As Tricia Rose notes, Public Enemy’s prophet of rage, Chuck D, keeps poor folks alert and prevents them from being lulled into submission by placating and misleading media stories and official “truths”. He holds the microphone with a vice grip and protects it from perpetrators of false truths, speaking directly to the poor, using indirection and symbolic reference. (Rose 1994, 99) Both Public Enemy and Dead Kennedys were founders of hardcore subgenres of subcultural musical collectives, and demanded audience participation

140 • Jessica A. Schwartz and Scott Robertson through a mode of aural vigilance. They satirized mainstream culture with politicized messages that critically engaged masses, often in masculinist terms. The comedy fomented among collectives of punk and rap musicians possesses great power when critiqued through ethical and inclusive listening—which is precisely what happened when female punk and rap groups later came to offer their own brands of education and humour. Conclusions Punk and hip-hop emerged at a time of creeping neoliberalization and individuation from the collective spaces of protest of the long 1960s. The music and other aspects of both subcultures offered alternative, collective modes of belonging and learning. In contrast to traditional pedagogical approaches of the school classroom, founded on oppression and domination (Hickey 2016; Reay 2010), these subcultural movements afforded participants opportunities to engage in debate and critical thinking (Dines 2015; Snell and Söderman 2014). Combining humour with political commentary and activism, the punk and hip-hop movements invited and empowered disenfranchised youth and young adults to be more critical, thoughtful and active civilians. Satire, irony and hype combined with frustration, anger and diverse musical and artistic creativities (Burnard 2012) to forge a pedagogy of comedic dissidence in service of the transformative potential of educational experience (Dewey 1938, 1951). Stephanie Horsley (2015, 63) observes that, regrettably, music educators have often “demonstrated a historical avoidance of issues related to politics, citizenship, and social justice”. Hip-hop and punk musics offer alternatives to such passivity. Estrella Torrez (2012, 135) describes the immensely potent pedagogical and political power of punk pedagogical praxis, noting, “Punk pedagogy requires that individuals take on personal responsibility . . . by rejecting their privileged places in society and working in solidarity with those forced on the fringes. By doing so, we strive to undo hegemonic macrostructures”. Hip-hop pedagogy equally possesses this transformative potential, harnessed by the likes of Public Enemy. We urge educators—schoolteachers, community members and fellow citizens—to embrace and enact such a pedagogy of comedic dissidence. Notes 1. Although scholarly work on social justice is deemed serious, hip-hop and use of humour offers youth an alternative perspective on understanding injustice while also creating a space for healing, expression and identity. 2. Neil Postman challenged teachers not to ask how they could better teach a subject, but rather to put the focus on the student by asking how can they help students learn. 3. “The Cowboy President” was a title Reagan earned from his cowboy portrayals as a movie actor in Western cowboy films. This masculine and individualistic hero has often been a neoliberal representation of the individual(ist) standing up to “big government”. Rambo became the new archetype in the ’80s.

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Laughing All the Way to the Stage • 143 Shaiken, Harley. 1977. “Craftsman Into Baby Sitter.” In Disabling Professions, edited by Ivan Illich, Irving K. Zola, John McKnight, Jonathan Caplan, and Harley Shaiken. London: Marion Boyars. Smith, Gareth Dylan. 2015. “Masculine Domination and Intersecting Fields in Private-sector Popular Music Performance Education in the UK.” In Bourdieu and the Sociology of Music and Music Education, edited by Pamela Burnard, Ylva Hofstander, and Johan Söderman, 61–79. Farnham: Ashgate. Snell, Karen, and Johan Söderman. 2014. Hip-Hop WITHIN and Without the Academy. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Staples, William G. 2000. Everyday Surveillance: Vigilance and Visibility in Postmodern Life. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Taussig, Michael T. 1999. Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Thompson, Stacy. 2004. Punk Productions: Unfinished Business. New York: State University of New York Press. Watts, Alan. 2004. “Out of Your Mind: Essential Listening From the Alan Watts Archive.” A Place for a Hermit. Sounds True, Louisville, CO. CD. Younger, Michael, Molly Warrington, and Jacquetta Williams. 1999. “The Gender Gap and Classroom Interactions: Reality and Rhetoric?” British Journal of Sociology of Education 20, 3: 325–341.

Discography and Videography Blondie. Autoamerican. Chrysalis. CHE 1290. 1980. LP Vinyl. Brother D. With Collective Effort. Dib-Be-Dib-Be-Dize/How We Gonna Make The Black Nation Rise? Clappers Records. CL-0001. 1980. LP Vinyl. Dead Kennedys—Live At The On Broadway, San Francisco. Rhino Home Video. RNVD 2001. 1985. VHS. https://youtu.be/32NtcTf3HUc. The Dictators. Go Girl Crazy! Epic. KE 33348. 1975. LP Vinyl. Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five. The Message. Sugar Hill Records. SH 268. 1982. LP. Propagandhi. Less Talk More Rock. Fat Wreck Chords. FAT 666–2. 1996. CD. Ramones. Ramones. Sire. SASD-7520. 1976. LP Vinyl.

10

Here’s Some Scissors, Here’s Some Glue, Now Go Make a Zine! A Teacher’s Reflections on ZineMaking in the Classroom LAURA WAY

Introduction: What Are Zines? Zines typically are small-scale, independent, non-commercial publications associated with underground movements, particularly, as Duncombe (2008) notes, with “do-it-yourself ” (DIY) subcultures. The history of zines can be traced back to the 1930s in the US, when fans of science fiction began making and publishing their own stories, and so the term “fanzine” emerged to refer to a type of small-scale, self-made magazine based around an expression of fandom (Duncombe 2008). The creation of fanzines (now known broadly as zines) was adopted as part of the punk subculture and its DIY ethos during the 1970s and 1980s, and later during the 1990s as part of the Riot Grrrl movement as a means of feminist activism (Duncombe 2008; Marcus 2010). Originally, zines were made by cutting out text and images, assembling them into collages and then photocopying the finished product. However, the development of word processing and internet technologies has led to a growth in the variety of styles and methods for zine construction. The themes, interests and topics covered by zines today are countless, with current examples ranging from Mama Riot, which brings together mothers’ responses to a pre-set theme (with this theme changing each issue) to Rich Cubesville’s (n.d.) The Vegan’s Guide to People Arguing with Vegans that collates various arguments and questions non-vegans might present to those following a vegan diet. This chapter is an account of ways in which I used the artistic, DIY character of zines as tools for both my professional reflection and for learners’ reflections. First I outline the chapter’s underpinning autoethnographic approach and reflect on my pedagogical values. I then review existing academic literature concerning zine use in the classroom before reflecting on two examples of my use of zines in classroom contexts. I conclude by considering zine use as punk pedagogical practice, and reflecting on the effectiveness of my efforts in this regard. 144

A Teacher’s Reflections on Zine-Making • 145 An Autoethnographic Approach Wall (2006, 154) notes a broad range of autoethnographic approaches, from the “conservative methodologically rigorous study [via] the personal but theoretically supported [to] the highly literary and evocative”. This chapter is of the second of these types, joining autoethnographic studies described as “highly personalized accounts that draw upon the experience of the author/researcher for the purposes of extending sociological understanding” (Sparkes 2000, 21). My autoethnographic approach is aligned with and embedded in the reflective practice in which I have engaged throughout my teaching career. As part of my teaching qualification for lifelong learning, I was required to keep a reflective journal, during which process students were urged to reflect upon critical incidents in our teaching placements, an approach that has been noted to increase teachers’ capacity for developing critical/reflective skills (Griffin 2003). I maintained this approach to reflective practice when working for a further education1 provider, where formally reflecting on lessons was seen as an important element of teachers’ continuing professional development. I had no hesitation in writing what might be considered critical stories, and locating myself within these, but writing in the first person singular did not always sit easily with me. Delamont (2007) argues that because autoethnography is rooted in experience, it is not analytical, which research should be. However, this ignores the various formats that autoethnographies can take, which (as already noted) can include rigorous critical analysis. Having spent my post-16 and undergraduate education being told never to write in the first person, when studying for a master’s degree in women’s studies I was introduced to doing just the opposite. I initially had a hard time adjusting to my lecturers’ insistence that I write in the first person and “take authorship of [my] work!”, but ultimately this changed the way I felt when writing; I felt closer to what I was saying, and found that both critical analysis and reflection came more easily. My initial discomfort and bafflement at the requirement to assert my authorship of my work were clearly results of my initial introduction to social research, which had been very much grounded in more traditional, positivist and quantitative approaches. Despite critiques of such approaches emerging in the late twentieth century (e.g. Goodson et al. 2013), and substantial qualitative, constructivist work occurring across the social sciences, little acknowledgement was given to this during my undergraduate degree. While lectures involved both positivist and anti-positivist approaches, the latter still were approached with the implicit caveat that social research should avoid the subjective. Autoethnography can, therefore, be seen as the antithesis of the positivist values into which researchers (and social science students like myself) are often socialized. Feminist researchers have pursued inclusion of their own experience in their research (Ellis 2004), and as a feminist studying women’s studies, I came to that recognizing this experience could also be important in challenging the

146 • Laura Way positivist dominance in social research that some feminists have found disempowering to women (Ramazanoğlu and Holland 2002). Averett (2009) highlights this affinity between autoethnography and feminist research, in that both are underpinned by the message that the personal is political (Hanisch 1970). Another similarity highlighted by Averett (2009) is the way both still actively struggle to be accepted in the mainstream research community. Canagarajah (2012) argues that those who experience marginalization may use autoethnography as a means of having a voice, suggesting that autoethnography is an important tool for those without power, and can serve such individuals as a source of empowerment. This potential can be seen as a common thread running through autoethnography, zine creation and punk pedagogy. My (Brief) Autoethnopedagogical History Reflection can be seen as important to both teachers and learners (Boud et al. 2013). Warren (2011) argues that one way teachers can be reflexive (reflecting, and then acting upon one’s reflections) and improve their teaching is through understanding their own autoethnopedagogical histories (Warren 2011), in order to understand the values and ideas they bring to their practice. It is thus appropriate to consider a little of my own autoethnopedagogical history here, to provide some understanding of how, as a teacher, I came to use zines in the classroom. During my secondary education there were two notable teachers whom I looked up to and admired. One was an English literature teacher and the other taught music. They were both female, and to my eyes they appeared to challenge the traditional view I had held of how a teacher “should be”—in part because they had foul mouths and openly smoked on school trips, flagrantly disregarding expectations of teacherly propriety. The English teacher loved cats, and her classroom was a feline shrine of sorts, with every space covered by a cat picture, adding to my perception of her as a rebel and iconoclast. I took music largely because of the music teacher. In a music department where female students would gravitate towards the more classical instruments and styles, while the male students dominated the practice rooms with their wall of electric guitars, this music teacher put a bass guitar into my arms, providing an inroad to an extra-curricular education of playing in bands and participating in subculture more generally. Both teachers were passionate about their subjects, and because of their combination of idiosyncrasies and passion, English and music became my favourite subjects at school. I can see the influence of these two teachers I admired, in how I have felt encouraged not to need to fit a particular professional ideal. It is perhaps the same underpinning values which I perceived as informing their teaching (e.g., challenging the status quo or not being afraid to speak their minds) that I later felt underpinned the punk scene I became involved in; these values shaped my general outlook, and therefore, later, my teaching.

A Teacher’s Reflections on Zine-Making • 147 I become involved in the punk scene after I started playing in a band in my teens, and it was there that I was first exposed to zines. Zines were sometimes sold or given away at gigs we attended, and many were based around the punk music scene of which the band I played in became part, involving reviews of gigs/music and interviews with bands. There were also some “per-zines” kicking about, which, as the name suggests, focused more on personal stories or views. I started to discover a lot more of this style of zine as I became more involved with feminism, and more specifically the Riot Grrrl movement, particularly while I was a postgraduate student of women’s studies. I was drawn to zines because I felt they embodied punk and the DIY ethos, and I also came to believe in the value they held for feminist activism, giving girls and women a voice and making the personal political, by raising awareness of “women’s issues”. My subsequent decision to use zines as part of my teaching might therefore be understood on a very simplistic level in terms of my desire to bring something from my personal life into my professional life—an integration of my personal interests and pedagogical practice. But there was a deeper rationale behind the decision, relating to the implicit pedagogical and sociological potential I saw in zines. Just as “challenging the status quo” and “speaking one’s mind” were things I had incorporated into my value system, so too were they values I hoped to encourage in my learners, and the use of zines in the classroom facilitated this; zines have been conceptualized as both acts of resistance and tools for (re)creating self (Kempson 2015). In addition to this, my feminist values also form an important part of my pedagogical approach. It has been argued that zine making is suited to a feminist pedagogy as it can facilitate participatory learning, develop critical thinking and validate personal experience (Creasap 2014). The Potential of Zines in the Classroom Zines have transcended their underground beginnings (Duncombe 2008), and their potential in relation to teaching and learning has become increasingly recognized. Wan (1999) emphasizes the value of zines in the classroom environment, offering new and alternative information sources, as well as allowing students to experience ways in which individuals (often their peers) can take control of a media outlet. This chapter focuses on zines as creation, and what the making of zines by learners can offer for both creators and readers. Yang (2010), for instance, used zines within a biology classroom with learners creating zines on self-chosen topics to educate others. Yang (2010) found that this helped deepen the learners’ knowledge as well as providing an opportunity for them to develop personal agency through taking on the role of educators, sourcing information, deciding what to use and how to present it. This approach to learning could therefore be seen to chime somewhat with anarchist pedagogy

148 • Laura Way as envisioned by Shantz (2012, in Dines 2015), whereby an authoritarian mode of teaching (e.g. the teacher as the authority of knowledge) is replaced with a non-authoritarian approach with learners becoming the educators. Creating zines can provide learners with opportunities for reflection, which, as suggested earlier with regard to journaling, can be seen as a key component of teaching and learning. In the context of pre-service art education, Klein (2010) gave university sophomore students a semester-long project of constructing zines to reflect on their observations of teachers. It was argued that zines’ capacity for author self-expression through images and text could assist in both the reflection and visual journaling of the students. Prinsloo et al. (2011) highlight the value of unstructured online diaries for enabling “spontaneous and authentic” reflection on learning; I would argue that an unstructured approach and freedom in creation are inherent to working with zines, which provide an ideal tool for achieving such aims. I propose, following Gauntlet (2007), that the creative, visual nature of zines might allow people to communicate ideas from disciplines that are less obviously creative within a teaching and learning context. This could be particularly beneficial to learners who may struggle otherwise to voice their ideas in the classroom through written or oral communication, or who, when these modes of communication dominate, can be marginalized and disempowered. The potential of zines being used in the classroom to promote inclusivity and empowerment of learners aligns with ideals of anarchist and punk pedagogical approaches (Antliff 2012; Froehlich and Smith 2017). Using zines in a higher education context, Congdon and Blandy (2003) adopted an approach that employed zines as both resource and creation. The authors asked learners to create zines, which were subsequently distributed and discussed as a source for engaging students in postmodern discourse. They noted that this also allowed a break from the strictures of formal paper writing germane to the university context (Congdon and Blandy 2003). The use of zines may therefore be viewed as an alternative to traditional academic practice, and this may also be relevant to the pursuit of punk pedagogical strategies.

Zine Creation in Class What follows are two examples of my use of zine creation in a teaching and learning context in the UK. Each example is based on my experience of working with a group of learners aged between 16 and 20 years of age as part of a further education course in sociology. Within each group there was an equal distribution of females and males, and each group included one learner with special educational needs. Learners were of a similar social background, and there were no international students present. Example 1 is based on my experiences with a group that included 12 learners, while Example 2 involved a larger group of 24.

A Teacher’s Reflections on Zine-Making • 149 Example 1 In this first example, zine creation was used for the purposes of reflection, for the learners and for me as a teacher. The educational institution where I worked required learners to complete a generic survey for each of the subjects they were studying about mid-way through the academic year. I was unconvinced of the usefulness of this survey, since (among other issues) many questions were not relevant to particular subjects. One advantage of the zine activity, therefore, was that it could allow me to seek richer, more detailed feedback from the learners about, for example, which topics they had particularly enjoyed. I aimed for this to feed back into my own reflection on my teaching, as discussed later. In terms of learner reflection, I hoped that creating the zines would give them more control over what they wanted to express while also potentially offering a more accessible alternative to language-based feedback for some learners (Gauntlett 2007). I decided to use zines as part of a lesson towards the end of the academic year, as I wished to ask students to reflect on the year to date. I had created a few slides to show them, which gave some explanation of what a zine was, and had lugged in my own zine collection to provide tangible examples of the possible scope in aesthetics and approach. I asked students each to create a zine that reflected on their first academic year of studying sociology. I specified that they should include certain elements (for example, which area(s) of study they enjoyed the most) but otherwise gave them creative autonomy. This contradicted somewhat the “absolute” freedom usually associated with zine creation, but seemed necessary for the (my) intended purpose of the activity. I also brought in what I considered some necessary zine-making tools: glue, paper and newspapers/ magazines. There were some protests from one or two of the students of “but I’m no good at art!”; nonetheless, they all busied themselves for the lesson making zines, and all had something to submit at the end of the session. A number of issues arose during the activity. First, it was apparent that the learners needed longer to examine zines in order to gain a fuller understanding of what was involved, as a number of them voiced concerns over what they were actually expected to produce. This could have been remedied by having the task spread over more than one 90-minute lesson. A learner with additional needs in particular struggled and misinterpreted the activity. Second, there were constraints when it came to resources—usually zine makers self-select resources that are to hand, whereas in the classroom context these learners were constrained by the resources selected and provided by me. This may have limited the learners’ creative freedom, and inhibited their inspiration and motivation—seemingly antithetical to DIY and anarchist pedagogical approaches. A third issue was the public creation of the zines, with learners expected to make their zines while surrounded by peers in close proximity, due to the constraints of classroom space. The lack of privacy and the impact of peer pressure may thus have limited students’ creations. Fourth, just as the learners could have

150 • Laura Way benefitted from having longer to explore what zines were, they may have also benefitted from more time to construct their own. Zine makers are generally able to create zines at their own pace, rather than watching the clock as these learners were. I would, with hindsight, prefer for my students not to have to work under such time pressure. Informal feedback from learners was mixed, split between those who enjoyed the activity for its creative focus, and those who disliked it for that very reason. Perhaps this reflected the particular zines I had shown them, and maybe I placed too much emphasis on image-based examples composed mostly of drawings, collages and photographs. I could have shared zines containing mostly or entirely writing. The feedback I gathered from reading the zines indicated elements of the course learners enjoyed or did not enjoy—information the generic institutional survey would have not have provided. I was thus able to reflect on why certain elements of the course may have struck a chord (or not) with individuals and the group, helping me to consider course content and particular ways of teaching. Example 2 Reflections on the first example informed my next use of zines in the classroom, for which I took a different approach. This took place during the following academic year, and within the first few weeks of term. An initial lesson was dedicated to gaining an understanding of zines; this involved some input from me, and group work allowing learners to consider a variety of zines and identify what these involved. I was careful this time to include examples of zines that were text-focused, rather than image-orientated. To provide learners with more freedom in the resources they utilized, and to facilitate privacy in their creative activity, I set the zine-making as a homework task based on “their views of society”. I gave no further guidelines, and hoped such a broad theme would engage and enact as much agency and freedom as possible. My rationale for focusing on students’ views of society was that it would develop learners’ critical, analytical skills through considering contemporary societal issues while reflecting on and interrogating their own positionality and values. Pridmore and Harling Stalker (2009) suggest that such a reflexive pedagogical approach can assist learners in developing their sociological imagination, examining their approach to instruction while acknowledging their social locations/positions. All 24 learners completed the task. As was the case in the first example, one student with additional needs appeared to misunderstand the task, highlighting to me that further work was needed regarding the suitability of the task for particular learners. Another student focused on others’ views instead of their own, which was not what I had asked for, but this perhaps demonstrated the power for that student of being afforded agency through the set task. The zines produced were of varying length and formats, and utilized a range of resources. Some focused on one main theme while others were more varied. This led me

A Teacher’s Reflections on Zine-Making • 151 to consider whether provision of resources (e.g. magazines to cut from, scissors, glue) could have been beneficial, as some students perhaps were limited in what they had to hand. Conversely, since it is in the nature of zine creation that one works with that to which one has access, perhaps my concern merely reflected my own narrow expectations regarding the appearance of zines. Issues and topics covered in the zines were varied, with some recurring themes. Reading the zines made me think about topics and issues I could employ in the classroom when starting to consider sociological concepts on the basis of ideas with which learners were already familiar, or opinions they held about society. It was also beneficial to “hear” the voices of learners who struggled to participate in classroom discussion. One of the most profound revelations for me was seeing the level of societal awareness of some learners. The zines were mostly negative and/or critical in tone, and half made reference to stereotyping. I had erroneously assumed a “typical” 16- or 17-year-old to be somewhat apathetic regarding societal issues, which reflected in my teaching of sociology. Conversely, however, the zines demonstrated that, while learners may not have always expressed their ideas openly in class, they were aware of particular issues and could offer interesting, critical insight. Once we had briefly covered some key sociological perspectives (functionalism, Marxism, feminism, interactionism and postmodernism) in class, I asked learners to analyze their zines, reflecting on which perspectives they thought had emerged from or were reflected in them. I collected both the zines and reflections to read and feed back. All bar one learner had attempted the requested analysis. The students were all able to link their zines to sociological perspectives covered on the course, with one unable to explain the link, indicating that I should perhaps provide further guidance in future. Some learners were more detailed in their application than others. Perhaps it would have been beneficial for me to have provided more structure and criteria for writing analyses; however, this might have undermined other (punk and anarchist pedagogical) benefits of having less structure. A cycle of application, reflection and experimentation, such as outlined by Kolb (1984) and Gibbs (1981), may help to identify where this balance is best struck. As such, the written feedback I provided was minimal, but offered links between their zines and sociological perspectives that students may have not considered.

Conclusion: Zines as Punk Pedagogical Tools As demonstrated throughout this volume, a “do-it-yourself ” (DIY) ethos is frequently advocated as part of punk pedagogy. Although this chapter focused on teacher-initiated and individually focused zine creation, I aimed in my teaching and facilitating of the classes to highlight ways in which creating zines can encompass DIY and collaborative punk pedagogical values (Gordon 2012; Grimes and Wall 2015; Smith and Gillett 2015). The DIY ethos also

152 • Laura Way underpinned my rationale for asking learners to create zines in the first example; I was dissatisfied with the institutional learner survey they were required to complete, and so found an alternative method of gathering learner feedback on my course and teaching. Critical, anarchist and punk pedagogues alike recognize and challenge traditional models of teaching and learning that position a teacher as bearer of knowledge and students as empty vessels to be filled (Froehlich and Smith 2017; Kallio, this volume). Torrez (2012, 133) argues that “education [should be] a fundamentally empowering, liberating, and healing cycle of reciprocity between teacher and learner”, relating to her vision of a punk pedagogy that breaks with normative modes of institutional education. Similarly, Kahn-Egan (2008) proposes that punk pedagogy should move away from models of passive learning. As such, the making of zines in the classroom can be seen as empowering and liberating punk pedagogical practice, wherein learners are active creators and agents in their own learning; this recalls Yang’s aforementioned (2012) use of zines in the biology classroom. Based on my own and my students’ reflections, zines clearly have the capacity for allowing learners to be active creators; however, as I realized, care must be taken not to constrain this potential, through ensuring the creative task is not too prescriptive, and by not limiting, or making too many assumptions about, the resources available to learners. As noted in my second example, zines can also provide those learners who may not so readily vocalize their opinions and thoughts in class, an arena in which they can “speak”—that is, a means of achieving authentic, personal expression that traditional pedagogical models can elide. This may have been effective in this particular example, in part because of how large the class was. Armaline (2009) points out that an anarchist pedagogy aims to maximize the voices of all involved—zines may provide a valuable pedagogical tool in achieving this. Zines, therefore, have the potential to empower learners who may feel marginalized. Zines can thus help students to bring theoretical concepts to bear upon their personal experiences, values and perspectives; in the second example, I noted an emerging criticality among the learners when reflecting on society and societal issues. Zines can thus provide an opportunity for learners to demonstrate and/or develop critical awareness, drawing together their sociological training and their interaction with the world. Developing this type of consciousness (Dines 2015) and criticality (Kahn-Egan 2008) are both important elements of punk pedagogy. Closing Reflections In this chapter I have discussed merits and pitfalls of using zines in the classroom, embedded within my wider reflexive practice as an educator, feminist, sociologist and punk. Zine making can offer learners the opportunities to feed back to teachers in a way not available to them through other institutional

A Teacher’s Reflections on Zine-Making • 153 channels; it helps students to express ideas in a non-verbal way, which may be particular suited to some; it can also provoke learners to engage with their own positionality in linking their own and others’ ideas and understandings to wider social experiences of the world. From my perspective as an educator, reflecting on these two instances of zine-making in the classroom has brought me to consider how I could use zines again in my future teaching and learning practice. Care needs to be taken regarding the freedom that learners have in creating; as such, in any future zine-making I would aim sensitively to curate, facilitate and recognize manifestations of that freedom. More extreme notions and forms of freedom associated with punk might need to be tempered better to accommodate and support all learners in the classroom—however anathema the notion of compromise might appear in the context of punk practice! Further thought needs to be given to ways of managing zine creation with learners presenting additional needs, so as to support them in helping them fully to understand and create zines.

Note 1. “Further education” in a UK context refers to the post-compulsory education sector that offers vocational training and/or access to higher education.

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154 • Laura Way Duncombe, Stephen. 2008. Notes From the Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture. Bloomington, IN: Microcosm. Ellis, Carolyn. 2004. The Ethnographic I. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. Froehlich, Hildegard C., and Gareth Dylan Smith. 2017. Sociology for Music Teachers: Practical Applications, 2nd edition. New York: Routledge. Gauntlett, David. 2007. Creative Explorations: New Approaches to Identities and Audiences. Oxon: Routledge. Giroux, Henry A. 2002. “Public Pedagogy and the Politics of Resistance: Notes on a Critical Theory of Educational Struggle.” Educational Philosophy and Theory 35, 1: 5–16. Goodson, Ivor, Nigel P. Short, and Lydia Turner. 2013. Contemporary British Autoethnography. Rotterdam: Sense. Gordon, Alastair. 2012. “Building Recording Studios While Bradford Burned.” In Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower, edited by Zack Furness, 105–124. Brooklyn, NY: Minor Compositions. Griffin, Maureen L. 2003. “Using Critical Incidents to Promote and Assess Reflective Thinking in Preservice Teachers.” Reflective Practice 4, 2: 207–220. Grimes, Matt, and Tim Wall. 2015. “Punk Zines: ‘Symbols of Defiance’ From the Print to the Digital Age.” In Fight Back: Punk, Politics and Resistance, edited by Matthew Worley. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Guzzetti, Barbara J., Leslie M. Foley, and Mellinee Lesley. 2015. “Nomadic Knowledge: Men Writing Zines for Content Learning.” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 58, 7: 591–601. Hanisch, Carol. 1970. “The Personal Is Political.” In Notes From the Second Year: Women’s Liberation: Major Writings of the Radical Feminists, edited by S. Firestone and A. Koedt. New York: Notes (From The Second Year). Hayler, Mike. 2011. Autoethnography, Self-Narrative and Teacher Education. Rotterdam: Sense. Kahn-Egan, Seth. 2008. “Pedagogy of the Pissed: Punk Pedagogy in the First-Year Writing Classroom.” College Composition and Communication 49, 1: 99–104. Kempson, Michelle. 2015. “ ‘My Version of Femininity’: Subjectivity, DIY and the Feminist Zine.” Social Movement Studies 14, 4: 459–472. Klein, Sheri. 2010. “Creating Zines in Preservice Art Teacher Education.” Art Education 63, 1: 40–46. Lake, Jonathan. 2015. “Autoethnography and Reflexive Practice: Reconstructing the Doctoral Thesis Experience.” Reflexive Practice 16, 5: 677–687. Larrivee, Barbara. 2000. “Transforming Teaching Practice: Becoming the Critically Reflective Teacher.” Reflective Practice 1: 293–307. Loughran, John. 2002. “Effective Reflective Practice: In Search of Meaning in Learning About Teaching.” Journal of Teacher Education 53, 1: 33–43. Marcus, Sara. 2010. Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution. New York: Harper Perennial. Pridmore, Jason, and Lynda Harling Stalker. 2009. “Reflexive Pedagogy and the Sociological Imagination.” Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge 7, 3: 27–36. Prinsloo, Paul, Sharon Slade, and Fenella Galpin. 2011. “A Phenomenographic Analysis of Student Reflections in Online Learning Diaries.” Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning 26, 1: 27–38. Ramazanoğlu, Caroline, and Janet Holland. 2002. Feminist Methodology: Challenges and Choices. London: SAGE. Richardson, Laurel, and Elizabeth Adams St Pierre. 2005. “Writing: A Method of Inquiry.” In The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, edited by Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Smith, Gareth D., and Alex Gillett. 2015. “Creativities, Innovation and Networks in Garage Punk Rock: A Case Study of the Eruptörs.” Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts 4, 1: 9–24. Sparkes, Andrew C. 2000. “Autoethnography and Narratives of Self: Reflections on Criteria in Action.” Sociology of Sport Journal 17: 21–43. Suresh Canagarajah, Athelstan. 2012. “Teacher Development in a Global Profession: An Autoethnography.” TESOL Quarterly 46, 2: 258–279. Torrez, Estrella. 2012. “Punk Pedagogy.” In Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower, edited by Zack Furness, 131–142. Brooklyn, NY: Minor Compositions. Wall, Sarah. 2006. “An Autoethnography on Learning About Autoethnography.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 5, 2: 146–160.

A Teacher’s Reflections on Zine-Making • 155 Wan, Amy J. 1999. “Not Just for Kids Anymore: Using Zines in the Classroom.” Radical Teacher 55: 15–19. Warren, John T. 2011. “Reflexive Teaching: Toward Critical Autoethnographic Practices of/in/on Pedagogy.” Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 11, 2: 139–144. Yang, Andrew. 2010. “Engaging Participatory Literacy Through Science Zines.” American Biology Teacher 72, 9: 573–577.

11

Give Violence a Chance: Emancipation and Escape in/ from School Music Education ALEXIS ANJA KALLIO

Introduction At first glance, there may well be few things in this world less punk than the secondary school music classroom. Indeed, it has been noted that the introduction of “youth music” to formal teaching and learning has been an efficient means to render any music as decidedly uncool (Allsup 2010)—perhaps all the more true with punk, arguably enjoyed by more middle-aged teachers than teenage students. Yet, popular musics have been seen in contemporary music education philosophy and practice as an efficient means to connect with young students, bridging the divide between music in schools and their “real world” musical experiences. Particularly in Nordic classrooms, popular music has been justified as a means to attend to the inherent diversity of student populations through motivating and engaging all students in accessible, authentic music-making. As such, popular musics are constructed as particularly democratic, playing a key role in “creating learning environments and methods, which break the rules of tradition, the conventional, and the taken-for-granted” (Westerlund 2002, 216). Such characterizations of a student-led, anti-hierarchical classroom may seem amenable to the inclusion of punk musics and their associated anti-authoritarian, do-it-yourself, rebellious ideologies. Similarly, the notion of punk pedagogies—as enquiry-based, critical approaches that promote student empowerment and social responsibility (Dines 2015, 22)—may also align with these participatory ideals. Punk musics and/or pedagogies may thus hold promises for teachers looking to enact the democratic potentials of music education through challenging of the status quo—asking how we “define music learning and what prevents people, processes, and performances from enacting positive and meaningful transformative change?” (O’Neill 2012, 178). However, it is important to note that the music classroom is not neutral terrain across which teachers guide change in their students, leading them towards becoming more knowledgeable, skilful, musical, socially responsible, active, moral citizens. Although it has been argued that plurality and the possibility 156

Give Violence a Chance • 157 for change are preconditions of democracy (e.g. Westerlund 2002), the school context does not, and arguably cannot or should not, allow for pluralities of absolutely any sort, or changes in absolutely any direction. After all, schooling is as much a moral enterprise as an academic one. This raises questions as to the extent to which a punk ethos (as underlies either/both musics or pedagogies) can serve as an arena for the democratization of music education through popular music. Do the “dialogue, shared meaning making, and sociocultural and sociopolitical associations” (O’Neill 2012, 179) of the school community welcome punk on its own terms? Or is punk included only insofar as it emphasizes a “failure to conform” (Dewey MW4: 278) to the established moral boundaries of the classroom? Is punk accepted within certain limits—with students told, “explore, but don’t go too far”? (Allsup 2016, 12). Drawing upon the philosophical writings of French philosopher Jacques Rancière, and the context of popular music education in Finland, I here argue that punk musics or pedagogies may unsettle the democratic project of music education, offering an alternative to transformative approaches to music education that risk imposing narrow visions of what constitutes the right and the good. I thus pose the question: if punk can be included in a way that avoids the pasteurization of the politics so often positioned in opposition to the progress-oriented, regulated, adult worlds of which school is a part, what will become of our students? “Welcome to Paradise”1: Claiming Space for Punk in a Democratic School Music Education The Finnish public school system has often been promoted in international forums as a paradise for popular music education. Most classrooms are equipped with guitars, keyboards, drums and microphones, and lessons have been said to resemble the working model of a garage band (Westerlund 2006). Introduced as part of the first comprehensive school curriculum at the turn of the 1970s, popular musics now hold an established place in school repertoires and tertiary music teacher education programmes. Similarly to other Nordic music education systems, this embrace of popular musics has been justified from a number of standpoints, each of which supports a vision of teaching and learning that stipulates that school music education should not only prepare students for participation in democratic societies, but be democratic in and of itself (Kallio 2015). Foregrounding inclusion and participation, democracy here refers to Gandin and Apple’s (2002) concept of thick democracy, concerned with producing an active citizenry. In searching for a place for punk in the thick democracy of the music classroom, I begin this chapter with an outline of the primary justifications for including popular music in school curricula more broadly, considering how punk affirms, or perhaps upsets, these inclusive, participatory ideals. In opposition to reductionist approaches to education that limited teaching materials to a narrow corpus of masterworks (e.g. Bloom 1987; Hirsch 1988),

158 • Alexis Anja Kallio contemporary music education scholarship, both in Finland and internationally, has sought to serve increasingly heterogeneous student populations through a broadening of classroom repertoires. The narrow focus on “high art” was seen to promote singular understandings of musical value, simultaneously excluding students who did not identify with classical, Western ideals. In addressing this marginalization of other musics and values, it has been argued that multicultural classrooms are also multimusical (Reimer 1993). The inclusion of popular music, as youth culture, has thus been seen as a means to reach out to all students by representing the (musical) cultures they are presumed to identify with and enjoy. In other words, the inclusion of Other musics has been seen as a means to include Other students. In attending to this multimusicality of school classrooms and drawing upon students’ out-of-school musical worlds, Bennett Reimer (1984/2009) considered it “fruitless to deem any particular style of music, say, as inherently more or less worthy than any other style” (199). However, it was also suggested that qualitative judgements could be made within any given style or genre, and the teacher’s task was thus to lead students towards cultivated appreciation through listening (185). Such an approach establishes a hierarchy of popular musics not so dissimilar to the hierarchies that distinguished “high art” from the merely popular, not to mention a hierarchy of musical engagements through the prioritization of appreciative listening.2 The teacher’s role as expert was similarly undisturbed, with the assumed ability to select musical goods from oceans of mass media–oriented flotsam and jetsam—even with regard to what was commonly seen as the music belonging to, and enjoyed by, the young. As such, while attending to the multimusicality of classroom populations may have changed the soundtrack of the classroom, such justifications for the introduction of popular musics to school curricula were still only a small step towards thick democracy. International calls to broaden classroom repertoires as an ethical response to multiculturalism may be seen to conceive of music as cultural artefact, with the learning and appreciation of different musics allowing for the learning and appreciation of the different cultures to which the musics “belong”. However, more recent philosophical work, particularly that associated with praxialism, has reconsidered music in the classroom from artefact to social activity. This has been articulated through David Elliott’s (1995) definition of music as a verb, “to music”, through his term musicing. In learning from contexts beyond the Western classical music tradition, praxialism has called for a considerable shift in classroom emphasis, from passive engagements with music as artefact (textual or auditory), to students actively making music together. With classrooms assumed to be inherently multimusical, and “the values and meanings evidenced in actual music making and music listening in specific cultural contexts” (Elliott 1995, 14), teachers have been instructed that they can no longer rely upon predetermined criteria in selecting any one music as best or better. Rather than selecting exemplars from collections of

Give Violence a Chance • 159 musico-cultural artefacts, the teacher’s role has been reconstructed as facilitator of student meaning-construction, through hands-on experiences of active music-making. This celebratory focus upon musical doings has somewhat foreclosed critical questions of which musics are to be included as part of classroom activities, seen as intricately related to the “why and who” of musicmaking. As Elliott and Silverman (2015) explain, teachers should “look to themselves and their own teaching circumstances” when selecting material for the classroom (406). Furthermore, in line with the democratic purpose of popular musics in the classroom, students have also been invited to participate in decisions regarding lesson content, as teachers ask, “what do they want to achieve now, this minute, and what is the main thing they need to achieve it?” (Green 2008, 34). Adding to the justification for popular musics in the classroom as a way of attending to students’ own musical preferences and experiences has been an underlying belief that popular musics are more accessible and readily intelligible for novice learners. With the classroom focus on music-making, putting together a complete pop song during class time has been seen as a feasible goal for teachers and students, at least when compared to achieving the same feat within the realm of Western art musics. Consequently, accessible pop/rock musics (ostensibly enjoyed and owned by the young) have been seen not only as democratic through enhancing participatory opportunities, but also as offering more authentic musical experiences. Bridging the divide between music in the “real” world and music in schools has also demanded new pedagogical approaches. This has perhaps been most notably expressed in Lucy Green’s (2002) seminal work that looked at “How Popular Musicians Learn” in seeking alternatives to the rigid master-apprenticeship pedagogical traditions associated with the teaching and learning of Western art musics. Popular music was thus seen to open up student-centred teaching and learning spaces, guided by the ideals of equality and inclusion. Such an authentic, inclusive and democratic approach to music education, affording students opportunities to participate in decision making and handson music-making, has not only been promoted as a means to empower the individual but also to foster a sense of community. Community, manifest in the ability to speak in terms of we or us, may be understood as hinged on at least the ideal of, if not actual, agreement. However, as seen in Dewey’s exclamation that “there is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication” (MW9:7), this does not mean that there is no room for difference or dissent. If learning is experiential—as Dewey and many others have claimed, and as has underpinned much of the turn towards music-making in the classroom—it takes place in reference to “the whole matrix within which the human being confronts the world—the material and social environment, the ever-changing flux of every-day life” (Westerlund 2002, 49). Indeed, confrontation is an essential component of teaching and learning, if the task of

160 • Alexis Anja Kallio schooling is to change our unreflective habits and actions that function in line with “stupid and rigid convention” (Dewey MW14: 15). This may sound like fertile soil for punk in the classroom, given punk’s propensity for the provocative. However, the academic and social goals of school music education raise questions with regard to how conflict is navigated, and to what ends. As government-funded and mandated institutions intended to serve all and contribute towards a democratic society, schools bear a considerable burden of social responsibility, both reflecting and constructing understandings of the right and good, and also the deviant and deleterious. With this in mind, the extent to which punk songs such as NOFX’s “Drugs Are Good” (1995) or Pennywise’s “Fuck Authority” (2001) can, or should, be included in school activities raises questions regarding whose values and ideals construct the school community. Similarly, which (or whose) punk ethos one welcomes through classroom doors holds serious implications—is the punk ethos, by definition, “progressive”? What of the “ ‘darker side’ of punk’s politics . . . representing right-wing and fascist ideologies?” (Phillipov 2006, 387). Without critically attending to popular music meanings as historically, ideologically and also institutionally constructed, music education runs the risk of including musics—and students—that already align with the ideals and values of the majority, and excluding or marginalizing those that stand in opposition. Rather than the multimusical, democratic ideals of equality whereby all students are included, this may instead (re-)enforce “systems of domination that assimilate and eradicate difference” (Laes and Kallio 2016, 81). “The Kids Aren’t Alright”: Is Punk Too Punk for School Music Education? Perhaps unsurprisingly, punk is often referred to as one of the many popular musics “cast in antipathy to education” (Green 2002, 159), existing in opposition to the ideals and values of many school communities. Indeed, North and Hargreaves (2008) include punk in their category of problem music, and the genre is often essentialized as a noisy, rebellious counterculture (at least when considered in relation to “school culture”). Similarly, the notion of punk pedagogies leaves many an educator scratching their heads (Dines 2015), unsure how the anti-establishment ethos might gel with the policies and practices of formal education institutions. However, punk—as music, ethos or pedagogical approach—is not inherently immoral or problematic, and defining punk as school-appropriate or otherwise may be understood as a political act of legitimation in and of itself. Considering how it is that punk comes to be defined as problematic, it is worth noting that such conceptualizations do not necessarily arise as the result of a one-directional authoritarian decision—such as a teacher telling a student that their favourite punk song is inappropriate to play in class. Rather, labels such as “problem music” may be

Give Violence a Chance • 161 seen as ongoing processes of deviantization, arising from competing ideological and moral agendas (Kallio 2015). As negotiations take place with regard to what is good music, and what music is good for, teachers’ situational classroom repertoire decisions require ethical deliberation if the ideals of democracy are to be upheld and enacted. Allsup and Westerlund (2012) state that teachers “must be more than a witness to student freedom” (134), and should contradict the values and ideals of students’ musical selections if they are not in keeping with those of the school. Rather than a laissez-faire “anything goes” approach to repertoire selection, they argue that “an ethically conceived informalist methodology must struggle openly with the possible contradictions of educational ends (the cultivation of citizenship, plurality, moral and disciplinary knowledge) and sociological ends (the cultivation of individuality, identity formation, social inclusion, and in-groups/out-groups)” (Allsup and Westerlund 2012, 134). This retains the teacher’s position as expert, if not in relation to content (what is good music), then in relation to ethical and educational ends of teaching and learning (what music ought to be good for). Even if we agree with Allsup’s later (2016) claim that “equipping students with the tools, musical and otherwise, not merely to respond or adapt to change but to consciously shape and direct one’s future is a moral end of school and university” (110), there is still a need to continually interrogate whose morals define the success of such critical awareness, and whose “dubious values” (Woodford 2014, 30) lie outside the enforced moral boundaries of the school. Indeed, it is necessary to question whose values construct the moral boundaries of schooling in the first place, and who ought to act as enforcer. Thus, although taking ethical dimensions of teaching and learning into consideration may (re-)construct music education as seeking or embracing open encounters (e.g. Allsup 2016), these are not necessarily philosophies of open ends. Beyond musical or educational ends (however one might define these), recent music education philosophies have been concerned with the moral ends of music education, through embarking upon a quest, if not for certainty,3 for the better. The risk of conceiving music education as transformative practice is that difference is all too easily positioned as a challenge to overcome, assimilating students into the norms and values of the school community, or rather, who the constantly evolving school community is envisioned to become. In this sense, processes of becoming are emphasized just as much as they are in aesthetic or other traditions, adding morality to the agenda of “students becoming more musical, becoming more confident, becoming more tolerant, becoming more knowledgeable, becoming more technically proficient, becoming more like us” (Laes and Kallio 2016, 81). The inherent problem with this unwavering focus on becoming is that it requires inequality—a division between those who are less and more moral, less and more critically aware, less and more emancipated. This echoes what Jacques Rancière (1991) has referred to as the myth

162 • Alexis Anja Kallio of pedagogy: “the parable of a world divided into knowing minds and ignorant ones, ripe minds and immature ones, the capable and the incapable, the intelligent and the stupid” (6). The teacher’s work is then to explicate the true and the good, leading students out of ignorance and immorality. The transformative work in guiding or cultivating students’ becoming can also be seen in sociologist Howard Becker’s (1963) figure of the moral entrepreneur, who is “not only interested in seeing to it that other people do what he thinks is right. He believes that if they do what is right it will be good for them” (148). The teacher’s deliberation “between multiple and contradictory ends and multiple and contradictory ideals” (Allsup and Westerlund 2012, 135) is then curtailed by a priori assumptions of which (or whose) ends and ideals are desirable or normal. In defining the good, in which direction teachers and students should strive, so in turn the school community defines the deviant. Deviance here is seen as “behaviour [which includes music, if thought of as social action] which somehow departs from what a group expects to be done or what it considers the desirable way of doing things” (Cohen 2009, 35). More complex than this, it has been noted that defining something as deviant is not a static event but a continuous and changing process. This is so because . . . it is a way of characterizing and reacting, exhibited by individuals and groups whose interests and favored values, and their ability to impose them, vary greatly and in many instances change over time . . . the distribution of power among persons and groups crucially shapes deviance outcomes. (Schur 1980, 66) In this way, the teacher’s ethical deliberations are contextualised within broader moral negotiations that draw the line between propriety and the problematic, as “struggles over competing social definitions” (Schur 1980, 8), referred to by sociologist Edwin Schur (1980) as stigma contests. These stigma contests arise as individuals or social groups seek to (re-)enforce their own moral boundaries in order to legitimize or normalize their own epistemological and ethical perspectives. As this epistemological and ethical competition produces meanings of musics, worldviews, actions and so forth as normal, desirable and moral, so too does it frame others as existing outside of the boundaries of propriety— the deviant. Morality and deviance are thus two sides of the same proverbial coin. If punk musics or pedagogies then seem out of place in the school classroom, it is worth reflecting upon the negotiations of morality/deviance that construct them as such. Particularly if music education is intended to be inclusive, open, participatory and democratic, who holds the power to construct what/who is considered normal, productive, moral and desirable (to become)? Who assigns punk meaning, in which situations, and to what ends? Defining

Give Violence a Chance • 163 musics such as punk as “problem music” are, in this sense, “not just labels, or mere words uttered in the heat of the moment, but categories of denunciation or abuse lodged within very complex, historically loaded practical conflicts and moral debates” (Sumner 1990, 28)—strategies of domination and control that potentially work against the participatory ideals of thick democracy in the music classroom. “We Don’t Need Freedom”: What Are the Sins of Imposition We Commit in the Name of Liberation?4 If music education is to be considered as transformative practice, and engage ethically and openly with “questions of culture . . . issues concerning identity and identity politics; and in multicultural education” (Biesta 1998, 500), we must interrogate the relations between schooling as an institution and who is being schooled, in what and to what ends. As a deviantized music in school contexts, punk may hold the potential to unsettle the moral boundaries of the dominant culture and the social stratifications of the status quo, giving rise to more equitable spaces and practices. Seen as not only artefact or activity, but also as ideology (Lamb 1996), punk music may be construed as a tool of empowerment—with its inclusion as part of classroom activities holding potential to empower, emancipate and address injustice. However, in light of Rancière’s myth of pedagogy, and the stigma contests that shape musical meanings, the transformative intentions of music education may, in practice, function to pasteurize punk, divorcing it from its social, historical, political and ideological meanings. For instance, in selecting musical material that is appropriate for the classroom, the teacher may well find music that “might promote antiviolence, challenge unjust social conditions, support gender equity, encourage education, critique commercial interests in the music industry, and/or other prosocial values” (Kruse 2016, 17). However, this same music may be excluded on the basis of the (musical) means through which such values are expressed, perhaps adapting musics for the classroom through changing the musical aesthetics themselves (the acoustic guitars, keyboards and xylophones commonly found in Finnish classrooms may result in an arguably less aggressive performance than the instrumentation of a typical punk band), or changing the lyrics, or selecting “socially conscious”, “clean” punk songs that do not “rock the boat” too much lest it capsize. This reminds me of Allsup’s (2016) question: “What if a musical Law, or a social more, were intentionally violated?” (113). What if the teacher themselves is positioned as the target of punk’s antiauthoritarian rebellion? What are the challenges then, in including such a music without re-appropriating the musical and social meanings to align with predetermined, or at least hoped, student becomings? In this way, well-intentioned attempts at inclusion may not result in the emancipation of students, but their assimilation through the normalization and (re-)enforcement of mainstream musical and moral boundaries.

164 • Alexis Anja Kallio With punk musics part of classroom repertoires, so too are the socio-culturalpolitical meanings that give rise to, accompany or are borne out of these musics. In navigating these, teachers are often directed to explicitly address issues of power and social responsibility. Punk pedagogies, as defined by Dines (2015), have been discussed as closely related to critical pedagogy, which offers an important perspective in: thinking about, negotiating, and transforming the relationships among classroom teaching, the production of knowledge, the institutional structures of the school, and the social and material relations of the wider community, society and nation state. (McLaren 2000, 345) The goal of critical popular music pedagogy, and perhaps punk pedagogy, is then not only the conscientization (Freire 1970) of musical meanings embedded and produced in socio-political context, but also to take action, through musicmaking, towards social justice, empowerment and social change. However, if we are to heed Rancière’s warnings against stratifications that assume, and are reliant upon, hierarchies of knowledge, ability, morality and so on, questions are raised as to the direction of this change: how can we be sure that change is for the better? Such questions are nothing new. Indeed, the “progressive agenda” behind much critical pedagogical work has been long criticized for its abstraction and obscurity (e.g. Ellsworth 1989). Positioning the teacher as moral entrepreneur or emancipatory authority appears to rely on a number of certainties that warrant critical attention, particularly if we take into account the inherent multimusicality and diversity of classrooms. One of these certainties is the very need for transformation itself. Research in critical pedagogy, or social justice in education more broadly, often focuses its gaze on those deemed disadvantaged, disaffected or at-risk, notably labelled as such by the critical pedagogue themselves. For instance, in seeking to close the achievement, or opportunity, gap, scholars have often sought ways to boost the performance of underachieving social groups—to include them in the mainstream. Such transformative visions construct difference (or inequality) as a “retard in one’s development” (Rancière 1991, 119) by privileging certain musics, cultures and values as the norm to which we should all aspire to. The punk student may then be seen as simply going through an awkward adolescent phase that they will grow out of with guidance and maturity. Non-conformity is thus conflated with a failure to conform—a deficiency requiring corrective action. In Rancièrian terms, the inequality fostered here is one that ranks intelligences through positioning the teacher as master, and the student as deficient—unable to emancipate themselves—through a distribution of the sensible (partage du sensible), a “system of self-evident facts of sense perception

Give Violence a Chance • 165 that simultaneously discloses the existence of something in common and the delimitations that define the respective parts and positions within it” (Rancière 2004, 12). With students requiring explication as to not only how to emancipate themselves from oppressive power but how their own welfare ought to be constituted, such projects of transformation risk manifesting as projects of assimilation, antithetical to the inclusive, participatory ideals of thick democracy, as seen in Giroux and McLaren’s (1986) explication of critical pedagogical approaches: “students and teachers can engage in a process of deliberation and discussion aimed at advancing public welfare in accordance with fundamental moral judgements and principles” (247). One might ask what the transformative critical pedagogue might make of the student whose punk music expresses an opposition to—or rejection of—these fundamental morals, judgements and principles? Is such an expression even within the realms of the sensible at all? Another certainty implied in transformative teaching is that power is a “fixed possession” (Walkerdine 1992, 15), often imposed in a one-directional torrent of oppression. In turn, freedom may be assumed to be the absence of such power. Such understandings downplay or negate the complex moral negotiations and conflicts arising through the stigma contests that produce meaning, values, morals and ideologies, preventing teachers and students from critically attending to these processes of normalization and deviantization. With the school community (ideally) seen as cohesive, and power seen as something one possesses (or not) once and for all, teachers and students are often seen to unite against a common oppressor. However, if the stigma contests of the school are recognized, and power ever-present and ever-negotiated, the school classroom is itself politicized terrain and home to both oppressors and oppressed. Music education is thus always inclusive and exclusive (e.g. Kallio 2015; Bowman 1998), the teacher always and both oppressor and oppressed, liberator and enforcer. Without a recognition of the conflicts and tensions arising through the stigma contests that establish the moral boundaries that define who makes up the school community, the punk music that is included in the critical music classroom may not be particularly punk after all. Rather, it may be punk rendered impotent, a safe simulation (Ericsson et al. 2010, 113) cleansed of its socio-political, historical, ideological meanings as an illusion of emancipation and equality while simultaneously fortifying the non-negotiability of the (authority-defined) universal truth that serves as educational ends-in-view. One way in which this may be achieved is through teachers explicating punk for students, maintaining control over its meanings and value (at least within the context of school work). Almost three decades ago, Elizabeth Ellsworth (1989) criticized the assumed “superiority of teachers’ understandings” (307) that afforded critical pedagogues permission to transform “conflict into rational argument by means of universalized capacities for language and reason” (Walkerdine 1985, 205). Punk’s “apocalyptic mantra ‘no future’, its investment in

166 • Alexis Anja Kallio detritus, and its desire for shock” (Howes et al. 2016, 3) do not easily align with the enforcement of “the rules of reason in the classroom” (Ellsworth 1989, 304) aiming towards universal validity. Students who identify with or enjoy punk are then not included as equal rational beings, but led by the expert teacher along the routes of becoming towards full, democratic citizenship. Rancière’s myth of pedagogy is thus manifest as the teacher is envisioned not as an aged obtuse master who crams his students’ skulls full of poorly digested knowledge, or a malignant character mouthing half-truths in order to shore up his power and the social order. On the contrary, he is all the more efficacious because he is knowledgeable, enlightened, and of good faith. (Rancière 1991, 7) Rather than enhancing equality and participatory democracy in schools, such divisions between the powerful and the powerless, the knowledgeable and the ignorant, the rational and the irrational, the pedagogue and the punk, may be seen to inform a transformative education that is dependent on the perpetuation of social inequality. Indeed, “[o]ne need only learn how to be equal men [sic] in an unequal society” (Rancière 1991, 133). “Give Violence a Chance”: Punk as an Escape Route So how else might music education approach the “questions of culture  .  .  . issues concerning identity and identity politics; and in multicultural education”? (Biesta 1998, 500). Might there be a place in the school music classroom for punk music to be included on its own terms? Can music education offer transformative experiences without predetermined destinations in mind with regard to who we would like our students to become? How might we broaden our ideas of who constitutes the we of the school community to enact the ideals of democratic participation? In concluding this chapter, I put forward one suggestion for what might constitute punk pedagogies in the school music classroom, and what they might offer teachers and students as they engage with the negotiations and conflicts over meaning, values and morals that politicize classroom content and activities. I argue that punk pedagogies, imagined through Rancière’s understanding of emancipation, “may enable teachers and students to engage in critical reflections and negotiations that extend beyond fixed notions of what constitutes a good music, or a good student” (Kallio 2015, 105)—escaping the dichotomies of inclusion/exclusion that have thus far framed approaches to music education aiming towards thick democracy. When freedom is understood as the absence of power, emancipatory or transformative music education cannot allow for students’ multiple, and at times conflicting, becomings. If music education is to avoid such well-intentioned

Give Violence a Chance • 167 exclusion and assimilation, it is necessary to move beyond assumptions of a foundational principle of a community that explicates what it is that those who are unequal should be emancipated from, and by whom. Rather than envisioning the school community in terms of an included majority and excluded minorities, Rancière’s thesis of radical equality conceives of a community that is continually negotiated and reconfigured. What this thesis offers in terms of transformative pedagogies is an escape from governance and control—an escape from emancipation as a process of becoming itself. What is the emancipatory, transformative, critical pedagogue to do, then? In his book Hatred of Democracy (2006), Rancière states, “democracy first of all means this: anarchic ‘government,’ one based on nothing other than the absence of every title to govern” (41). Such a statement does not imply that society need do away with government, or in this case, teaching, but challenges any justification for making a “distinction between those who occupy the position of governing and those who do not” (May 2012, 119). In other words, the teacher is not positioned as one who knows more, or who knows better, who can guide or emancipate the student. Quotation marks around the word “government” furthermore unsettle what it is such guidance might be or in what direction it might guide. This embrace of uncertainty aligns with anarchist pedagogies that aim not towards a new social order, but towards “freer and more critical minds, and more open, cooperative and nonoppressive relationships within society” (Mueller 2012, 14). This multiplicity and openness of (educational) ends may well serve as the basis of punk pedagogies, offering not emancipation but escape (Rancière 1995). Through escaping minoritized positions, or the structuring of society (through education), punk pedagogies entail a “rupture in the order of things” (Rancière 2003, 219); a “removal from the naturalness of a place” (Rancière 1995, 36); a troubling of certainty; a shock. Punk pedagogies, as pedagogies that antagonize and disrupt, might both identify and subvert the power hierarchies of the school classroom. By rejecting the “inhibiting constraints of conformity . . . [as] an oppositional tendency that seeks to unmask the sources of power, hoping to reveal their exploitive nature, disseminating the truth the way it is perceived and  .  .  . potentially [serving] the function of an organic intellectual” (Kristiansen et al. 2010, 145), punk pedagogies refocus attention from the idealized destination to the stigma contests that construct social, cultural and musical meaning. Such pedagogical approaches require attending to what, or who, constitutes the social in the first place. The teacher is then not simply a witness to student freedom as Allsup and Westerlund (2012) caution, as such a freedom is impossible. Yet, neither is the teacher guiding the students out of ignorance, or oppression, as such a liberatory approach “runs the risk of being duplicitous, engaging in circular processes of manumission, unreflectively partaking in the very . . . processes of domination and oppression it aims to eradicate” (Kallio 2015, 99). The multiple and multi-directional

168 • Alexis Anja Kallio power relations inherent in the school music classroom, and the inclusion and exclusion resulting from them, are then not necessarily bad, nor good; they quite simply are. Following from a recognition of power, inclusion and exclusion as omnipresent, interrelated and even necessary aspects of classroom work, deviantization is not necessarily experienced as a negative. Thinking about deviance differently, punk may be seen to find refuge in its exclusion from mainstream legitimized repertoires and norms, and exclusion is thus a source of power in itself. Punk pedagogies, in this way, do not seek to overcome difference by inviting the Outsiders of music education into mainstream policies and practices, but to embrace difference as of “political value, a means of preserving certain practices and dimensions of existence from regulatory power, from normative violence” (Brown 1998, 314). Through enacting ruptures to the status quo, and regarding difference as a resource for, rather than hindrance to, learning, punk pedagogies seen through a Rancièrian perspective position equality as the starting point of education rather than a goal to strive towards. Emancipation is thus the verification of equality, “a struggle for equality which can never be merely a demand upon the other, nor a pressure put upon him, but always simultaneously a proof given to oneself ” (Rancière 1995, 48). The potentials of punk pedagogies might then lie deep within, or even beyond, thick democracy, in the escape from the mainstreaming of majoritarian worldviews and value systems, within the school system itself. This escape is enacted by (re-)politicizing classroom spaces as multiple and complex, engaging with disruptions that arise through communication and conflict, interrogating the processes of deviantization that legitimize and exclude, and giving violence, in all its destructive potency, a chance. Notes 1. In keeping with Elliott’s (1995) claim that music is social action rather than artefact, the subtitles for this chapter are drawn from musics that were, and are, part of my own becomings—Welcome to Paradise (Green Day, 1992); The Kids Aren’t Alright (Offspring 1998); We Don’t Need Freedom (Saccharine Trust 1981); Give Violence a Chance (G.L.O.S.S. 2016). 2. Divisions between means of engaging with musical works in the classroom have been furthered since the mid-1970s by scholars such as Keith Swanwick (2016), who distinguishes between five parameters of musical experience: composition, literature studies, audition, skill acquisition and performance (30). 3. Cautions against a “quest for certainty” appear already in John Dewey’s writings, but also more recently in those of Zygmunt Bauman for example. 4. Orner, M. (1992, 77).

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170 • Alexis Anja Kallio North, Adrian, and David J. Hargreaves. 2008. The Social and Applied Psychology of Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. O’Neill, Susan. 2012. “Becoming a Music Learner: Towards a Theory of Transformative Music Engagement.” In The Oxford Handbook of Music Education, edited by Gary E. McPherson and Graham F. Welch, 163–186. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Orner, Mimi. 1992. “Interrupting the Calls for Student Voice in ‘Liberatory’ Education: A Feminist Post Structuralist Perspective.” In Feminism and Critical Pedagogy, edited by Carmen Luke and Jennifer Gore, 74–89. New York: Routledge. Phillipov, Michelle. 2006. “Haunted by the Spirit of ’77: Punk Studies and the Persistence of Politics.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 20, 3: 383–393. Rancière, Jacques. 1991. The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Rancière, Jacques. 1995. On the Shores of Politics. London: Verso. Rancière, Jacques. 2003. The Philosopher and His Poor. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rancière, Jacques. 2004. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible . London: Continuum. Rancière, Jacques. 2006. Hatred of Democracy. London: Verso. Reimer, Bennett. 1984/2009. “Choosing Art for Education: Criteria for Quality.” In Seeking the Significance of Music Education, edited by Bennett Reimer, 191–200. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield. Reimer, Bennett. 1993. “Music Education in Our Multimusical Culture.” Music Educators Journal 79, 7: 21–26. Schur, Edwin. 1980. The Politics of Deviance: Stigma Contests and the Uses of Power. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Sumner, Colin. 1990. Censure, Politics and Criminal Justice. Buckingham: Open University Press. Swanwick, Keith. 2016. A Developing Discourse in Music Education: The Selected Works of Keith Swanwick. Oxon: Routledge. Walkerdine, Valerie. 1985. “On the Regulation of Speaking and Silence: Subjectivity, Class, and Gender in Contemporary Schooling.” In Language, Gender, and Childhood, edited by Carolyn Steedman, Cathy Urwin, and Valerie Walkerdine, 203–241. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Walkerdine, Valerie. 1992. “Progressive Pedagogy and Political Struggle.” In Feminisms and Critical Pedagogy, edited by Carmen Luke and Jennifer Gore, 15–25. New York: Routledge. Westerlund, Heidi. 2002. Bridging Experience, Action and Culture in Music Education. Doctoral dissertation, Sibelius Academy. Westerlund, Heidi. 2006. “Garage Rock Band: A Future Model for Developing Musical Expertise?” International Journal for Music Education 24, 2: 119–125. Woodford, Paul. 2014. “The Eclipse of the Public: A Response to David Elliott’s ‘Music Education as/for Artistic Citizenship’.” Philosophy of Music Education Review 22, 1: 22–37.

Part III Theorizing from Punk Pedagogical Practice

12

Being Punk in Higher Education: Subcultural Strategies for Academic Practice1 TOM PARKINSON

Introduction The relationship between punk and formal education is ambiguous and complex. The beginnings of punk’s narrative are typically located in the late 1970s, against a backdrop of ostentatiously virtuosic rock music, manufactured pop music and late free-market capitalism (Moore 2012). Punks positioned themselves in opposition to these cultural, political and economic status quos, and to the mainstream institutions that were seen to support the dominant order (Hebdige 1979). State-funded schools and universities have been portrayed by many punk artists as an invidious aspect of institutionalized culture, mediating knowledge in the service of state ideology. In one such example, the Suicidal Tendencies’ song “Institutionalised” (Muir and Mayorga 1983) plays on the idea of institutionalization by linking education with mental health. The song’s protagonist Mike is considered mentally ill by his parents because of his frustration with life and desire to remain in his bedroom all day. This exacerbates his frustration, which in turn reinforces his parents’ belief that he is mentally ill. As they inform him he is to be sectioned, Mike replies angrily that he has already attended their “institutionalised learning facilities” that “brainwash you until you see their way”, and that it is in fact they who are “crazy” (Muir and Mayorga 1983). This vignette depicts the common punk theme of marginalization, in which outsiders are misunderstood, diagnosed and ultimately subdued by an institutionalized system. In its antagonism towards this system, punk can be seen as not only non-institutional but an anti-institutional counterculture. The do-it-yourself (DIY) ethics espoused in punk culture promote the rejection of mainstream cultural infrastructure, and the establishment of a supposedly emancipated alternative social world through unmediated knowledge sharing and community building (Moore 2010; O’Hara 1999). Thus punk might be seen to constitute an alternative education system, with its own artefacts, practices and foundational ideologies.

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174 • Tom Parkinson This oppositional narrative glosses over a history of reflexive engagement between punk and formal education. In particular, the early punk aesthetic was in large part formulated by academy-educated artists and musicians familiar with the compositional practices of the postmodern avant-garde (Gordon 2005; Moore 2012). Yet a clear unease surrounds this relationship, issuing from a sense that it is contradictory and unethical. Much of the discussion of the punk/education nexus grapples with the problem of how “punkademics” (Furness 2012) might engage in higher education without compromising their punk identity and values (e.g. Haworth 2012; Moore 2012), and defend themselves against “co-optation lurk[ing] around every corner” (Deleon 2012, 315). Identity is approached in this paper as relating both to “an individual’s identification with different groups”, and to “an image that we construct of ourselves [in terms of] humanist notions of individuation, self-actualisation and [.  .  .] self-awareness” (Kreber 2010, 171). In an academic context, Winter (2009) suggests that “identity schisms” (124) can occur as a result of value conflict at the nexus of academic and “managerial” identities, particularly when academics are “engaged in academic work that embodies corporate ideologies, values and practices [. . .] that conflict with a central valued and salient [professional] self ” (122). Winter’s conception of academic identity is delimited to academics’ relative identification with their organization and their profession, amounting to what Kreber (2010) refers to as the “immediate social context” (172), and as such does not accommodate consideration of academics’ wider sociocultural backgrounds. Yet if we understand identity to be “essentially intersubjective, dialogical and relational in nature” (172), then cultural (including subcultural) subjectivities that are, prima facie, external to the immediate academic context nonetheless participate in academics’ identity formation, and thus impact upon their approaches to and experiences of academic practice. Drawing on interviews with five UK-based academics who self-identify as punk(s), in this chapter I consider how punk identity might inform academics’ values and teaching practice. Furthermore, I consider whether punk ethics and practices might offer helpful responses to the state of contemporary higher education in the United Kingdom. Punk and Institutional Education Punk has been an object of study almost since its emergence (e.g. Hebdige 1979). More recently however, punk has manifested in academe beyond simply being an artefact, informing research methodologies, academic publishing and pedagogy. In 2008 for example, Jim Groom, a learning technologist at the University of Mary Washington, Virginia, used the term “edupunk” to call for “an EdTech movement towards a vision of liberation and relevance” in protest at online learning platforms such as Blackboard’s “capitalist will to power” (Groom 2008). Edupunk has since burgeoned into an international movement

Being Punk in Higher Education • 175 inspired by DIY ethics and punk aesthetics, and promoting autodidactic approaches to learning. Although the ethics of Edupunk have become somewhat contested, amid accusations of co-optation, watering down and the “positing [of] the entrepreneur [. . .] as saviour” (Groom 2010), it has nonetheless thrown up the possibility of a “third space” based on collaborative social networks that “route around established disciplines” (Cunnane 2011). Edupunk, Punk Scholars Network and other examples evidence a growing alternative infrastructure that skirts the periphery of traditional academe, yet is sustained through social media. Within such spaces, alternative, non-institutional intellectual activity can intersect with mainstream scholarship, and in so doing disrupt scholarly norms and boundaries. Punk’s presence within the university proper has been discussed in a number of publications, including an edited volume (Furness 2012). Many have suggested an affinity between punk ethics and the critical pedagogy movement (e.g. Haworth 2012; Malott 2006; Miner and Torrez 2012). Such arguments can be persuasive, but there are reasons to be cautious. First, as Gordon (2005) suggests, the ideological heterogeneity of punk defies attempts to assert a set of common, core ethics; punk has, for example, manifested itself across the political spectrum from far right to far left and cannot therefore be reduced to a specific political bent. Second, these comparisons tend to be made in firstperson accounts by educators who both openly identify as punk and align themselves with critical pedagogy, and thus are bound up in the authors’ reflective rationalizations of their own practice. Treated as case studies, however, they offer insights into how punk educators across a range of contexts negotiate their ethical positions in the coming together of their punk and academic identities, and how this impacts upon their academic practice in the classroom. Malott (2006) proposes “pedagogies of insurrection” based on an understanding of punk rock practices as “spaces of non-alienated labour outside the boundaries of dominant society” (159). Relating this to Bey’s (1985) anarchist notion of the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ), Malott (2006) argues for the potential of localized autonomous activity to effect change beyond itself and promote the “experience of enlightenment” (Malott 2006, 160). Shantz (2012) also writes of the influence of Bey’s (1985) work on punk activism in his ethnographic account of the Anarchist Free Skool [sic] in Toronto. Shantz provides two AFS course descriptions in his appendix. These read as a striking hybrid of university module guide and political manifesto: This course will be a broad introduction to anarchist theory and practice, as well as a look at the history of anarchism and anarchist struggles. [. . .] This course seeks to reconnect anarchism with the struggles of working people to build a better world beyond capitalism of any type. (Shantz 2012, 143)

176 • Tom Parkinson There is perhaps an irony in Malott (2006) and Shantz (2012) calling for the establishment of radical educational spaces from tenure-track university posts. In later writing, Malott (2012) reflects upon his earlier resistance to “university culture”, which denied him “any strategic room for adaptability” (Malott 2012, 65). He chronicles how, through subsequent employment in a little-known and under-resourced institution, he found balance between his skate punk and academic identities by engaging critically with power structures and developing links with “activist scholars” (Malott 2012, 65). Malott (2012) acknowledges the competitive pressure to achieve prestige in US academia, but justifies his career trajectory on the belief that the radical Left needs to be represented in elite institutions, however much this might contradict punk ethics. Ultimately, it is through reflective engagement with the dilemma of participation and opposition that Malott constructs his academic identity. A similar unease is portrayed by Haworth (2012), who recounts being called a “fucking sell-out” (1) by a student, a pivotal experience that prompted him to interrogate his values and behaviours and critically examine the relationships between anarchism and education. He characterizes this relationship as one of “tension and ambiguity” (2), but argues that while formal institutions have “oppressive tendencies”, there may be “ways to make use of the institutional space without being of the institution” (Haworth 2012, 5, his emphasis). Miner and Torrez (2012) likewise conceive of their presence within the university as a form of “infiltration” (32), and like Malott (2012) justify it on the basis that outsider perspectives need representation within the university. Dunn (2008) argues for punk to be studied within International Relations (IR) as an example of counter-hegemonic globalization. While the relationship between punk and academia is not his central focus, he nonetheless argues for punk’s pertinence to his discipline beyond its being an object of study. He juxtaposes an IR conference and a punk show, noting that “while the discipline of IR pontificated down the street, I swirled in the mosh pit wondering: what relevance did I and the [conference community] have to these kids?” (Dunn 2008, 194). Dunn recalls that it was through engagement with punk as a teenager that he became aware of labour struggles and the experiences of subaltern groups, which in turn prompted him to engage proactively with current affairs. Contrasting this with his current position as an academic, he concludes that “academia has alienated me from the world that I am trying to understand [by] decrying emotions and passion” (Dunn 2008, 210). Erricker (2001) offers a more detached, third-person discussion of the relevance of punk to education. His exploration is broadly epistemological rather than ethical in emphasis and focuses on the destabilization of “knowledge sustained by tradition” (74) by outsider perspectives. He defines the punk as one who feels they do not fit with, and subsequently challenges, the institutionalized order and “introduce[es] the subjectivity of the knower into the frame” (2001, 77). Accordingly he ascribes the label of punk onto Kuhn, Wittgenstein,

Being Punk in Higher Education • 177 Hayden White and Paulo Freire, on the basis that they interrogated the assumptions of their disciplines and disrupted the dominant conceptual order. Erricker (2001) thus considers the intellectual (as opposed to ethical) utility of punk, and ultimately asks: “what if we treat all epistemologies subversively and relativistically, by denying them the status they confer on themselves?” (74). Punk is not the only form of popular culture to be explored for its academic potential. McLaughlin (2008) identifies a “pedagogy of the Blues”, where what she refers to as the “Blues metaphor” (xiii), in which the life narratives of blues singers, the lyrical content of blues music and the historical associations of blues are intertwined, is employed as a didactic framework for exploring race, class and gender. Aligning it with critical pedagogy, McLaughlin (2008) sets it in opposition to “techno-rational” (21) curricula that delegitimize knowledge and values that sit outside of what state administrations deem important and correct. She asserts its potential to undermine the “banking concept” (Freire 1970) whereby students’ minds are conceived as vessels to be filled, and to provide students and teachers with the tools to become “uncov[er] injustices” (McLaughlin 2008, 21). Beyond this, however, McLaughlin argues for pedagogy to be approached as art, to emancipate the learner from strictly rational modes of apprehension. She calls for the performative characteristics of blues to be harnessed in the act of teaching, leading to pedagogy as ‘an embodied art form in which spontaneity, invention, and change are important com- ponents’ (2008, xv). Bladen (2010) proposes a “gonzo” pedagogy that takes inspiration from the writings of Hunter S. Thompson. Identifying the ideological subtext of gonzo culture as rejection of mainstream hegemony, Bladen (2010) considers it in relation to contemporary higher education, and via a Gramscian analysis asserts that the pressures of student recruitment, quality assurance and league tables have become internalized by teachers and detracted from their focus on teaching and learning. At the same time, he argues that financial and social pressures can impact upon students’ motivation and engagement, and that lecturers’ “outdated content and [. . .] unsophisticated delivery style” (Bladen 2010, 38) can compound this. Like McLaughlin (2008) with blues, Bladen considers the application of gonzo pedagogy in terms of form as well as ideology, proposing a teaching style wherein “the gonzo lecturer-as-performer uses a variety of techniques” (38) such as personal narrative, exaggeration and humour, “to liberate [themselves] from [. . .] oppressive, institutional hegemony and students from a dry, often un-engaging educational communication style” (38). To summarize here, it is clear that these educators have identified in punk and other forms of popular culture ethical and aesthetic values that resonate with their academic values, and participate in the formation of their academic identities. It should be noted that, with the exception of Bladen (2010) and Erricker (2001), all of the authors reviewed here were working in US universities at the time of their writing. Although many of the themes covered are germane to higher education in a general sense, Malott’s (2012) and Miner and Torrez’s

178 • Tom Parkinson (2012) references to US cultural expectations highlight that the experiences of academics are contingent upon different cultural, social and policy contexts. Since all participants in this study work in the United Kingdom, it is worth giving some space here to an overview of UK higher education. Contemporary Higher Education in the United Kingdom Higher education discourse of the two last decades has been characterized by themes of marketization, managerialism and employability. White papers and other publications by successive governments have set out visions of educational purpose using distinctly business-like rhetoric, emphasising efficiency, global competition and value for money and rationalising higher education funding in terms of macroeconomic return. The funding strategy for UK higher education has moved incrementally towards a tuition fee–dependent model where student recruitment bears directly upon the funding available to universities. Cribb and Gewirtz (2013) argue that the shift in the dominant values of higher education towards those of business and global competition has resulted in a “hollowed out” higher education sector with no ethical core, in which the traditional orientation of universities towards “the celebration of human learning and achievement” (342) has been relegated to the sidelines amid “gloss and spin” (341). Against this backdrop, it has been suggested that academics’ sense of identity can become destabilized when the perceived culture of the institution or sector contradicts their understanding of the intrinsic value and purpose of education (e.g. Harland and Pickering 2011; Kreber 2010; Skelton 2012; Winter 2009). However, the level of debate surrounding this perceived cultural shift has arguably given rise to dualistic analyses of academic values and identity in terms of the “clash of values between traditional academic cultures and the modernising corporate cultures of higher education” (Winter 2009, 127). In contrast, however, the literature reviewed earlier suggests that identity schisms cannot always be understood in terms of a traditional/corporate dualism, and may instead relate to other, more entrenched academic norms, such as the notion of detached scholarship (e.g. Dunn 2008) or perceptions of racial discrimination (e.g. Miner and Torrez 2012). Haworth (2012) warns against the assumption that resistance to neoliberal visions of higher education correlates to a desire to return to the liberal ideal, noting that many activists are “more privy to the complex historical problems of how universities operate, [and wish] to distance themselves from the reestablishment of these structures” (5). The Participants Six educators’ voices are presented in this chapter. The first of these is my own. I am 35 years old at the time of writing and hold lecturing posts in the disciplines of education and music. I have been teaching in higher education for five

Being Punk in Higher Education • 179 years. Although I have never self-identified wholly as a punk (in the subcultural taxonomy of 1990s South East London I was an Indie Kid), I have always identified with punk practices, ethics and culture, all of which are woven into my lifestyle and worldview. This study proceeds in acknowledgement of this interested position and with the understanding that my analyses are inevitably coloured by it. The remaining five voices belong to academics working within UK higher education, across a range of disciplines. Four are members of the Punk Scholars Network, and responded to my participant call asking for teaching-active academics who self-identify as punk(s). One is a personal contact. They are as follows: Table 12.1 List of Participants Name

School/faculty

Position

Age

Philip Heike Vlad Mehmet Claire*

Music Politics Sociology International Relations Theology

Senior lecturer Hourly paid lecturer Research fellow Lecturer Hourly paid lecturer

50 41 40 31 38

*Names have been changed

Unstructured interviews were conducted with each participant, themed around the intersection of the participants’ punk and academic identities, their perceptions of UK higher education and their teaching practice. An inductive approach as outlined by Thomas (2006) was used to code the data into thematic categories. “Two Sides of the Same Coin”: Becoming Punk Educators All five participants had identified as punk since they were teenagers. Although their definitions of punk were differently nuanced, these all corresponded to resistance to dominant hegemonies, boredom, conservatism and elitism, and also corresponded to learning. For Vlad, there was no sense of discord between academic life and punk culture; instead, he had experienced a symbiotic relationship between these two aspects of his life since first attending university in newly post-Soviet Russia, where a reactionary spirit on campus coincided with punk activity, including the occupation of university buildings as squats and performance spaces. From then on, punk and academia were, for Vlad, “two sides of the same coin, [both] about freedom, the opening of meanings, discovery [. . .] exploration”. Mehmet’s views regarding punk and education were similar to Vlad’s. He felt no sense of contradiction or betrayal, and had become aware that formal learning and subcultural learning could be mutually enhancing when,

180 • Tom Parkinson as a high school student, he sought to challenge the narratives presented in history textbooks and was “praised for [his] critical thinking”. Claire attributed her intellectual development as a teenager to discussions at anarchist bookstores, and recalled an impromptu speech at a show as a critical juncture in her life when she was awakened to the value of education, and to her own desire to become a teacher. Philip spoke of his interest in alternative culture stemming from his early encounters with punk, while Heike, like Dunn (2008), had developed her interest in politics through engagement with punk. Never Mind the Bollocks: Punk Awakening and the Gestalt Shift My analysis of interview data revealed three main themes that were of concern among participants. The first related to the prevalent epistemologies and methodological conventions within the participants’ disciplines. The second related to the state of UK higher education, from the perceived obsession with measurement and accountability to its time-consuming bureaucracy. The last concerned the ideological assumptions perceived to be inherent in mainstream curricula. There was a sense among the participants working within the social sciences (Mehmet, Vlad and Heike) that their field had become too introspective at the expense of outward purpose. Vlad suggested that sociology had become “a monastery commenting on itself ”, with little interest in developing “new research that can change the world”. He felt this led to meaningless discussion and the “horrible ritual of talking about things [we] already know anyway”: Nowadays reading academic articles is boring and time-wasting [for me]. [. . .] I have to force myself to finish and by the end it hasn’t taught me anything new at all. Mehmet echoed this position, and spoke of the “navel-gazing” tendencies of social scientists to deliberate at length over “esoteric” issues of ontology and epistemology. As with Vlad, this was for Mehmet a distraction from the central purpose of his discipline: Why waste time arguing with someone that your ontology is more valid in a pluralist discipline that doesn’t agree on the nature of knowledge? You can leave that to the side. Relating this to his students’ experience, Mehmet explained that this culture led to anxieties about “not understanding the discipline”, which in turn sapped students’ motivation. He was keen to emphasize the primacy of conviction and original thought over the “window dressing”. Employing the Sex Pistols’ slogan, he recounted discussions with tutees:

Being Punk in Higher Education • 181 cos it’s a social science context, and there’s [. . .] an overwhelming backdrop of that scientific, positivist approach, the students are freaking out about what to put into their theoretical framework chapter and into their methodology, and I say “never mind the bollocks, what’s your opinion? Why do you have it, and can you lead me through the steps that led you to it?” Mehmet spoke at length about the inherent conservatism that he perceived within the social sciences, and his belief that restrictive protocols exerted a control over the flow of knowledge within the field, inhibiting innovation and leading to “boring” thought: If you think about the window dressing [too much] your thought will suffer and you’ll end up thinking like a boring person, the way those categories and conventions make you think. Similarly, Vlad told his students that there was no need to write at length “about theories and methodologies and so on, that’s boring”. Of greater importance was “honesty”, which he related to punk ethics, and accordingly he encouraged students to write about “something they’ve lived through themselves”. He conceded that because of its overt subjectivity “in some ways [this was not] science”, but was opposed to the dominance of detached research within the social sciences and sought to promote more subjective research writing: I am regularly trying to get rid of this anathema. Although very often it doesn’t look very academic, I enjoy reading it and it’s something that I learn a lot from, it’s something new, because [when] someone who went through some problems of violence or community writes about it, that’s great because who else would write about it? Heike, although in agreement with Vlad and Mehmet about the need for change within the social sciences, was more cautious about actively challenging the dominant norms in a teaching context, “because [she] wanted the students to graduate [and didn’t] want to fuck up their chances”; she reasoned therefore that radicalism needed to take on “subtler” forms, chiefly through “lifting somebody onto a more critical plain”. Her approach was characterized by pragmatism, but also by an anxiety of complicity in an academic culture at stark odds with her own values, and which in her view inhibited the university’s ability to effect change. Also reflecting upon the impact of UK higher education (HE) culture on the “front line” of teaching, Claire spoke of “often meaningless” aims and learning outcomes, stemming from an obsession with accountability and bureaucracy. She felt that these strictures inhibited the live-ness of pedagogy and left “no

182 • Tom Parkinson room for spontaneity, for interaction in the moment with one another”. She suggested that the precariousness of the academic job market served to compound this situation, since “rules [could] be used to bash you over the head with the possibility of unemployment”. Relating this to her punk background, however, she asserted that she had “forgot[ten] to stand in line when they were handing out risk-adverse tendencies”. Of most concern to Claire, Philip and Mehmet was the dominance of mainstream worldviews that went unchallenged within curricula. Philip spoke of assuming rhetorical positions that would lead students to engage with the possibility of different perspectives and support independent critical thinking, something he aligned with the “punk ethos”: I’m very fond of the avocatis diavoli kind of approach. [. . .] I’m not telling them what to think, you know. [. . .] I think it comes back to where we started really, the punk ethos. The wonderful thing that I remember about punk was [. . .] “don’t listen to what anyone else is saying, it’s rubbish”. And that was a tremendously useful starting point, particularly in our subject areas it seems to me. Mehmet’s approach was similar. He felt that, for all the emphasis on “critical thinking”, not enough space was given to alternative worldviews that might provoke students to examine their assumptions. Harnessing what he saw as punk’s ability to awaken people to the possibility that “things aren’t always what they seem”, he took a performative approach to teaching in which he shifted between worldviews: I play the punk rocker. I might play the Marxist even though I’m not a Marxist, but that’s how you achieve the gestalt shift. [.  .  .] My job as a scholar and educator is not lifting the veil as showing you the truth, but lifting the veil on the idea of there being one truth. The punk thing to do is say “well why are you so certain?”

“Here’s a Chord. Here’s Another. Here’s Another. Now Form a Band”2: Agency, Responsibility and Experience in the Classroom Each of the five participants spoke of drawing from punk culture and practice in the classroom. For some, this was in response to normative teaching and curriculum design that they perceived to be constraining and outmoded. Claire, who had been a secondary school teacher prior to entering higher education, found the top-down pedagogies and curricula she had encountered in institutional education to be “constricting and largely irrelevant”. Recounting

Being Punk in Higher Education • 183 her own experiences of being a student, she identified within the university a tendency to patronise young people, and to devalue ways of knowing associated with youth culture: They [. . .] had the attitude of “you know nothing because you are young,” instead of thinking actually your ideas hold merit, [. . .] let’s talk about them further. This was in stark contrast to her experiences of the anarchist bookstore she attended as a teenager, where “punks would take the time to talk with rather than at a 14 or 15 year old who was incredibly shy and inarticulate”. Vlad also spoke of the need to position students’ ideas at the centre of their intellectual development, and to recognize their personal experiences as a legitimate source of knowledge. He felt it was important to accommodate the cultural phenomena and artefacts through which young people sought meaning, since young people “look for the answers to their problems in popular culture”. Vlad tried to “engage students as much as possible about their own experiences”, and saw this as an opportunity to learn “with” and “from” students. Claire also spoke of “learning alongside [students] and valuing their experiences”, and related this to the autodidactic DIY principles of punk, enshrined in “the whole here’s 3 chords now go do thing—here’s the info, here’s the skills, go apply, learn, change and educate us on your return”. She gave an example from teaching in a Theology context: One of the courses I created focuses on religion and conflict and it works incredibly well doing that there. “There is the name of the country and the religions, there is a room, go and sort it out and report back however you want”. It becomes like an academic battle of the bands at the end of the course. Mehmet, together with “other punks of the department”, had seized the opportunity to design his own module “specifically around the idea of punk awakening”, as it offered a chance to escape the restrictive schemes of work prescribed by senior colleagues. They had sought to simulate “the punk experience for students who haven’t had it subculturally”, avoiding dispassionate analysis and instead, like Vlad, encouraging students to engage their own ethical beliefs in their investigations. Rise Above! Changing and Reclaiming Higher Education I asked all participants about their educational values and how these related to their experiences of working within the UK higher education sector. In all cases, there was a perception that ethical change was needed, although this

184 • Tom Parkinson corresponded to different things. For Claire, this meant reasserting the social and moral purpose of education, and shifting the emphasis away from skilling an “elite” and towards achieving social justice: [It] forces [students] to conform to a learning structure set up when Britain was an empire and the elite would rule the masses. [. . .] It is a redundant system. Learning should be for the betterment of the individual, the community and society. She felt that higher education had a responsibility to protect and secure justice for marginalized groups, a cause to which she felt punk values were particularly applicable: It is [being] willing to wear the mantle of the Other to make a change that makes punk so strong, or at least potentially strong. If a bunch of snotty nosed kids can do it, why can’t we? Reflecting on the impact of marketization on learning culture, and on students’ understanding of what higher education was for, Claire identified an obsession with grades that was “getting worse and worse as they adopt ever more the business model”, and detracted from the intrinsic value of learning. Heike perceived the “decline” of British higher education as stemming from the state’s funding strategy, which in contrast to the European model commodified the educational experience, rendering it responsive to consumer demand. She suggested that the threat of unemployment within the current system promoted a conservative attitude among teachers, which she found frustrating. Similarly, at sector level, fears for survival sustained what she saw as the neoliberal identity and purpose of UK (and US) higher education, and undermined universities’ potential to effect change: The agenda of [UK] higher education is not to effect change but to train future professionals. And that precludes or prevents radical change. [. . .] the Anglo-American system is built on foundations that don’t want radical change because if [they] promote radical change then [they] undermine [their] identity and longevity. Heike felt that in Germany (her native country), where the education system was not reliant on student fees, the culture of higher education was in a healthier state than in the United Kingdom and that academics “had more opportunities to be radical”. Within UK HE however, she distinguished between academics who were complicit in the status quo and those who sought to change it, and suggested that the potential and responsibility for change, as in punk, lay at the level of the individual:

Being Punk in Higher Education • 185 The institutional umbrella is reliant on the people who are committed to a certain mission, [but] we’re not all total sell-outs. [. . .] The individual academic has often retained some sense of “I want to make a change”. Mehmet spoke of the pressure exerted on his department to undertake teaching and research activity that “ticked the boxes” of a status quo. While this was widely resented among his colleagues, he was immune to it “cos [he was] too punk”; by resisting these expectations he maintained his punk integrity and projected an example of resistance to his students: I can see colleagues sensing the pressure, but I refuse it at such a deep level that I don’t even feel it anymore. I wear T-shirts of punk bands to my lectures, and I don’t do it ignorantly, it’s a deliberate sign [. . .] about being myself in the face of those imperatives, and getting on with projects and engaging in those contexts despite those pressures. Regardless of official learning outcomes that he gave little thought to, the outcome he most desired was for students to develop a sense of responsibility for the world: My real aim is to convince someone of the urgency and the open-endedness of this challenge that we face, and the need to try to develop responses [because] the system is fucked. Or to be more specific, the current nexus of economic and political logics involves huge degrees of social violence, distributed unevenly, and that sucks. I don’t know the answer [. . .] but we need to come up with responses.

Discussion In general terms, the participants’ responses conveyed themes of frustration, boredom, individual and collective responsibility, and resistance to the status quo. These themes chimed with their understandings of the spirit of punk, which they all spoke of applying in their academic practice. As in the literature reviewed earlier in this paper, participants tended to reflect holistically on their experiences, and detailed, specific examples of applying punk practices pedagogically were relatively sparse, but their application of punk in their teaching can nonetheless be collated into three broad themes. Performativity Mehmet and Philip both spoke of acting out different roles and opinions within the classroom to highlight the possibility of different perspectives, which Mehmet likened to “play[ing] the punk rocker” to antagonize and disrupt.

186 • Tom Parkinson This is as much an application of punk’s aesthetic as of its ethos, in that, as McLaughlin (2008) and Bladen (2010) suggest for blues and gonzo, respectively, he employed the form by which punk’s ethos is embodied. More than simply constituting a performance in the mimetic sense, however, in proposing “performative pedagogy” McLaughlin (2008) emphasizes also a potential to perform, in that word’s other sense of effecting change; this sense that was also implicit in the participants’ reflections. Furthermore, to draw analogously3 from Butler’s work (e.g. 1993, 1999 [1990], 2004) and related work (e.g. Benhabib et al. 1995; Hey 2006; Olson and Worsham 2000) on performativity in relation to gender identity, and on performative resignification, we might argue that participants’ invocation and embodiment of punk constitutes a performative resignification, untying punk as a concept from its normative associations and, in applying it in an educational context, disrupting what they perceive as a scripted pedagogical status quo. Punk thus provides a form through which the participants perform resistance in response to identity schisms felt within the academy. Autodidactism and Amateurism The idea of learning for oneself is a longstanding ethical principle of punk and a dimension of the broader DIY principle, implicit in the “here’s a chord” maxim discussed earlier. While the notion of autodidactism within formal education is arguably, in an absolute sense, oxymoronic, Vlad’s and Claire’s placing emphasis on students taking responsibility for their own learning, and on the accessibility of knowledge to those who sought to acquire it, bore the spirit of these principles. Mehmet’s honesty in declaring to students that he “[didn’t] have the answers”, and Vlad’s and Claire’s acknowledgement of learning from and with students, point to pedagogies in which the traditional delineation of teacher and student is disrupted, and the active acquisition of knowledge is presented as everybody’s individual and collective responsibility. Such approaches display a resistance to “the idea of there being one truth” (Mehmet)—an idea implicit in “techno-rational” (McLaughlin 2008) education systems premised on Freire’s “banking concept” (1974, cited in McLaughlin 2008)—and point to the emancipatory potential of critical thinking. The notion of amateurism is also, in many respects, anathema in higher education, particularly in the current global iteration that prioritizes the development of skills for professional service. Yet beyond its meaning-in-use as the opposite of professionalism, amateurism connotes an “altruistic commitment and [. . .] personal investment in the activity undertaken [. . .] that can generate important knowledge contributions outside formal standards and accreditation” (Edwards 2015, 869) that provides the intrinsic motivation for autodidactism to flourish. Claire, Mehmet and Vlad all stressed the importance of harnessing students’ curiosity and enthusiasm, and recalled its centrality to their own learning.

Being Punk in Higher Education • 187 Experience and Praxis Related to autodidactism, this concerned the placing of students’ experiences and subjectivities at the centre of their learning. Claire felt that “you can’t actually make a difference in the world until the sociocultural context of your own life is made clear”, and like Vlad encouraged students to focus on their own lives as sources of knowledge. As such, detached, disinterested modes of inquiry were discouraged in favour of experiential and emotionally invested approaches. Where Dunn (2008) lamented his own disengagement from the “world [he is] trying to understand” as a result of his enculturation into dispassionate, passive scholarship, Mehmet and Claire were emphatic about the responsibilities that accompanied knowledge, to the extent that learning and action were conceived as inextricably bound together in the educational experience, each an aspect of the other. These understandings were closer to Deweyan notions of experiential learning as a non-dualistic “organic connection between education and experience” (Dewey 1938, 25) occurring symbiotically within and throughout a “lived experience”, and with moral implications, than to the more recent connotations of experiential learning in the contexts of professional skills development or accreditation (e.g. APEL). These understandings were thus also at odds with the privileging of skills for business and economic growth within higher education discourse (see Cribb and Gewirtz 2013). Experiential learning can also be approached here in terms of praxis, understood by Freire (1970) as simultaneous and symbiotic thinking and action for the purpose of transformation and emancipation. Kolb (1984) notes that “praxis [involves] the process of ‘naming the world’, which is both active—in the sense that naming something transforms it—and reflective—in that our choice of words gives meaning to the world around us” (29), and in this regard praxis, like performativity as conceived by Butler (1993, see above) can constitute “that discursive practice that enacts or produces that which it names” (13). Such an understanding is writ large in Mehmet’s and Claire’s rationalization of learning in terms of responding to “economic and political logics involv[ing] huge degrees of social violence” (Mehmet) and “the betterment of the community, society and the individual” (Claire). Obviously, these themes are not exclusive to punk educators, or necessarily radical per se. Indeed, it could be argued that they are already implicit in learning outcomes that place emphasis on criticality, self-directed learning and reflectivity and moreover that the norms, cultures and policy climate they oppose are commonly critiqued in higher education literature (e.g. Carr 2009; Cribb and Gewirtz 2013; Williams 2012, 2016). What is important here however is that, in the context of profound feelings of values incongruence and identity schism (Winter 2009), punk served as an ethical, epistemological and aesthetic resource for participants (and those educators whose accounts are discussed in the literature review) in their resistance to a perceived status quo.

188 • Tom Parkinson It is significant that arguments for the educational value of other subcultures (e.g. gonzo [Bladen 2010], blues [Mclaughlin 2008], hip-hop [e.g. Dimitriadis 2001; Hill 2009]) tend to be made in similar terms, commonly asserting an affinity with critical pedagogy and a social justice agenda and advocating a performative embodiment of the forms’ aesthetics in the act of teaching. All such arguments are inherently countercultural in that they present these forms as strategies for resistance against the dominant cultural order, both within and outside of the academy. This is not to reduce these different subcultural pedagogies to a generic ethos, but rather to emphasize that, just as subcultural forms of popular culture express different groups’ experiences of living against the grain of the dominant culture while simultaneously constituting lived practices of resistance for those who identify with them, so too can they be seen to provide ethical, epistemological and aesthetic frameworks for their affiliates’ academic practice. Such cases highlight that, just as students “look for the answers to their problems in popular culture” (Vlad), the enduring influence of popular culture on academics’ identities and practice warrants attention. Bladen (2010) describes the gonzo lecture as a “countercultural” activity, and it is in terms of a countercultural orientation that these educators’ experiences are best understood. We might consider this in relation to May’s (2001) suggestion of three “moments” in US higher education, later applied by Cribb and Gewirtz (2013) to the UK higher education context. The first and second moments describe the liberal arts college ideal and subsequent shift towards market-oriented training and careerism. The third accounts for the “counter-cultural movement [who] sought immediate relationships to people, power, truth and morals and rejected all mediated relations in these spheres” (May 2001, 253; cited in Cribb and Gewirtz 2013, 343). Cribb and Gewirtz (2013) suggest that this countercultural movement has been muted in the UK context during the last 35 years, while instrumentalism has gained pace and the liberal ideal has struggled to gain footing. Across the interviews and literature reviewed in this chapter, however, there is clear evidence of a reactionary disposition that conforms to May’s (2001) characterization of the countercultural moment in HE. May’s (2001) notion of counterculture relates to the domain of education and does not equate to the use of that term in the popular culture context. Yet as has been demonstrated in this paper, these two senses can coalesce in the experiences and identities of punk academics. The grand punk narrative set out at the beginning of this chapter has obvious facility to these educators as a mythological tool, encapsulating and ennobling their ethical frameworks and validating their responses to the pressures of academic life in a troublesome higher education climate. Notes 1. This chapter was originally published as Tom Parkinson (2017), “Being punk in higher education: subcultural strategies for academic practice,” Teaching in Higher Education, 22:2, 143–157. doi:10.1080/13562517.2016.1226278.

Being Punk in Higher Education • 189 2. This is a reference to the famous cover of the Sideburns fanzine’s first issue, which featured diagrams of three guitar chords and the instruction “Here’s a chord. Here’s another. Here’s another. Now form a band”. This slogan has now taken a place in punk lore as a mission statement enshrining the DIY ethics of punk culture. 3. This is not to claim equivalency, and my analogy here is necessarily reductive; a more thorough application of Butler’s theories to a discussion of punk and pedagogy would be valuable.

References Benhabib, Seyla, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, and Nancy Fraser. 1995. Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange. London: Routledge. Bey, Hakim. 1985. T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. New York: Autonomedia. Bladen, Charles. 2010. “The Gonzo Lecture: Counterculture in the Classroom.” Compass: The Journal of Learning and Teaching at the University of Greenwich 1: 35–41. Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. London: Routledge. Butler, Judith. 1999 [1990]. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Butler, Judith. 2004. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge. Carr, David. 2009. “Revisiting the Liberal and Vocational Dimensions of University Education.” British Journal of Educational Studies 57, 1: 1–17. Cribb, Alan, and Sharon Gewirtz. 2013. “The Hollowed-Out University? A Critical Analysis of Changing Institutional and Academic Norms in UK Higher Education.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 34, 3: 338–350. Cunnane, Sarah. 2011. “DIY Says Edupunk Star. Distortion and Sell-Out, Say Critics.” Times Higher Education. November 17: 20–21. Deleon, Abraham. 2012. “Against the Grain of the Status Quo: Anarchism Behind Enemy Lines.” In Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflections on Education, edited by R. Haworth, 312–326. Oakland: PM Press. Dewey, John. 1938. Experience and Education. New York: Collier Books. Dimitriadis, Greg. 2001. Performing Identity, Performing Culture: Hip Hop as Text, Pedagogy and Lived Practice. New York: Peter Lang. Dunn, Kevin. 2008. “Nevermind the Bollocks: The Punk Rock Politics of Global Communication.” Review of International Studies 34, 1: 193–210. Edwards, Richard. 2015. “Amateurism and Autodidactism: A Modest Proposal?” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 36, 6: 868–880. Erricker, Clive. 2001. “Living in a Post-Punk Papacy: Religion and Education in a Modernist World.” Journal of Beliefs and Values 22, 1: 73–85. Freire, Paolo. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. Furness, Zack. 2012. Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower. Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions/Autonomedia. Gordon, Alistair 2005. The Authentic Punk: An Ethnography of DIY Music Ethics. PhD diss, Loughborough University. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/handle/2134/7765. Groom, Jim. 2008. “The Glass Bees.” [blog] Bava Tuesdays blog. http://bavatuesdays.com/the-glassbees/. Groom, Jim. 2010. “Edupunk or, on Becoming a Useful Idiot.” [blog] Bava Tuesdays blog. http:// bavatuesdays.com/edupunk-or-on-becoming-a-useful-idiot/. Harland, Tony, and Neil Pickering. 2011. Values in Higher Education Teaching. London: Routledge. Haworth, Robert H. 2012. “Introduction.” Chapter 1 In Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflections on Education, edited by R. Haworth, 1–12. Oakland: PM Press. Hebdige, Dick. 1979. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge. Hey, Valerie. 2006. “The Politics of Performative Resignification: Translating Judith Butler’s Theoretical Discourse and Its Potential for a Sociology of Education.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 27, 4: 439–457. Hill, Mark L. 2009. Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life: Hip-Hop Pedagogy and the Politics of Identity. New York: Teachers College Press. Kolb, David. 1984. Experiential Learning as the Science of Learning and Development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

190 • Tom Parkinson Kreber, Carolin. 2010. “Academics’ Teacher Identities, Authenticity and Pedagogy.” Studies in Higher Education 35, 2: 171–194. Malott, Curry. 2006. “From Pirates to Punk Rockers: Pedagogies of Insurrection and Revolution: The Unity of Utopia.” Critical Journal of Education Policy Studies 4, 1: 159–170. Malott, Curry. 2012. “Finding Balance in the Academy.” In Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower, edited by Z. Furness, 65–66. Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions/Autonomedia. May, William F. 2001. Beleaguered Rulers: The Public Obligation of the Professional. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. McLaughlin, Shirley. 2008. A Pedagogy of the Blues. Rotterdam: Sense. Miner, Dylan, and Estrella Torrez. 2012. “Turning Point: Claiming the University as a Punk Space.” In Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower, edited by Z. Furness, 27–34. Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions/Autonomedia. Moore, Ryan. 2010. “Postmodernism and Punk Subculture: Cultures of Authenticity and Deconstruction.” Communication Review 7: 305–327. doi:10.1080/10714420490492238. Moore, Ryan. 2012. “Is Punk the New Jazz?” Chronicle of Higher Education. January 15. http:// chronicle.com/article/Is-Punk-the-New-Jazz-/130281/. Muir, Mike, and Louiche Mayorga. 1983. “Institutionalised” [Recorded by Suicidal Tendencies]. On Still Cyco After All of These Years [LP]. Sun Valley: Frontier Records. O’Hara, Craig. 1999. The Philosophy of Punk: More Than Noise. New York: Autonomedia. Olson, Gary A., and Lynn Worsham. 2000. “Changing the Subject: Judith Butler’s Politics of Radical Resignification.” JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory 20, 4: 727–765. Shantz, Jeffery. 2012. “Spaces of Learning: The Anarchist Free Skool.” In Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflections on Education, edited by R. Haworth, 124–145. Oakland: PM Press. Skelton, Alan. 2012. “Value Conflicts in Higher Education Teaching.” Teaching in Higher Education 17, 3: 257–268. Thomas, David R. 2006. “A General Inductive Approach for Analysing Qualitative Evaluation Data.” American Journal of Evaluation 27, 2: 237–246. Williams, Joanna. 2012. Consuming Higher Education: Why Learning Can’t Be Bought. New York: Bloomsbury. Williams, Joanna. 2016. Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Winter, R. 2009. “Academic Manager or Managed Academic? Academic Identity Schisms in Higher Education.” Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 31, 2: 121–131.

13

“There’s Only One Way of Life, and That’s Your Own”1 GARETH DYLAN SMITH

Introduction: Taming the Impetuosity Reflex The interview for my first salaried teaching position, at a north London preparatory school in the summer of 2001, consisted principally of me defending my position in an argument with the school’s headmaster, who asserted that Donovan was a superior artist to Bob Dylan. As far as I was concerned (despite having not even a passing familiarity with Donovan’s back catalogue), Donovan had nothing that held a candle to Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom” (1968), “John Wesley Harding” (1967), “Blowin’ in the Wind” (1963), or anything off of Blood on the Tracks (1975). The headmaster’s expression of preference for one legendary folk singer over another was a red rag to a bull; my middle name is Dylan, and my parents brought me up to enjoy the music of Bob Dylan and the poetry and plays of Dylan Thomas. There was no way I was about to agree with this guy, job interview or not. Simply keeping my mouth closed or saying, “yeah, Donovan remains pretty unequalled” did not even cross my mind. My would-be employer struck me as something of an eccentric from the outset. In response to my unsolicited written enquiry regarding a potential position at the school as a drum teacher, he had called me for interview on the grounds that he had no need of a drum teacher, but did require an enthusiastic Director of Music who would work three days a week teaching general music, choir, guitar, reading and sports. He could offer more money than I needed for rent while I worked in my ample spare time towards fame and fortune with my rock band (the reason I was moving to London in the first place). I accepted his offer of the job before leaving his office. This man’s dubious hiring practices (an unwittingly brilliant approach to human resourcing—the following year he recruited the inspiring woman who would later become my wife) set in motion a series of events that continues to unfold. That job interview was a critical moment in my nascent punk pedagogical practice. I have been able, more recently, to channel my combative-argumentative streak to achieve more strategic ends than potentially shooting myself in the foot in job interviews. I work with undergraduate students to question a societal and music industrial status quo that many of them instinctively recognize as 191

192 • Gareth Dylan Smith flawed, and seek in my writing to challenge, for instance, rampant and unfettered neoliberalization of the higher education system (Allsup 2015; Giroux 2014a; Smith 2015a), constructions of music graduate “success” (Smith 2013a), and the sexism and misogyny that plague institutions of the contemporary music industry and higher popular music education (HPME) (Parkinson and Smith 2015; Smith 2015b). I was relieved recently to discover that “this attitude of constant challenge and determination to disrupt is [an] observed feature of the punk mindset” (Sofianos et al. 2015, 30). At least I now have a label for my impetuosity reflex. In early 2002 I answered an advert in the New Musical Express (NME) to audition for a “Psycho Ceilidh” band called Neck. Playing (what I naively interpreted as) really fast rock music with highly virtuosic folk instrumentalists dancing all over the top, this band seemed ideal for me, as I had been indoctrinated with a love (albeit somewhat undiscerning) of Celtic music and folk-rock since my childhood. To me, this would be like playing in Fairport Convention, only faster, which suited me down to the ground. Off the back of playing for six months in Neck, and on the very night that we were permanently kicked out of our hard-won residency gig at the Lord Nelson pub on Holloway Road because the drummer was too loud for the landlord to bear, I was invited to join a second punk band. This group had recently changed its name, sensibly, if misleadingly, from “Speed-o-phile” to “Eruptörs”. In less than a year we were undertaking a DIY tour of the American Midwest that set the tone and drew the road map for our ascent to total obscurity. The Eruptörs appealed to me through their invitation to play whatever I wanted, as fast and as loudly as possible. It sounded like my perfect musical home. After making a number of records, the three members of the Eruptörs eventually went our separate ways—geographically, if not musically—and two of us now publish and give conference presentations about aspects of our “punkademic” practice (Furness 2012).2 Back to School Occupying my time as a music teacher, wannabe rock star and part-time punk, in 2003 I undertook to learn about being an educator, motivated to do so by my obvious skills gap in this area and because my girlfriend was considering staying in the UK (she was visiting on a visa from the US) to complete the master’s degree that she needed to in order to retain her New York State teaching certification. My higher education to date consisted of just an undergraduate degree in (classical) music, and I knew I should really do a PGCE,3 since this would open numerous doors at other schools nationwide, would teach me how to teach and would lead me inexorably to Qualified Teacher Status and higher earning potential—traditional markers of career success. Instead of applying for a PGCE, however, I started on an MA in Music Education at the (now UCL) Institute of Education in central London. This programme

“There’s Only One Way of Life” • 193 seemed really interesting from the prospectus. Fame and fortune from my drumming career were, as they surely remain today, just around the next corner. Much better then, to have fun and learn things, I reasoned, than to position myself for an undesired career as a school teacher. Plus, if I ended up marrying this American girl and moving with her to the US, the Americans wouldn’t know what a PGCE was anyway (I assumed without checking any of the facts). Among the people to teach me on the MA programme were educators whose pedagogical practices were decidedly “punk”. Dr. Colin Durrant started me attending academic conferences and publishing my writing, and set me on the road to studying for a PhD. He was deeply passionate about family life and choral conducting, and kept telling me that academia was “a game”, resonating with Dines’s (2015, 30) conclusion that punk pedagogy can be and feel like lots of fun. Drawing a parallel with Higgins’s (2012, 50–51) observations about the participatory nature of the late ’70s British punk music scene, Colin, “dispelling the feeling of elitism . . . explored, celebrated, and affirmed the identity of those who participated” in his classes. I began to feel that there could really be a legitimate way to combine my drumming, my instinctive critical streak, and my need (and, I began to admit, increasing fondness) to teach. As a classical choral conductor, I am not certain Colin would easily identify as a “punk”. However, Rashidi (2012, 84) confirms punk rock as a “genre formulated on critical thinking”. Throughout supervising my dissertation, and in his class on aesthetics and philosophy in music and music education, Colin encouraged, enabled and legitimated my proclivity to problematize, demonstrated the need to question all things, and pointed me in the direction of continuous, necessary and (ir)reverent iconoclasm. He gave me a glimpse of how it might be possible and even essential to be punk, as integral to a role in the academic community; after all, as Parkinson (this volume) notes, punk is an “anti-institutional counter-culture”. Torrez, too, affirms, punk pedagogy requires that individuals take on personal responsibility (anarchist agency in the face of capitalist structuralism) by rejecting their privileged places in society and working in solidarity with those forced on the fringes. By doing so, we strike to undo hegemonic macrostructures. (2012, 135) This was what I instinctively felt, and what Colin stoked in me. Following a few more years working as a drummer, high school general music teacher, peripatetic drums, guitar and clarinet teacher, and, for a spell, a driving instructor, another round of unsolicited job applications in early 2009 led me to receive a phone call from the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance (ICMP). I accepted their offer of a job teaching blues drumming for an hour a week, which rapidly led to more teaching, administration and research. In 2014,

194 • Gareth Dylan Smith ICMP hired Mike Dines and Tom Parkinson (co-editors of this volume), and by 2015 I was employed full-time: a licensed, legitimized punk pedagogue! That legitimation did not long survive, following a change in senior management; just before the publication of this book, I parted ways with ICMP for what, had we been in a band together, might be cited as “artistic differences”. Following Torrez (2012, 135), I understand punk as “both an epistemology (world-view) and ontology (nature of being)”—the latter being apparent to me many years ahead of the former. I still play occasionally with Neck and the Eruptörs, and continue to question everything I am told. Punk praxis, philosophy and pedagogy appear to loom large in my life. Writing this chapter has allowed me to put a name and a frame to it all, acknowledging, as Parkinson (this volume) notes, “punk has manifested in academe beyond simply being an artifact, informing research methodologies, academic publishing and pedagogy”. Sofianos et al. describe punk as being reactive, a mode in which people very quickly have “moved from angst to action; a kind of philosophical shortcut, with learning and reflection and adaptation (of both methods and ideas) following afterwards” (2015, 26). This certainly rings true for my approaches to teaching, in which I have adapted and adopted models to suit my ends. Mantie and Higgins (2015, 1) ask about socio-musicologist and political activist, Charles Keil, “Are author and person one and the same?” They conclude in the affirmative. Without seeking to elevate myself to anything approaching Keil’s revered academic and ethical status, this much I share in common with him: when I write, as with when I drum, when I teach, and when I go about my life in general, I cannot but be me. I find it hard not to be full and frank. I feel an obligation to myself and to others to be sincere and honest in my writing (see also de Rond 2008, xii). In this regard, and as identified by one of Parkinson’s (this volume) participants, I “forgot to stand in line when they were handing out risk-averse tendencies”. I hope nothing detrimental comes to me from my work, but I always feel subservient to the process and the purpose. In the rest of this chapter, I look at how various aspects of my work as a teacher and academic are informed by and contribute to what might be read as a punk pedagogy. Punk Pedagogy and Eudaimonism Torrez (2012, 136) explains that “punk pedagogy is a manifestation of equity, rebellion, critique, self-examination, solidarity, community, love, anger, and collaboration”. This heady, complex mix of attributes and attitudes contains numerous tensions, not least between imperatives that seem to focus primarily on individual responsibility and action (critique, self-examination, love and anger), and those which emphasize collaboration, cooperation or working for others (equity, solidarity, community and collaboration); rebellion, while requiring an other, can work on an individual level or collectively. As explored in the following section, much of the (my) practice of punk pedagogy can be

“There’s Only One Way of Life” • 195 seen to take place in the push-and-pull between serving one’s own needs and seeking to meet those of others. Della Fave et al. (2011, 204) explain “Aristotle’s definition of eudaimonia as the fulfillment of one’s deepest nature in harmony with the collective welfare”. However, extant literature on the “ethics of eudaimonism” (Norton 1976, 15) focuses overwhelmingly on the pursuit of self-fulfillment (Ryan et al. 2008; Smith 2016; Waterman 1993). For Dierendonck and Mohan (2006, 232), “Eudaimonic well-being [is] related to feeling challenged and to activities that offer the opportunity for personal growth and development”. Thus, Norton (1976, 8) suggests that earnestly pursuing one’s daimion, or “eudaimonistic ‘integrity’ exhibits a marked kinship to the ‘identity’ that contemporary men and women are said to be searching for”. He describes people “quietly and decisively living their lives according to their own inner imperative” (1976, xiii). There is, then, arguably something very zeitgeist and twenty-first century about eudaimonism, where everyone is, or is encouraged to be, an entrepreneur (Hewison 2014). Bourdieu (2003, 30) describes this as the “myth of the transformation of all wage earners into dynamic small entrepreneurs”, and explains how, under the guise of individual empowerment, European governments have been able: to collaborate, in the name of monetary stability and budgetary rigor, to the sacking of the most admirable conquests of the social struggles of the past two centuries—universalism, egalitarianism  .  .  . and internationalism— and to the destruction of the very essence of the socialist idea or ideal. (2003, 54) The mainstream media perpetuate this ideal as the hegemonic new normal (Shaiken 1977), “reciting the neoliberal gospel” (Giroux 2014b, 11). In step with this trend, higher education institutions adopt and are increasingly bound to a “conception of educational value traceable to a dominant neoliberal meta-policy that totemizes global competition” among individuals, departments and institutions. In this climate, “Neoliberal education constrains the information needed for democratic participation and choice through its development of ‘manipulated man’ ” (Horsley 2015, 71). As I have suggested elsewhere, however: Our job as educators is to lead by example. Where curricula and mission statements are instrumentalist in focus, we have to show students by engaging them critically—helping them to see Oz from different perspectives by removing the green glasses of neoliberalism, and discussing that there is an alternative possibility to the normative, self-defeating crush of the omnipotent capitalist, neoliberal paradigm. (Smith 2015a, 79)

196 • Gareth Dylan Smith If we believe, as Dewey (1897, 80) did, that “education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform”, then for punk pedagogues in higher education our responsibility to act becomes clear. As Lynch et al. note, “The freedom from necessity enjoyed by academics affords them the space to write and teach, so there is a choice whether or not to use that freedom to act” (2010, 297). Eudaimonism, therefore, may be helpful to capture and frame the balance between individualism and the welfare of others that is core to a punk ethos and to manifestations of punk pedagogy. Levelling the Land4 The title of this chapter is taken from the chorus of the Levellers’ (1991) song, “One Way”. For a while I was unsure about the band’s call to agency and selfdetermination. As a bigoted young Methodist at age 14, I was confident that my life was predestined by God, so the only way of life could surely be His; after all, Jesus claimed He was “the way, the truth and the life” (Holy Bible, John 14:6, emphasis added). Reading the song as blasphemous (but nonetheless guiltily enjoying the catchy melody, playing the song repeatedly and singing along), I did not allow myself to engage with the rest of the lyrics, or, therefore, to understand other possible meanings or the context of the chorus. My enjoyment of the band’s music was complex, owing in large part to the fact they were from my hometown—well, almost. I lived in Shoreham-by-Sea, and the Levellers were based in Brighton, six miles away. We had a Brighton postcode, and a Brighton-area phone number, which was enough for me to feel I was from the city; as soon as I was old enough, I hung out there all the time (mostly going to the jazz club). There is a big park in Brighton called The Level, and I thought the band had named themselves after that, which was partly the case, but, more significantly, they took the title of a radical English political organization of the 1640s. The hugely influential Levellers movement foreshadowed the politics of the democratic governments that grew out of the French and American Revolutions (British Broadcasting Corporation 2011), and Levellers’ ideology can be heard resonating among today’s democratic socialist political advocates and in more anarchist political viewpoints. Foxley (2013, 94–95) explains that “the Leveller ideal of the common good as exemplified in the equal freedoms of individuals” led to “extensive conclusions about political rights” of all Englishmen. This can be seen as a quintessentially punk outlook. Thus a more mature reading of the lyrics of “One Way” (Songlyrics 2015) clearly aligns the song’s meaning and intent with the band’s political leanings, concerning a more equitable distribution of power, in this case over “our” personal and social destinies, and the agency that affords them to a whole generation. This song became an anthem for the band, uniting audiences in the quintessentially “democratic and non-hierarchical” punk ethos that is reflected in the work of those identifying (and identified) as punk pedagogues (Dines 2015, 27).

“There’s Only One Way of Life” • 197 Torrez explains, “Punk pedagogy requires individual responsibility for social actions, while invoking continuous reflexivity in our quotidian actions upholding supra institutions of oppression” (2012, 135). Or, as the Levellers (and eudaimonist philosophical perspectives) put it, “there’s only one way of life, and that’s your own”. As I progressed through my undergraduate music studies, I moved simultaneously away from the church and what I guessed/intuited/prayed might be God’s bidding for me, towards fulfilling what I hoped (and worked hard towards) would be my destiny as a drummer, teacher, writer and, eventually, academic. I became increasingly interested in providing the best education and future for my students and those with whom they may come into contact beyond graduation. Through the work of numerous scholars (e.g. Barrett 2011; Green 2008a; Wright 2010), I have come to appreciate and to work (as well as to struggle) with the tension inhering in the constant reconciling of academic entrepreneurism and individualism with the great and deep compassion that educators are prone to feel for their fellow humans. Parkinson (this volume) identifies this as a “punk/education nexus [that] grapples with the problem of how ‘punkademics’ (Furness 2012) might engage in higher education without compromising their ideological principles”. He goes on to describe how “academics’ sense of identity can become destabilized when the perceived culture of the institution contradicts their understanding of the intrinsic value and purpose of education”, as mentioned earlier. This is a discombobulation and cognitive dissonance with which I have become familiar. The destabilized identity of which Parkinson writes can, I suggest, be rebalanced and reconciled through incorporation into a punk pedagogical frame. Despite the fact that a punk pedagogy may in various ways appear “paradoxical” or “oxymoronic” (Dines 2015, 20), it can be used to tackle and effect social change for the better, perhaps all the more so with an awareness of peers (such as fellow contributors to this volume) trying to achieve similar ends. Ladson-Billings (2015, 416) notes of another disruptive, socially conscious, grassroots popular music movement, “Educators seek colleagues who are willing to ‘be’ hip-hop”; pedagogues welcome affiliation with others who are willing to “be” punk. Punk Pedagogical Practice My master’s degree at the UCL IOE, as I mentioned earlier, was for me an inspirational and empowering time, thanks in large part to the (punk) teaching approach of Colin Durrant. He embodied all three of the themes emerging from Parkinson’s (this volume) study into how teachers in higher education understand and apply punk pedagogy: (1) performativity (the teacher adopting different roles); (2) autodidactism (empowering students through learning for themselves); and (3) experience (putting students’ experiences at the core of their education). Following Durrant’s insistence that academia was “a game”, I have since chosen to play it by what I perceived to be rules he set out.

198 • Gareth Dylan Smith Performativity In Durrant’s class on philosophy in music and education, he had a wonderful way of adopting any given position, to the extent that some class members seemed fully convinced that our lecturer believed everything he said. He would nimbly adopt a range of subtle, sometimes oppositional positionalities, deftly navigating the classroom space in discussion, facilitating and deepening debate. This technique seemed to get the best out of individuals and the group, as we each were incensed, appeased or amazed by the insights and perspectives of influential thinkers in our field. In my own teaching practice, I try to emulate this performativity. In seminar classes where contentious issues are under discussion, I adopt the role of, for example, Bourdieu, Butler or Adorno, switching hats as guide and referee to help students navigate the terrain. When providing written and verbal feedback on drafts of written assignments, I will also “play the part” of an author or commentator representing a particular stance, including sometimes just playing devil’s advocate to help students to see and work through a problem. I use this technique in my approach to publication as well, writing for instance about the exciting future of entrepreneurship and the need to collaborate in a market economy (Smith 2013b; Smith and Gillett 2015; Smith and Shafighian 2013), and then arguing to the contrary and for a more nuanced approach from colleagues across the higher music education sector (Parkinson and Smith 2015; Smith 2015a; Smith 2016a). As various famous writers from Norman Mailer to Hunter S. Thompson are alleged to have said, I often do not know what I think until I write it down—and frequently not even then, having only articulated my thinking (through others’) in part. Moreover, I often feel uncertain about what to think or how to think until I have worked through it all on my laptop. The research that I publish is always contingent—on context, on delimitations and on understandings and experience. A punk, multifaceted performativity allows me and my students to get inside a range of perspectives, and to understand and argue from there, affording us insights into rationales and principles that we might not otherwise have understood or considered. Autodidactism From being given carte blanche as a primary school Director of Music, through the empowerment I felt as a fledgling academic author fashioning my master’s dissertation for publication, to days of gleefully leafing through journal back issues from the shelves of the UCL IOE library as a PhD student and engaging my students in their own writing and activism, autodidactism has been a core feature of my learning to be a teacher and academic. I should add that the “auto”-didactism in which I engaged during my doctoral studies was expertly and lovingly supported by the guidance and supervision of Professor Lucy Green. As a part-time PhD student working several jobs, I was unable to

“There’s Only One Way of Life” • 199 take full advantage of the doctoral student community at UCL IOE. I therefore sought out conferences where I could present my developing work to peers and senior scholars from relevant disciplines and fields, immersing myself in discourse and discussion in a collegial spirit of sharing. My approach to conferencing reflected the DIY punk approach (Gordon 2012) I had become used to among bands at punk shows and festivals, that is “more collaborative than competitive” (Smith and Gillett 2015, 19). Since earning my PhD and feeling the burning desire to publish,5 I have opted mostly to write book chapters for and edit compilations that appeal to me, for example, Burnard et al.’s (2015) Bourdieu and Sociology of Music Education, Randles’s (2014) Music Education: Navigating the Future, Kenny and Christophersen’s (in press) volume on musician-teacher collaborations, and my co-edited book with Roger Mantie (2016), the Oxford Handbook of Music Making and Leisure. Working on these projects felt like drumming in a band whose members are working together to record an album or rehearse a stage set, as opposed to, for instance, sending a recorded solo drumming project out into the ether to see who “bites”; I like the frame and the direction provided for my creativities by a book, and it is exciting to have to read and to learn. In each of the examples listed and more, I have been privileged to work on projects that align with other punk pedagogical ideals, in step with Keil’s conviction that people of this generation can be “the antidote, the cure” to “the capitalist nastiness that seems to be guiding policy and guiding people toward more war, more nationalism” (quoted in Mantie and Higgins 2015, 2). Whereas I know from senior colleagues that I “should”, in career terms, focus more on publishing articles in particular revered journals, my approach to scholarship, which I find incredibly creative and fulfilling (eudaimonic), reflects Cook’s (2012, 120) observation that “Rock [musicians] prefer an intuitive approach over creativity toolboxes”—a “punk publication” approach, perhaps. My learning experiences on this academic journey have much in common with the “informal” (Green 2002) and “non-formal” (Mok 2010) learning approaches gaining traction and recognition in music education scholarship and practice (D’Amore and Smith 2016; Green 2008b). The Music Learning Profiles Project (2016, 65) identifies such broad-ranging, inclusive approaches to learning engaged by contemporary institutional and non-institutional learners as “hybridized learning”, following Smith (2013b, 26). Advocates of hybridized learning are especially concerned with ascription of “pedagogic authority” (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977, 19), which refers to learners’ decisions regarding from whom they are willing to learn (Froehlich and Smith 2017); sometimes this can be recognized teachers, but pedagogic authority refers to the ascription of wisdom or valued knowledge to any particular source—I, for instance, ascribe and have ascribed significant pedagogic authority to the first four albums of Led Zeppelin, to Joseph Heller’s (1961) Catch 22, and to numerous scholars and peers across music and music education.

200 • Gareth Dylan Smith Experience Along my career trajectory, much of my writing draws on and problematizes my environment and my experiences—from my study of drummers (Smith 2013a) to the eudaimonic music-making of non-celebrity contemporary musicians (Smith 2016a); from the exploration of gendering in the music business and music education (2015b) and “success” in popular music (Smith 2013b) to the discussion of relationship marketing and new models of creativities and entrepreneurship (Cartwright et al. 2015; Smith and Gillett 2015). My cultural psychological study of drummers stemmed from an awareness, also observed by Hart (1990, 30), that as a community drummers were under-researched (Smith 2013c, 11). Prior to exploring “masculine domination” (Bourdieu 2001) throughout the music industry and my place of work, I felt “an ethical and pedagogical obligation to write [that] chapter” (2015b, 61). My work on “(Un) popular music making and eudaimonism” grew out of a need I felt to explain that so many musicians of my acquaintance simply “have to make time for making music” (Smith 2016a). My involvement in this book grew out of my response to a call for papers so tempting as to be irresistible! In reference to teaching (history) in a contemporary context in the US, Ladson-Billings observes: The hardest thing we have to do is actually making democrats in undemocratic spaces. This is close to impossible . . . The larger question is how to re-situate democracy in the school, so that students begin to understand how issues of rights, fairness, equality, and equity can and should exist within the school and its practices, rather than as abstract concepts to be applied at some later date. (2015, 417) I was fortunate in that at my former institution, ICMP, lecturers were encouraged—some readings of the job description might even say required— to curate democratic spaces in our classrooms. This was nowhere more evident than in the Music, Culture, Context and Criticism thread that led to the finalyear Dissertation module (ICMP 2016).6 Reflection, discussion and criticality were encouraged among all students from the outset, and were acknowledged and rewarded through assessment of spoken and written assignments. The dissertation, especially, provided a vehicle for incorporation of the performative and autodidactic aspects of a punk pedagogical approach. The teaching “delivery” model for the final-year dissertation included weekly small-group seminar classes, organized by topics reflecting students’ research proposals. Seminars that I facilitated include Music and Society, and Music and Gender. I approached these classes as a carte blanche endorsement of Torrez’s (2012, 5) conviction that “Punk [pedagogy] is . . . a critique of

“There’s Only One Way of Life” • 201 hegemony and the advocacy against conformity”. One of my principal tasks early on in the classes was to demonstrate my dissatisfaction with the world and my enthusiasm for expressions of anger, frustration, impatience and so forth from young people who are engaged in the world around them and for whom it can seem unjust, unkind and unfair. It was my pleasure to permit and facilitate these expressions, through seminars and one-to-one supervision, while students each spent nine months researching a dissertation project, resulting in a critical, evaluative report of about 10,000 words. I was buoyed by Dines’s encouragement that punk pedagogy is “heuristic. It becomes the living counterpart to the subject matter of the curriculum” (2015, 28). I encouraged my students to challenge everything I said and they read, and to read and view widely, so as to have context and content for their arguments. As Dines (2015, 25) writes of punk pedagogical praxis, “students are encouraged . . . to question an existing hegemony and instead look to new, creative ways to discover self-empowerment” (2015, 25). All ideas were welcome in my classes, and we challenged one another in an environment of mutual respect. I made explicit my fundamentally punk orientation to the world, trying to live my belief that “life matters, so don’t fuck it up, and if someone else is fucking it up, do something about it” (Bayard 1999, 13): that to “do something” could begin with writing about it in a dissertation. Students frequently raised a wide range of issues that were either omitted from curriculum or mainstream discussions, or that ran counter to the norms and expectations of an overtly conservative education and music industry. I am not sure the space was wholly democratic, but I made it very clear from the outset that the class was certainly not about me filling vacant vessels with (my) knowledge. Reflecting the compassionate, empathic and politically charged pedagogical approach of Niknafs and Przybylski (2017), I tried to embrace in those spaces the pedagogical principle “that education is a fundamentally empowering, liberating, and healing reciprocity between teacher and learner” (Torrez 2012, 133). My work on the Dissertation module aimed to tackle two questions at the core of punk’s raison d’être, “ ‘How should we live in practice?’ and ‘What should we believe in?’ ” (Sofianos et al. 2015, 21). Students writing dissertations for the first time were often unsure of how to locate their papers in what feels like meaningful context. For many, grounding their writing in their own experiences could provide a way into understanding more about issues affecting them, and to contextualize their experiences in a community or from a perspective not previously foregrounded in their (formal) education. Even when students did not produce the best dissertations, I was often aware that the learning, discussion and soul-searching that happened would be far more valuable, to the students and to those who populated their lives, than necessarily the completion of an a A-grade piece of critical writing. However, when the final assessed product was great too, I confess to feeling especially humbled and excited. Dissertation subjects from recent years,

202 • Gareth Dylan Smith notable for their potency or for the capacity of the learning journey to change and empower the authors, included an exploration of homophobic lyrics and attitudes in popular mainstream hip-hop; work-life balance for professional musicians with commitments to jobs and families; expressions of feminism in different movements and “waves”; the queer and transgender punk scene in London; the dearth of female music producers; and objectification of women in music videos, audio recordings and performances. Critical, Anarchist and Punk Pedagogies Parkinson (this volume) sagely notes, “The ideological heterogeneity of punk defies attempts to assert a set of common, core ethics”. As such, authors claiming kinship with punk pedagogy sometimes align their thinking and actions with critical pedagogy or broader, less clearly defined anarchist pedagogy (Parkinson, this volume). Torrez (2012, 136) finds “Critical pedagogy . . . and punk ideologies  .  .  . can and do meet once punks begin to claim space within the academic world”. As Dines (2015, 31) explains, “Punk pedagogy seeks to build upon the work of critical and anarchist pedagogies, seeking new ways in which to address and interrogate marginalization”. For me, a key locus of my being punk resides in the eudaimonistic sensibility described earlier, where I just feel that I have to do something, to be a certain way, that is, critical of perceived untruths and injustice. Advocating for a “critical education”, Giroux writes: Against an increasingly oppressive corporate-based globalism, educators and other cultural workers need to resurrect a language of resistance and possibility, a language that embraces a militant utopianism, while being constantly attentive to those forces which seek to turn such hope into a new slogan or to punish and dismiss those who dare look beyond the horizon of the given. (2007, 31) Giroux recalls the writing of Antliff, who, discussing “anarchist pedagogy”, explains it “is . . . about subverting and transcending oppressive social formations so as to realize our freedom to creatively shape our lives in the fullest sense” (2012, 328). This is what I felt I was doing, in a very small way indeed, with some of my aforementioned publications and others that, for instance, question the validity of confounding and straitjacketing grading criteria (Smith 2011). These papers all come from my inkling that things could be better, and that I have to put my hand up and speak, combined with a sense that if I draw my understandings of these issues to people’s attention, then maybe things can be changed for the better. As well as shaping my own life, as Antliff implies, I hope very much that the publication, discussion

“There’s Only One Way of Life” • 203 and dissemination of these articles can help to effect positive change in and through the lives of my and others’ students, so extending from my impetuosity reflex and eudaimonistic leanings to a perhaps more compassionate punk pedagogy. I feel conflicting, and perhaps complementary, responsibilities in my role working with undergraduates who expect careers somehow related to, if not exactly as rewards for, their studies; in my role there is a palpable tension between training and education, between vocationalist and liberal educational values and authenticities (Allsup 2015; Jones 2017; Parkinson and Smith 2015). As I have noted elsewhere, I feel strongly that those of us teaching in higher education “are obliged to use the liminal space afforded us in the classroom” (Smith 2015b, 78) to engage in critical educational practice. With students navigating such a fragile, significant space (Tuan 1977) as contextualizes the undergraduate or postgraduate journey, the un-criticized status quo is simply never good enough. I have never been consciously “anarchistic” in my pedagogical approach, but recognize that my behaviour could perhaps be construed as such. I identify strongly with Antliff ’s observation that, Rooted in antiauthoritarian values often at odds with the “mainstream”, anarchists conceive of education as a site of critical reflection and creative license, where life and learning comingle, giving rise to ways of being that prefigure and realize our ideals on a practical level, as a lived reality. (2012, 326) This is what Dines (2015, 25–26) means when he talks about “incorporating [an ethos of punk] into pedagogical practice”. His words chime with those of Dewey, who strongly advocated that, “the mature person, to put it in moral terms, has no right to withhold from the young on given occasions whatever capacity for sympathetic understanding his own experience has given him” (1997, 38). Hear, hear. Towards a (Personal) Punk Pedagogy I was privileged at ICMP to work closely with (co-editor of this volume) Mike Dines. Mike was, and remains, wonderfully supportive and encouraging of punk pedagogical positionality and praxis. I realize that this privilege works in direct counterpoint to situations elsewhere, such as, for instance, in Houston, Texas (one of several US states to permit concealed weapons on university campuses), where in February 2016 faculty were advised by a forum of peers to “be careful discussing sensitive topics” and to “not ‘go there’  ” if lecturers sense anger (Wermund 2015). While perhaps sensible for the protection of those on campus, the perceived threat of gun violence in classrooms, and these suggested measures to avoid such a threat, run directly counter to the ontology

204 • Gareth Dylan Smith of a liberal higher education. The advice given to these Texan faculty members provides frightening and disappointing evidence to support Giroux’s observation that “there is widespread refusal . . . to address education as a crucial means for expanding and enabling political agency” (2003, 96). Perhaps even more alarming in this regard is the Professor Watchlist website that aims to “continue to fight for free speech and the right for professors to say whatever they wish; however students, parents, and alumni deserve to know the specific incidents and names of professors that advance a radical agenda in lecture halls” (Turning Point USA 2016, emphasis added). The concept of individual freedom and agency was core to the Levellers’ political philosophy in seventeenth-century Britain, and strong traces of this unsurprisingly remain in the politics of (former British colony) the United States. In the fictional dystopian, totalitarian North American state of Gilead, Margaret Atwood suggests a dichotomy of “freedom to and freedom from” (1986, 34); while over-simplistic, as binary oppositions are wont to be, this notion highlights the perennial tension in punk and anarchist ideology between freedom and responsibility. In government and state ideological terms, this can be bifurcated as the libertarian/authoritarian dichotomy. As Atwood’s character, Aunt Lydia, says, “In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from” (1986, 34). The Levellers’ (the folk-punk band’s) insistence that there is “one way of life, and that’s your own” highlights the necessary balancing act for governments, citizenry and perhaps especially educators, between empowering individual agents or actors and accepting responsibility towards other individuals. This issue is at the core of eudaimonism’s apparent conundrum, indicated earlier—a stance that is at risk of being an “ethics of the selfish” (Smith 2016b). I take solace in Antliff ’s affirmation, “Changing society anarchically through learning  .  .  . is a process of ‘becoming anarchist’ that necessarily eludes any final resolution” (2012, 328). As well as trying to be punk, it is a lifetime’s work continually to become punk. Fortunately, there remain numerous punkademics (Furness 2012) who see it as their vocation to take this road and effect change. Niknafs and Przybylski (2017), for example, write about a need for actively “de-institutionalizing space” in universities, and Kaltefleiter and Nocella (2012, 203) urge and envision: The space in which university learning takes place can be resisted so as to create oppositional paradigms of thought that allow for new modes of communication and direct action. Students and faculty collaborate to engage in a resistance culture wherein individuals question the ways in which members of society come to internalize and to believe the ideologies set forth the by ISAs [ideological state apparatuses], including universities.

“There’s Only One Way of Life” • 205 Conclusion: Persevering With Punk Pedagogy Bayard refers to the early US hardcore scene as “A house of freaks and misfits struggling to deal with each other and themselves—sometimes successfully, sometimes not” (1999, 9), a description that could very easily be applied to punkademics! Within this “house of freaks and misfits”, we do not all need to know precisely who we are or exactly what we are doing all the time, but we punks like to talk about punk pedagogy, to think about it, and we feel compelled to keep trying to get it right. Part of our strength surely lies in our diversity, itself linked to our instinctive non-conformity. Dines reassuringly notes, “the porous nature of punk means that it can draw up on the multifarious to create identity and meaning. It can draw upon a plethora of ideas and beliefs to supplement its core” (2015, 22), a core that is also multi-located, contingent and individualized. In closing this chapter I would like to suggest three main reasons for adopting punk pedagogy, as a principle and/or as praxis: • Punk pedagogy describes and includes ways of being and modes of behavior that seem to come naturally to some people; • Punk pedagogy seeks democratically to empower students, lecturers and all who embrace and are affected by it; • Western “democracies” stand at a critical point in the lives of their societies—punk pedagogy may be able to help us. Henry Giroux suggests, “Political exhaustion and impoverished intellectual visions are fed by the increasingly popular assumption that there are no alternatives to the present state of affairs” (2003, 94). As I first drafted this chapter, however, there was a tangible rise of the political left in the US and the UK, proposing socialist democratic alternatives to the neoliberal pact, that appear popular among especially younger members of the electorate. While this more democratic socialist sentiment took a beating at polls, owing to a commensurate rise on the right (perhaps, most notably, directly prior to and since the election of President Donald Trump in the US), the reinvigoration of political activity and activism feels like a mandate to keep working at being a punk. Punk pedagogy is intimately connected with the social justice agenda in education, sharing the ethos of this movement towards greater democracy. Horsley, citing Sonu (2012) explains: Social justice education—however we might conceive of it [is identifiable through] “its adherence to the belief that education can cultivate within students a sense of civic responsibility, the duty to care about the plight of others, and the means to work in solidarity to transform the

206 • Gareth Dylan Smith structural and ideological forces that benefit certain communities at the expense of others”. (2015, 62) Punk pedagogy provides a flexible framework, successful precedents and accessible literature for setting about realizing necessary and dramatic social change. It is important as an ethos for our times, and is key to giving voice to democracy—a core, reified ideology that, nonetheless, is “elusive and contested” (DeLorenzo 2015a, 1). Woodford (2005, 79) observes, “Democracy is an open and socially constructed concept and set of principles into which each generation must breathe new life”. It is, then, an ideal home and project for punk pedagogy. Democracy, DeLorenzo writes, “is more than a political statement. It is freedom: freedom to celebrate the triumphs of mankind; freedom to bear witness to the horrors of humanity; freedom to advocate for change; and freedom to reflect on the human condition. Let us not waste this opportunity” (2015b, 262). Let us go forth and be punk. Notes 1. The title of this chapter is taken from the chorus refrain of the Levellers’ song “One Way” from their 1991 album, Levelling the Land. 2. We also still make music together, although rarely in the same physical space. We now average about three years between each rehearsal/recording session. 3. Postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE), the UK’s gateway qualification to teaching for those with undergraduate degrees outside of education. 4. Levelling the Land is the title of the Levellers’ second album, released in 1991. 5. Alongside the pressing need to write in the “publish or perish” world of academia. 6. “Modules” on degree programmes in the UK are typically referred to as “courses” in, for example, the US.

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“There’s Only One Way of Life” • 209 Smith, Gareth D., and Colin Durrant. 2006. “Mind Styles and Paradiddles—Beyond the Bell Curve: Towards an Understanding of Learning Preferences, and Implications for Instrumental Teachers.” Research Studies in Music Education 26: 51–62. Smith, Gareth D., and Alex Gillett. 2015. “Creativities, Innovation and Networks in Garage Punk Rock: A Case Study of the Eruptörs.” Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts 4, 1: 9–24. Smith, Gareth D., and Atar Shafighian. 2013. “Creative Space and the ‘Silent Power of Traditions’ in Popular Music Performance Education.” In Developing Creativities in Higher Music Education: International Perspectives and Practices, edited by Pamela Burnard, 256–267. London: Routledge. Sofianos, Lisa, Robin Ryde, and Charlie Waterhouse. 2015. The Truth of Revolution, Brother: An Exploration of Punk Philosophy. London: Situation Press. Songlyrics. 2015. The Levellers One Way. Accessed December 28, 2015. www.songlyrics.com/thelevellers/one-way-lyrics/. Sonu, Debbie. 2012. “Illusions of Compliance: Performing the Public and Hidden Transcripts of Social Justice Education in Neoliberal Times.” Curriculum Inquiry 42, 2: 240–259. Torrez, Estrella. 2012. “Punk Pedagogy: Education for Liberation and Love.” In Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower, edited by Zack Furness, 131–142. Brooklyn, NY: Minor Compositions. Turning Point USA. 2016. Professor Watchlist. Accessed March 20, 2017. http://professorwatchlist. org/. Waterman, Alan S. 1993. “Two Conceptions of Happiness: Contrasts of Personal Expressiveness (Eudaimonia) and Hedonic Enjoyment.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64: 678–691. Wermund, Benjamin. 2015. “UH Faculty Suggest Steering Clear of Some Topics If Students Armed.” Houston Chronicle. Accessed February 28, 2016. www.chron.com/local/education/campuschronicles/article/UH-faculty-may-drop-topics-from-curriculum-as-6849002.php. Woodford, Paul. 2005. Democracy and Music Education: Liberalism, Ethics, and the Politics of Practice. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Wright, Ruth (Ed.). 2010. Sociology and Music Education. Farnham: Ashgate.

14

From Punk Ethics to the Pedagogy of the Bad Kids: Core Values and Social Liberation TIAGO TELES SANTOS AND PAULA GUERRA

Forbidden entrance for those not amazed to exist. —José Gomes Ferreira1

Introduction A sense of crisis is often felt as a normative part of people’s everyday lives (Streeck 2016). For this reason, the social, political and economic catalysts that shaped the emergence—and probably the most visible era—of punk in the 1970s seem to make more sense now than ever. Punk’s notoriety made it into a cultural form that echoes through time with its characteristics resembling those of Ozymandias in Shelley’s (1818/2008) sonnet; like “the king of kings”, its ability to stand above the chaos makes it a perfect habitat for the emergence of oppositional ways of thinking. This chapter presents and discusses a set of characteristics of punk that render it simultaneously a rich object of study and a starting point for pedagogical modalities that enable the social inclusion and empowerment of individuals lying on the margins of society. Understanding punk as a cultural form defined by a set of values in opposition to normative and mainstream cultural modalities—as a “space” of freedom—we start by presenting our own perspective on punk; as a means to mount a critique of formal models of education, focusing on inequalities inherent in or associated with these models and addressing the “hidden curriculum” (Apple 1999b), the ideological apparatuses of the state and new forms of “pedagogy of the oppressed” (Freire 1970). We contend that formal schooling does not work effectively for everyone in the same way; hence, we propose that the core values of punk—and particularly its do-it-yourself (DIY) ethos—might undergird the pedagogies of non-formal education to provide individuals with skills, perspectives and attributes that enable them to assume control over their own lives, and to find alternative strategies for integration and empowerment. 210

Pedagogy of the Bad Kids • 211 As such, we argue that punk has a critical role to play in the theory and practice of education as it enables and reiterates a critical opposition to the status quo, permitting multiple resistance stances and contributing a counterhegemonic voice through its informal and de-centralized networks and activities. These have historically included a flux of music, fanzines and styles; the liveliness of labels and stores; bands’ recording and releasing of their own music; participation in social movements; the revival of community centres and volunteering; and the engagement in professions centred on an ethos of resistance, among other features and indicators. Taken as a whole, these have enabled punk as a form-cum-movement to develop strategies for maintaining high degrees of independence and evade the constraints of neoliberalism (Guerra and Quintela 2014; Guerra 2014; Guerra and Silva 2015). Our approach is based on a theoretical itinerary focused on the contributions of writers such as Foucault (1986), Bourdieu (2007), Freire (2005) and Apple (1999a, 1999b). From this we will draw ideas for reflection and discussion about individuality and difference that are key aspects of punk (Sofianos et al. 2015, 23) while presenting what we believe to be the core values of a punk ethos and ethic, and the way these might be mobilized in school curricula and educational practices. Freedom and Resistance: Punk as a Space of Possibilities Style is a subtle way of transferring the confusion and violence of life to the mental stage of an unit of significance . . . We can’t take the messed up disorder of life. Therefore we pick it up, reduce it to two or three topics that are relatable. Afterwards, through an intellectual operation, we say that these topics can be found in a common topic. (Helder 2013, 7)2

We are mindful that any attempt to “define” punk is problematic. Instead, we offer the caveat that, notwithstanding our generalizations and discussion of “core” meanings, we do not wish to ascribe a definitive meaning to punk. Rather, we offer a subjective conceptualization arrived at by way of our experiences and inclinations (in the Heideggerian sense of that word). In our understanding, punk is structured by an attitude of transformation, of (re)creation of the world through re-appropriation of materials and meanings, transforming them into new and essentially different products. Through DIY, the mechanisms of dependence are subverted, creating escape routes, spaces open to experience, actual and symbolic communities, comprising both practices and meanings. According to Dunn (2008), the attractiveness of punk as a form of political and personal expression resides in the offer of resources for agency and empowerment through disalienation, a DIY ethos and an anti-status-quo disposition, a disposition that, according to James (2009), is a deliberately rude infraction of aesthetic and social norms.

212 • Tiago Teles Santos and Paula Guerra Punk is a space of and for resistance. According to Foucault (1997), the act of resisting is not detached from power; there is no exteriority, no absolute exterior to power. In this way, power relations depend on a multiplicity of points of resistance that fulfil the role of the adversary, the place of the target. For Charlesworth (2000, 17), “the world is a particular world, come to be known in a particular way: a way that makes possible the realisation of life projects”. This “particular world” is based on the being-in-the-world and on a set of noncognitive attitudes that refer to what Merleau-Ponty (2004) defines as the world of perception, or, in other words, the world that is revealed to us through our senses in our daily lives. This world of perception, despite being referred to as an illusion by Merleau-Ponty (2004), is the one that we know, the one upon which we act and from which we receive information. It is this world that forms and transforms our lives, and upon which existence is defined. In this context, space is social and is a central element in the definition of the universe of possibilities—the limits of the thinkable (Castoriadis 2000). For Lefebvre (2010), social space is a product of a sequence and set of operations that cannot be reduced to the place of one object or product among others; social spaces contain multiple products that collectively frame their interrelations. According to Bourdieu (2010a), if physical space is defined by the order of the coexistences, social space is defined by mutual exclusion, or distinction, of the positions that constitute it while it structures the juxtaposition of social positions. It is this inescapable struggle for distinction between individuals and groups—resonating with and actualizing Foucault’s understanding of power— that shapes the social world. The significance of this concept is that space serves as a locus for everything else; what is comprised in the world is “a body to which there is a world, which is included in the world, according to a form of inclusion irreducible to the simple material and spatial inclusion” (Bourdieu 1998, 199). To this point we have two different, complementary perspectives regarding space and the world, one presenting the world from the perspective of individual, perceived experience, and the other situating individuals in the field (Guerra 2015). Written into the world of their own description, in a reduced reality of significations and frameworks, how is it possible for individuals to deal with the dissonance between identities and wills, and the context in which they are inscribed? The myth of Tiresias worked, for Schutz, as a springboard to examine the way in which the thoughts of men and women anticipate future events and, moreover, to operate as a distinction between the kingdom of the social world that stands beyond human control and the one upon which individuals can act (Schutz, in Auyero and Swistun 2009). Nevertheless, unlike Tiresias, confronting the world that is imposed on them and which escapes their control, a world on which their existence depends, human beings create anticipations in the shape of fears and hopes. At this point we propose that punk can serve as a shelter that enables individuals to take the present into their own hands, to

Pedagogy of the Bad Kids • 213 change the course of their lives by their own will while reclaiming no future,3 instead creating and enacting a different future (Santos 2012; Guerra and Bennett 2015). In this way, punk offers opportunities for people to recognize collective cultural and political desires as their own (Thompson 2004). This operates in contrast to the identity crisis facing contemporary society, which, according to Fromm (1999), reflects the crisis produced by its members’ becoming instruments without individual personalities, whose identities are reliant on their participation in corporations. One of punk’s structuring characteristics, one that makes it a stronghold for hope, is its perpetual refusal to stop imagining the world as other than it is (Thompson 2004). Neoliberalism is neither natural nor necessary—this is a guiding principle for many punks who cannot fully imagine how a better world might be, but who refuse to accept that this one cannot change (Thompson 2004). In this sense, we might see punk as a large family, with different people and weird uncles, that accepts, protects and often (although not always) welcomes its different elements. Punk is informed by points of view, experiences, trajectories, ideals, expectations and contexts, orbiting around one another to form collective and shared experiences. Coming from different social, generational and geographical backgrounds, individuals can share a culture of resistance— resistance to the status quo and to politics, and, above all, resistance against the impacts of both in everyday life. In a society in crisis, that is shattering at both social and personal levels, one can share a culture of opposition, a culture that can either exist only at the level of discourse or can be actualized. Here, the strength and modality of one’s relationship with punk can be the key to understanding this ambiguity. For those who maintain a strong connection and high levels of participation, the discursive strength is reflected in their daily lives and everyday practices. When the level of participation and contact with the scene, or identification with punk’s everyday life and mode of functioning are reduced, the practical impact of the ideals diminishes also, resulting in a platonic affiliation, a kind of non-actualized relationship where one becomes more detached from day-to-day practice but still identifies with a concept or an idea (Santos 2012). Nevertheless, punk is also made from these antitheses and antagonisms. If its ideological matrix opens the door for a crowd, sometimes punk only has room for a few. In this way, there are individuals for whom punk became its own antithesis, meaning that punk adopted some of the mechanisms that structure the same world it criticizes (Silva and Guerra 2015). Otherwise, in a context of crisis (both personal and global, perfunctory or more sustained), the familiarity that punk seems to offer its “militants” is a result of its ability to frame different feelings and the possibility for individuals to be “punk” while being different from other punks. Punk thus becomes a space able to guarantee shelter, and to be a support base for those who, for one reason or another, feel different or

214 • Tiago Teles Santos and Paula Guerra displaced (Santos 2012). This is possible because of punk’s deep embrace of the logics of social and political positioning through negotiation between individuals’ or groups’ identities and the dominant order, dissent and opposition to such order, and a celebration of self-initiative as the DIY philosophy (Guerra and Silva 2015; Sofianos et al. 2015). Punk has been declared dead,4 but punk survives. It took time to reveal itself, and soon after faked its own death. However, punk was here long before it acquired its name.5 It is therefore possible to look at punk based on the idea that it “existed before it existed”, as an attitude that prefigured its definition and that enabled it to survive its own “death”, maintaining the “punk attitude” at its core. In the words of Clark: Gone the hair, the boutique clothes, the negative rebellion [. . .]. Gone the name. Maybe it had to die to receive its own life insurance. When punk was declared dead it left as a legacy to its successors—punk itself—a new subcultural discourse. [. . .] By freeing itself from its own orthodoxies—its costumes, musical rules, behaviours and thoughts—punk incorporated the anarchism to which it aspired. (Clark 2003, 234) We would contend, therefore, that punk malleability serves as a habitat for a different kind of pedagogy. Foucault (1986, 2002) presents heterotopias as peculiar spaces that at once relate to and deviate from everyday life. They figure disorder and are made up of “fragments of a large number of possible orders” juxtaposed “without law or geometry” (Foucault 2002, xix). For Foucault, heterotopias (unlike utopias) are disturbing because they secretly undermine language and disable the possibility of discourse (Foucault 1986, 2002). They are not only the breakdown of a particular system of signification; rather they transgress the very distinction between signifier and signified, namely words and things. In this sense, to look at punk as place, as a safe haven or a shelter for difference, makes it a kind of symbolic heterotopia—existing in the world, disturbing the status quo through means of resistance based on a shattering of signifiers and a (re-)appropriation of signs. The Battle for Education A new world is being shaped. While this assertion might not be novel, the size of the impacts of this change is today more visible than ever. The political world “has been gradually turning into itself, absorbed by its internal rivalries and problems” (Bourdieu 2010b, 627), reflecting in its structure the weight of individualism. Over the past few decades we have observed the collapse of ideologies and the reshaping of the Western cultural world (Giroux 2014, 2016). This crisis is de-humanizing (Zerzan 2007), shaping an individualistic

Pedagogy of the Bad Kids • 215 and selfish society (Apple 1999a) wherein the pillars of stability are shattered and global uncertainty reigns, accompanied by shifting political events that invoke some of humanity’s worst memories: fear and loathing of the other, the resurfacing of populist right-wing movements, the decaying value of knowledge and information, and of values like truth and honesty. These are complex times, lived in a society inhabited by “people visibly unhappy: alone, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent—people who are joyful to kill the time we so eagerly try to save” (Fromm 1999, 17). School and education play a key role in this project, one that we discuss with two cases and from two points of view: the internal and the external. According to Bourdieu and Passeron’s work (1978), the schooling system can be understood, despite its professed goals of equality and social mobility, as the centre of social reproduction mechanisms, operating in order to sustain the order of things, with all the inequalities that it involves. Discussing pedagogic action, they posit that the dominant cultural forces tend to remain in a dominant position, defining and imposing the value of the economic and symbolic market upon the dominated classes. In this way, pedagogic action is always constituted as symbolic violence as it works to impose and inculcate certain significations and exclude others by selection (Bourdieu and Passeron 1978; see also Illich 1971). According to Bourdieu: It is probably due to an effect of cultural inertia that we still take the schooling system as a factor for social mobility, according to the ideology of the “liberating school”, when, conversely, everything tends to demonstrate that it is one of the most efficient factors of social conservation, as it offers an apparent legitimacy to social inequalities. (Bourdieu 2007, 41) For the most and least favoured in this system to remain as such, it is necessary and sufficient that school ignores, at a curriculum level and in its methods, techniques and evaluation criteria, the cultural inequalities between individuals from different social backgrounds (Bourdieu 2007, 53). Bernstein (1996) helps us understand the grounds for these affirmations in his analysis of pedagogical discourse. Codes, classifications and frameworks fulfil an important role in education. While the code is a “regulative base, acquired tacitly, that selects and integrates relevant meanings, ways of realisations and evocative contexts” (Bernstein 1996, 143), the classification and framework are used, respectively, to describe the power and control relations of what is taught and learnt and the ways in which these relations influence how the teaching/learning process is conducted. Bernstein further demonstrates that children from different social origins develop different codes, or forms of speech: children from a workingclass background usually demonstrate the use of a restricted code, a discourse deeply imbricated in their own specific cultural context. Their particular world

216 • Tiago Teles Santos and Paula Guerra is perceived as guided by evident norms and values that, consequently, are not usually expressed in their language. Here, language is useful to communicate practical experiences but not so useful to discuss abstract ideas, processes or relationships. Middle and upper class children’s socialization, by contrast, usually permits the acquisition of an elaborate code, a style of language where the meaning of the words can be individualized in order to adapt to the demands of particular situations. It enables children to deal with the unexpected and to become more adaptable to different situations (Bernstein 1996). We see with Bourdieu and Passeron that the schooling system’s pedagogic action is derived from the dominant classes. Bernstein reveals the basic level at which disadvantages operate. Following Bernstein, Abrantes (2010), writing about the Portuguese reality, argues that while the existence of multiple intelligences can be acknowledged, the school only acknowledges a limited range: Sociological analyses suggest that the primary socialisation of youth from the elite and the new middle classes, is not only more varied but it also promotes the types of intelligence valued by the school, whereas the popular classes’ parents are characterised by the scarcity of educational resources, developing in their children types of intelligence that are very useful in other contexts but rarely acknowledged by the educational system. (Abrantes 2010, 139) This internal structure of inequality is not a problem or an “error” but is based in an ideology that is gaining in prevalence, credence and normativity among Western societies. Writing in the 1970s, Louis Althusser (1971) presents the concept of Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) in which he inscribes the education system. ISAs function by force of ideology, by shielding and promoting one group of people to the detriment of others in order to preserve the position of the dominant ideology and reproduce the conditions of production (Althusser 1971). Structuring both public and private institutions, these apparatuses operate in relation with those who repress, in order to ensure reproduction not only of the system’s “skills” but also the reproduction of its subjection to the ruling ideology or of the “practice” of that ideology, with the proviso that it is not enough to say “not only but also”, for it is clear that it is in the forms and under the forms of ideological subjection that provision is made for the reproduction of the skills of labour power. (Althusser 1971, 89) Paulo Freire’s (2005) work is in alignment with Althusser in this regard. Freire’s banking concept of education describes the process of depositing knowledge by

Pedagogy of the Bad Kids • 217 the teacher into the student in a non-communicative relationship. For Freire, this is the antithesis of education, as students, instead of being active learning agents, become repositories of information and lose their sense of humanity that comes only with “creativity, transformation, and knowledge”, and “through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other” (Freire 2005, 72). For Freire, this is an intentional process that serves the interests of the oppressors as they “care neither to have the world revealed nor to see it transformed” (Freire 2005, 73), aspiring thus to annul the students’ creative power. Freire echoes, in his critique, Ivan Illich (1985), who begins by drawing a distinction between education and schooling, between learning skills and knowledge: Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance . . . The pupil is thereby “schooled” to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is “schooled” to accept service in place of value. (Illich 1985, 16) In spite of these critiques, school has (little) room for knowledge and education. However, it has become clear that education is under new management and the neoliberal ideology pervades this ISA (Parkinson and Smith 2015). Michael Apple explains that “the calls for a focus on ‘hard’ rather than ‘soft’ subjects and a call to return to ‘real curricula’ and to rigorously police the teaching of them, are visible both in government and in the media” (Apple 2013, 211; Department for Business Innovation and Skills 2016). Making use of rhetorical devices, profit making is gaining ground in education, transforming the state and its forms, and commodifying schools, students, knowledge and policies (Allsup 2015; Apple 2013, 211). Apple (2013, 2016) suggests it is possible to observe the emergence of a new “hegemonic bloc” constituted by four movements: neoliberalism, pressuring for a dependency between education and corporate models; neoconservatism, demanding a common and consensual culture; new managerialism, committed to audit cultures and “very reductive forms of accountability and testing in schools”; and “authoritarian populist” religious movements, assuming “ultraconservative positions in education and the larger society” (Apple 2016, 130). This development is felt especially in the reform of education and social services: Conservative modernization is a complex and at times unstable formation of various groups that looks backward culturally, seeks to reassert cultural authority, and looks forward to bring education in line with a very limited

218 • Tiago Teles Santos and Paula Guerra set of economic goals. It has created an umbrella that not only involves an alliance of a number of powerful groups but also is extremely creative in the ways in which it connects with people’s common sense. (Apple 2016, 129) Through the use of what Apple describes as “corporate style accountability procedures” (2016, 130) and an uncritical point of view to the work of teachers and to curricular knowledge, this new model for education and school—visible in the charter schools and vouchers market in the USA, the academy schools in the UK, even in the public school system in Portugal—focuses on producing a new type of student and citizen similar to those presented by Fromm. Individuals are “malleable rather than committed, flexible rather than principled—essentially depthless” (Ball in Soudien et al. 2013, 455), “within the interstices of performativity through audits, inspections, appraisals, self-reviews, quality assurance, research assessments, output indicators and so on” (Ball in Soudien et al. 2013, 455). Also, within this process of instituting “thin” forms, neoliberalism destabilizes its opposition through a process of disarticulation and rearticulation (Ball in Soudien et al. 2013), or opposition (Žižek 2002), emptying words of their original meanings—of their substance—and filling them with new ones. Neoliberalism thus renders opposing it very difficult, through reinforcement of the new language that substantiates and supports it: Thus, through long-term and creative ideological work in the media and elsewhere, “thick” meanings of democracy grounded in full collective participation are replaced by “thin” understandings where democracy is reduced to choice on a market and to constantly providing evidence that one has successfully made the right decisions . . . These new understandings are accompanied by major shifts in identity. Subjectivities are slowly but ultimately radically transformed. (Soudien et al. 2013, 458)

For a Punk Pedagogy We are not in a church, so we should not be worried about heresy. (Apple 2013, 209)

After exploring education’s transformations, its problems, and situating it amid ideological struggles for power and domination, we now have the basis to discuss the prospect of a critical punk pedagogy that may work in opposition in order “to illuminate the ways in which educational policy and practice are connected to the relations of exploitation and domination—and to struggles against such relations—in the larger society” (Apple 2013, 207). To this end we need to reaffirm ourselves as public sociologists who work “in close connection with a

Pedagogy of the Bad Kids • 219 visible, thick, active, local, and often counter-public”, establishing “a dialogue, a process of mutual education”, again aiming “to make visible the invisible, to make the private public, to validate these organic connections as part of our sociological life” (Burawoy 2005, 265). As we have shown through Apple’s and Ball’s contributions, in Western societies, education is being systematically converted into a product, commodified in a framework where the only culture “that is worth approaching is the ‘entrepreneurial culture’ and the flexible dexterities, knowledge, dispositions and values necessary to economic competition” (Apple 1999a, 47). Understanding and responding to this situation, punk “can function as a space where individuals can experiment, create and interrogate” (Dines 2015, 24). This creative process is at the core of what Freire (2005) poses as concern for humanization; attained only by what he defines as “true generosity” (Freire 2005, 45). For Freire, the radical—who we cast as the punk—is an individual fully committed to grasping and transforming reality: “This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, and to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into dialogue with them” (Freire 2005, 39). It is this attitude that characterizes the emergence of punk pedagogies. According to Dines (2015), punk pedagogy, despite being a notion capable of raising eyebrows, finds its own space among two particular possibilities: it can be seen as a form of pedagogy inspired by the critical pedagogy school, the DIY ethos and the oppositional attitude of punk; or as a pedagogy based on punk as a subject matter, as part of a curriculum. Both discourses and punk lyrics can be considered subject matters in a curriculum focused on punk. Nonetheless, our goal is to use them to illustrate punks’ ideology of opposition, their radicalism (using Freire’s expression) in embracing a form of pedagogy that breaks free from the constraints of the schooling system and that emerges, in turn, as a free space, as a symbolic heterotopia. Inspired by critiques of education presented earlier, and working as a response to the ongoing neoliberal transformations that are occurring, punk pedagogy is here seen as a space in which: Values are enabled within practice; where authoritarian affinities, development of consciousness and the questioning of power per se, becomes part and parcel of the learning process. In this instance, one looks deeper into the experimental of punk, exploring processes of subcultural membership, personal and group consequence, and ideology. Punk is not seen in the abstract but instead through the heuristic. It becomes the living counterpart to the subject matter of the curriculum, as a complex space where (sub)cultural practice becomes reciprocal. (Dines 2015, 28) Guerra and Silva’s study of Portuguese punk texts analysed the lyrics of 264 punk songs, gathered from interviewees. From the 130 most cited songs,

220 • Tiago Teles Santos and Paula Guerra 41.5 percent vented sentiments of “denouncement, protest, demarcation”, 20 percent of “anger, revolt”, 11.5 percent of “rage, hatred”, and 10 percent of both “evasion (fun, pleasure, experimentation)” and “friendship, brotherhood” (Silva and Guerra 2015, 122). The banner songs of the Portuguese punk scene, then, speak of: Criticism and dissidence, but also of restlessness and personal search, and about the group’s strength and its music. They adopt a confrontational attitude, attacking several pillars of the “system”, provoking with words and gestures, defying values and conventions, parodying rules, institutions and common sense. (Silva and Guerra 2015, 118) In “Há que violentar o Sistema”, the Aqui d’el-Rock hymn, the band sings: “Think/ And guess/ What is what/ That being old/ As shitting/ Is new/ Or still to be invented/ Worse than good/ Better than bad/ That for changing so much/ Keeps the same/ (The system)/ So/ There’s a need to force the system”6 (in Silva and Guerra 2015, 105). Crise Total, in their song, “Assassinos no Poder”, another one of the most-cited, sing, “And now what to do/ Assassins in power/ Society’s to blame/ For what’s about to happen/ Assassins in power/ Assassins in power/ Everything we want/ Will go down the drain/ If we won’t take out/ The assassins from power”7 (in Silva and Guerra 2015, 107). These excerpts highlight the oppositional potential of punk and a strong political stance. Both these bands are associated with the emergence of Portuguese punk, and their songs accompanied the history of the scene.8 In others we can observe the strong spirit of union and community, like in the following excerpt from X-Acto’s song “Somos uma só voz”: “Everyone equal, only one voice!/ From every race, only one voice!/ From every sex, only one voice!/ You can have the right clothes/ You can have the right albums/ But if it is not from the heart, then it is not hardcore!/ Don’t stop, never shut up, never stop to resist/ And if it’s not about respect, then it is not hardcore!” (in Silva and Guerra 2015, 118). Freire (2005) proposed a “problem posing” education as a “revolutionary futurity”, one that helps individuals to transcend themselves via knowledge and awareness of the world (Freire 2005, 84). This “problem posing” education, “as a humanist and liberating praxis, posits as fundamental that the people subjected to domination must fight for their emancipation” (Freire 2005, 86). Education only succeeds as a relationship that overcomes authoritarianism through the becoming of both the teachers and the students as subjects of the educational process, and through the use of dialogical action focused on cooperation, unity, organization and cultural synthesis (Freire 2005, 86). How can this be achieved in the scope of a punk pedagogy? We agree with Woods’s assertion that the critical pedagogues’ “aim [is] to empower students

Pedagogy of the Bad Kids • 221 through emancipating them from ideologies and discriminatory practices” (Woods, cited in Dines 2015, 28). The DIY ethos is of the utmost importance in this regard. It is through this that punk’s emancipatory power enables it to thrive and survive as a pedagogical pillar based on the teachings of Paulo Freire, one that “reinstates personal responsibility instead of relying upon the dominant ideology of teacher as transmitter” (Dines 2015, 24). In this regard, the free school—an educational space, autonomous from the state’s education system and focused on self-development and non-compulsory learning—is a good example of how a punk pedagogy might find its place. According to Dines, such schools provide a space shaped by “the notion of creativity, freedom of expression and the development of critical thinking?” (Dines 2015, 23). In his work, Shantz (2012) focuses on The Free Space, a space “intended as a venue for committed anarchists, novices and non-anarchists alike to come together and share ideas about the prospects, difficulties and strategies for creating new, anti-authoritarian social relations” (Shantz 2012, 128). In summary, a punk pedagogy should be liberating. The outsider positionality and capabilities of punk enable the development of an educational process that can both happen inside of punk and draw from it to the outside. A punk pedagogy is not, in this sense, for the punks. It is an educational process that uses their attributes, diversity and ethos to create a collective, solidary, radical and educational alternative to the individualistic schooling hegemony. Conclusion By approaching punk as a free space, we aim to pave the way for discussing punk pedagogy inscribed in punk, and its characteristics; moreover, we have attempted to discuss a pedagogy that draws its tenets from punk in order to constitute itself. Punk’s oppositional nature and its disaffiliation, its ethos and its networks, its texts and discourses, its influences and what it influenced, make it a melting pot for new things to come. In a world in transformation, whose key structures are evolving to become unrecognizable, destroying the places whence punk emerged, punk seems like it can be/become one of the “old world’s” safe havens, preserving an ethos that contains ideals of freedom and equality, community and empathy (Santos 2012; Guerra and Bennett 2015). Punk is a form of music and a bearer of aesthetic, cultural, political and symbolic meanings that have withstood innovation and dissent. It mapped new undergrounds and spread itself through the streets while shouting that anyone could be a part of it. Punk, for the UK at least, was a cultural and aesthetic movement that sprang from dynamics of the post-war consensus and its eventual breakdown. From Rab Butler’s Education Act of 1944, the formation of the Welfare State and the challenges of decolonization, anti-imperialism and the Cold War, punk emerged as a unique underground phenomenon. It is a singularity positioning itself on the fringe of, or as an outlier to, the

222 • Tiago Teles Santos and Paula Guerra institutionalized, neoliberal system. Punk’s constant defiance of the institutionalized order is built on a systematic questioning and deconstruction of that order’s core tenets, and its own accommodation of individuals’ search for personal coherence (Santos 2012; Guerra and Quintela 2014; Guerra 2014; Guerra and Silva 2015). Punk is also a scene, a network that connects participants with different roles and positions, tools and means. It also has—and, we have argued, is—spatiality and territoriality, inscribed within social (physical and, more recently, virtual) and symbolic spaces whose dimensions it continuously subverts, challenges and rewrites. As a corollary of its characteristics, punk birthed and framed a series of underground cultures and DIY practices. Rather than proposing a reformulation of the educational system, we have drawn from the works of Althusser, Illich and Freire to propose the idea of the emergence of a new punk pedagogy that exists apart from Ideological State Apparatuses, and tries to avoid colonization, oppression and symbolic violence. In Freire’s phrase, the rules of the oppressor will not suffice nor permit the definition of the oppressed. One cannot free herself from domination or value inculcation while playing by the rules that dominate and inculcate her. Despite being a predominantly male subculture, punk professes the values of equality, respect, sharing and radicalism that are also fundamental to fulfilling the objective of lifting the veil that obscures reality. In this manner, punk may also be—or can at least become—a pedagogical space or, more accurately, a space for an empowering, liberating contemporary pedagogy, adaptive to the crises of late modernity.

Notes 1. Writer and Portuguese poet (Porto, June 9, 1900–Lisbon, February 8, 1985). Authors’ translation. 2. Herberto Helder was a Portuguese poet, considered the “greatest Portuguese poet” of the second half of the twentieth century. Authors’ translation. 3. No future was one of the most significant banners in punk’s emergence, one immortalised by the Sex Pistols’ eponymous song. 4. After its 1977 boom, punk suffered from a process of institutionalization and commodification that led to it being declared dead by some of its prominent figures. Standing against the system and institutions this process was perceived as a hard blow to its core tenets. Regarding this matter see Crass’s seminal song “Punk is Dead” from their 1978 album The Feeding of the 5000. 5. Greil Marcus (1989) posits punk as a contemporary label for an ethos or cultural phenomenon that is traceable across several centuries of Western history. 6. Our translation. 7. Our translation. 8. Punk arrived in Portugal soon after the country’s Carnation Revolution that paved the way for democracy. Answering to what some perceived as a dull everyday life and a lack of cultural alternatives, punk was well established among youth. Nonetheless it was not until the mid-1980s and the beginning of the 1990s that it boomed and you could see a relevant number of bands and fanzines emerging. It is still a broad movement in Portugal where it was never much institutionalised—apart from a couple of bands that came from a punk background but soon became something else—and keeps on offering a counter-hegemonic and anti-system alternative.

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Index

Abrantes, Paulo 216 academic identity 174 Adbusters 19 Adorno, Theodor 16, 46–47 Ahmadinejad, Mahmood 32–33 AIGA Journal 19 AIZ (magazine) 23 Albertine, Viv 101 Albini, Steve 58 Allmusic.com 104 Allsup, Randall 3, 9, 109, 161, 163, 167 Alternative Tentacles (record label) 135, 137 Althusser, Louis 48–49, 216 anarchism 1, 3, 16 anarchist agency model 16 Anarchist Free Skool (Shantz) 175 Anarcho-Improv 31, 37–40; as non-linear dynamical systems theory 37 Anarcho-Punk 31, 76 Anderson, Chris 123 anger/passion, punk and 4 Anti-Nazi League 16 Antliff, Allan 202–204 Apple, Michael W. 157, 211, 217–218 Aqui d’el-Rock 220 Armaline, William T. 152 art worlds 32 “Assassinos no Poder” (Crise Total) 220 Astley, Tom 130 Atwood, Margaret 204 autodidactism 187, 198–199 autoethnographic approaches to zines 145–147 Averett, Paige 146 Bad Brains 114 Bag, Alice 132

Bambaataa, Afrika 132 Bangs, Lester 113 Bannister, Matthew 103 Barnett, Ronald 15 Barre, T. J. 81 Barthes, Roland 16, 19–21 Bayard, Marc 100–101, 205 Bayley, Roberta 92 BBC Radio 1 92 Becker, Howard 32, 162 Bedtime for Democracy (album) 135–136 Behzad 35, 38 Belgrano, Matt 96 Benjamin, Walter 16 Bennett, Andy 31 Bernstein, Basil 215–216 Bessant, J. 75 Bestley, R. 22, 74 Bey, Hakim 38, 175 Bheemaiah, K. 81 Biafra, Jello 130, 135, 137 Birkett, Derek 78 bitcoin, as blockchain technology 80 Black Flag 74 Bladen, Charles 177, 186, 188 Blandy, Doug 148 “Blitzkrieg Bop” (Ramones) 128 blockchain technology, entrepreneurial learning and 73–86; described 79–80; dominant discourses, countering 75–78; enterprise pedagogy as punk pedagogy 78–79; introduction to 73–75; live project using 79–84 Blondie 100, 129 Blood on the Tracks (Dylan) 191 “Blowin’ in the Wind” (Dylan) 191 Blueprint 19

225

226 • Index Blues metaphor 177 Bomrani 35 Boon, Richard 18 Bourdieu, Pierre 16, 26, 48, 195, 211–212, 215 Bourdieu and Sociology of Music Education (Burnard) 199 Branson, Richard 75 Breton, André 25 British Movement 16 Brody, Neville 21 Brooks, Van Wyck 95 Brown, Dove 122 Brown, Jerry 136–137 Bubbles, Barney 21 Buchan, Wattie 96 Burkett, Mike 66 Burnard, Pamlea 77, 199 Butler, Judith 186–187 Butler, Rab 221 Buzzcocks 18, 74, 80 “California Über Alles” (Dead Kennedys) 136–137 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) 23 canon formation 98–99 Captive Words: Preface to a Situationist Dictionary (Khayati) 25 “Career Opportunities” (Clash) 119 The Cartel 75–77 Catch 22 (Heller) 199 CBGB 92, 100, 113 Charlesworth, Simon J. 212 “Chimes of Freedom” (Dylan) 191 Chinn, Kendall “Mr. Chi Pig” 122 Chuck D 138–139 Church, J. 62 Clark, Dylan 214 Clash 74, 96, 99–100, 102, 119 Clem, Jay 73 College of Media and Entertainment 93 comedic dissidence, pedagogy of 128–140; collective-based movements and 130–134; Dead

Kennedys case study 134–138; defined 129–130; Public Enemy case study 138–140; in punk and hip-hop 128–130 commodification of knowledge 50–52 Congdon, Kristin G. 148 conscientizacao (critical consciousness) 111–112 conscientization, of musical meanings 164 Constructivism 25 contradictions 46–47 Cook, Peter 199 Coon, Caroline 91–92 Cope, J. 78–79 Corré, Joe 101–102 “Country, Bluegrass, Blues, and Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers” (CBGBs) 113 Cramps 96 Crass 74–78, 85, 102, 105 Crass Records 78 Crass Reflections (Gordon) 120 Cribb, Alan 178, 188 Crise Total 220 critical public pedagogy 51 critical thinking 15–16, 202–203; punk graduate students and 46–49 cross-campus entrepreneurship 78–79 cryptocurrency 80 Cubesville, Rich 144 Cubism 25 Cultural Thaw 35 cypherpunks 80 Czezowski, Andy 92 Dada movement 22, 25 Dale, P. 74 Dammers, Jerry 78, 85 Damned 100–101 Dead Kennedys 74, 129–130; comedic dissidence case study 134–138 Debord, Guy 25 Delamont, Sara 145 Della Fave, Antonella 195 DeLorenzo, Linda C. 206

Index • 227 democratic school music education 156–168; introduction to 156–157; potential of punk in 157–160; punk as escape route and 166–168; punk as problem music and 160–163; schooling as institution/student relationship 163–166 Derrida, Jacques 21 design: defined 13; research about 14; research into 14; research through 14 design education 13–27; détournement and 24–25; introduction to 13–14; parody and 24; pastiche and 24; philosophy of punk and 15–19; postmodernism and 19–22; punk graphic design 22–23; punk visual tropes, resourcefulness of 26–27; recuperation and 25–26; researching 14–15 Desperate Bicycles 74, 76 destructiveness, punk and 4 détournement 24–25 deviantization processes 161–162 Dewey, John 131, 159, 195–196 Dictators 128 Dierendonck, Dirk van 195 Dines, Mike 5–6, 44–45, 51–52, 164, 193, 201, 205, 219 Dion, Celine 57–58 Direct Action 121 Dischord Records 66, 78 DOA 114 do-it-yourself (DIY) ethic 4, 17–18; in hip-hop 132; History of Punk course and 115–116; in Iran music 35–36; KISMIF and 44; music and 74; punk as 73–76; zine creation and 151–152 dominant discourses: countering 75–78; critics of 75; of entrepreneurship 75 Donovan 191

Drakopoulou Dodd, S. 76 Drayton, William (Flavor Flav) 138 “Drugs Are Good” (NOFX) 160 Duncombe, Stephen 144 Dunn, Kevin 176, 180, 187, 211 Durrant, Colin 193, 197–202 Dylan, Bob 191 Eagleton, Terry 16, 47, 51 Edmonton Free School 109–110 education, punk’s role in theory and practice of 210–222; battle for education and 214–218; critical punk pedagogy and 218–221; freedom/resistance and 211–214; introduction to 210–211 Edupunk 174–175 Eliot, T. S. 98 Elliott, David 158–159 Ellsworth, Elizabeth 165 Emigre 19 End of the Century (documentary) 102 enterprise pedagogy as punk pedagogy 78–79 entrepreneurial learning: cross-campus 78–79; defined 78; shifts in 78–79 entrepreneurship, punk record labels and 77–78 Erricker, Clive 176–177 Eruptörs, The 78, 192 eudaimonism concept 191–206; Aristotle’s definition of 195; autodidactism theme 198–199; critical thinking and 202–203; Durrant’s teaching approach and 197–202; experience and 200–202; impetuosity reflex, taming 191–194; individual freedom/agency and 203–204; introduction to 191–194; performativity theme 198; punk pedagogy and 194–197, 205–206

228 • Index experience 200–202 experience of enlightenment 175 experiential learning 187 Exploited 96 Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (Sassen) 111 Eye 19 Fab Five Freddy 129 Factory 75 fanzines 144; see also zines Farrakhan, Louis 139 Fast Product 75 Ferreira, José Gomes 210 Ferrer, Francisco 45 Fever Pitch (Hornby) 103 Fields, Jim 102 Filth and the Fury, The (Temple) 102 First Things First Manifesto (Garland) 19 Flavor Flav 132, 138–139 Flipside fanzine 122 folkbildning tradition 115–116 Form 19 Forman, Murray 132 Foucault, Michel 21, 122, 211–212, 214 Foxley, Rachel 196 Frankenchrist (album) 135 Frederickson, Lars 96 free schools 45 Free Space, The (Shantz) 221 Freire, Paulo 44, 52, 95, 109, 111–112, 117, 187, 211, 216–217, 219–221 French Revolution 1 Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (album) 129 Friedman, Dan 21 Fromm, Erich 213 From Westway to the World (Letts) 102 “Fuck Authority” (Pennywise) 160 Fugazi 59 Fugs 135 Furness, Zack 5, 46, 74

FUSE 98 19 Futurism 25 Galgano, Michael 95 Gandin, Luís A. 157 Gang of Four 105 Garland, Ken 19 Garrett, Malcolm 21, 27 Gartner, W. B. 76 Gauntlett, David 148 Genesis: Grasp (Hell) 128 Gewirtz, Sharon 178, 188 Ghamari-Tabrizi, Behrooz 37 Gibson, Josh 119 Giger, H. R. 135 Gillett, Alex 77–78 Gilmore Girls 96 Giroux, Henry A. 44, 51, 94–95, 109, 111, 123, 165, 202, 205 gonzo pedagogy 177 Gordon, Alastair 26, 74, 120, 175 Gosling, Tim 31, 39 Graffin, Greg 58 Gramaglia, Michael 102 Gramsci, Antonio 48–49 Grandmaster Flash 139 graphic design 13; academic study of 14; computer-based tools for 13–14; postmodernism and 19–22; punk 22–23; thematic approaches to postmodern 21; as visual language 14–15 Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, The (movie) 77 Green, Lucy 38, 159, 198 Green Day 58–59, 99 Greiman, April 21 Groom, Jim 174 Guardian 102 Guarino, Michael 135 Guerra, Paula 118, 219–220 Haas, Lük 120 Hall, Stuart 119

Index • 229 Hannah, Gerald 121 “Há que violentar o Sistema” (Aqui d’elRock) 220 Hara, Sukhvinder 81 Hardy, Don 73 Hargreaves, David J. 160 Harling Stalker, Lynda 150 Harry, Debby 129 Hatred of Democracy (Rancière) 167 Haworth, Robert H. 176, 178 Heap, Imogen 83, 85 Heartfield, John 23 Hebdige, D. 73 Hell, Richard 113, 128 Heller, Joseph 199 “Here’s to the State of Mississippi” (Ochs) 119 Hesmondhalgh, D. 74–75 heterotopias 214 Higgins, Lee 193–194 higher education, being punk in 173–188; autodidactism/amateurism and 186; concerns of participants 180–182; educational values and 183–185; experience/praxis and 187–188; institutional education, punk and 174–178; introduction to 173–174; performativity and 185–186; punk culture/practice in classroom, drawing from 182–183; study participant overview 178–180; in United Kingdom 178 Higher Education: A Critical Business (Barnett) 15 higher education (HE) system, marketization of UK’s 62–66 higher popular music education (HPME) 192 High Fidelity (Hornby) 103 Highlander Folk School 112 Hindle, K. 78

hip-hop: development of 132; punk comparisons with 132 History of Punk, The (course) 109–127; Edmonton Free School and 109–110; foundation for 110–111; introduction to 109–112; launch of 109–110; participatory learning, attitude for 112–117; punk as topic and learning method in 118–122; punk community and 115–117; safe learning environment, creating 111–112; summary of 122–125, 127 Hodgson, Godfrey 113 Holmstrom, John 92 Hornby, Nick 103 Horsley, Stephanie 140, 205–206 Horton, Myles 112 Hot Topic 96 “How We Gonna Make the Black Nation Rise” (Brother D with Collective Effort) 138 Hughes, Robert 25 identity schisms 174 Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) 216, 222 ideology 47 “Idle No More” (Rellik) 119 Idle No More movement 118, 123 Ignorant Schoolmaster (Rancière) 129 Illich, Ivan 2, 217 immediate social context 174 impetuosity reflex, taming 191–194 individual freedom/agency 203–204 Industrial 78 Institute of Contemporary Music Performance (ICMP) 193, 200 institutional education, punk and 174–178 “Institutionalised” (Muir and Mayorga) 173 Internationale Situationniste 25

230 • Index International Relations (IR) 176 Iranian Intergalactic Music Festival 30 Items 19 It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (Public Enemy) 139 James, Kieran 211 Jay-Z 75 Jenifer, Darryl 114 Johnson, Boris 101 “John Wesley Harding” (Dylan) 191 Jones, C. 79 Jr. Gone Wild 122 Kahn-Egan, Seth 4, 45, 152 Kaltefleiter, Carline K. 204 Kaye, Lenny 92, 113 Keating, Zoe 85 Keedy, Jeff 19–21 Keil, Charles 194 Keithley, Joey “Shithead” 114 Kennard, Peter 23 Khas-o-Khâshâk 32–37 Khayati, Mustapha 25 KISMIF (Keep It Simple, Make It Fast) 43–44 Klein, Sheri 148 Knabb, Ken 25 knowledge, commodification of 50–52 Kolb, David 151, 187 Kreber, Carolin 174 Krims, Adam 132 Kristal, Hilly 92, 113 Ladson-Billings, Gloria 197, 200 Laing, Dave 73–74, 78 “La mort de l’auteur” (Barthes) 19 Landscape #XX (painting) 135 “Learning Through Resistance: Contextualisation, Creation and Incorporation of a Punk Pedagogy” (Dines) 5 Led Zeppelin 199 Lefebvre, Henri 212

“Lessons to Be Learned from Paulo Freire as Education Is Being Taken Over by the Mega Rich” (Giroux) 109 Lettrists 25 Letts, Don 92, 97, 102 Levellers, The 1, 196–197, 204 libertarianism 1 Lines, David 2–3 live projects: benefits of 79; using blockchain technology 79–84 Livermore, Larry 66 Lookout! Records 66 Lynch, Kathleen 196 Lyotard, Jean-François 50 MacKaye, Ian 59–60, 66, 68 MacLeod, Dewar 131 Mailer, Norman 198 Malott, Curry 49, 175–177 Mama Riot 144 Management and Creativity (Bilton) 77 Mantie, Roger 194, 199 Marcus, Greil 46, 73, 94, 104 Marginson, Simon 64 Marx, Karl 51, 109 “Master Race” (Dictators) 128 Maximum Rocknroll (radio show) 116 Maximum Rocknroll fanzine 119–120 May, William F. 188 McCain, Gillian 92 McDonald, Mike 122 McDowell, Alex 21 McLaren, Malcolm 77, 101 McLaren, Peter 5, 165 McLaughlin, Shirley 177, 186 McNeil, Legs 92 Mekons 105 Mencken, H. L. 66 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 212 Middlesex University 73; see also blockchain technology, entrepreneurial learning and Miklitsch, Robert 3–4

Index • 231 Millennial Generation 63 Miller, Daniel 78, 80, 85 Mills, Russell 21 Miner, Dylan 17, 47, 176–177 modern art 25 Modern Life is War 91 Mohan, Krishna 195 moral entrepreneur 162 Morton, Chris 21 music education, in Iran 30–41; Ahmadinejad election and 32–33, 35; Anarcho-Improv 31, 37–40; do-it-yourself (DIY) ethos in 35–36; Iranian revolution and 37; Khas-oKhâshâk reference and 32–37; Khatami presidency and 34–35; overview of 30–32; Raam’s story 30–31, 38–39; radical imagination and 40–41; revolutionary songs 34; Tehrani music and 36–37 Music Education: Navigating the Future (Randles) 199 musicing 158 Music Learning Profiles Project 199 Mute 78 Mycelia for Music 83–84 myth of pedagogy (Rancière) 166 National Front 16 Neck 192 negative dialectics 46 Neilson, David 81 neoliberal hegemonic ideology 47–48 neoliberalism 2, 40, 109, 131–132, 213 Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education (Giroux) 109 Nettl, Bruno 37 “Never Mind the Tagmemics, Where’s the Sex Pistols?” (Sirc) 4 New Hormones label 74 New Musical Express (NME) 192 New Rhetoric, A 119

new wave designers 24 New York Post 1 Ng, C.K.F. 79 Niknafs, Nasim 201, 204 Noble, Ian 22 Nocella, Anthony J., II 204 NOFX 59, 66, 96, 160 No More Rules (Poynor) 20 Nooshin, Laudan 34–35 Normal, The 80 North, Adrian 160 Norton, David L. 195 Notting Hill Carnival riot 105 The O.C. (tv show) 97 Ochs, Phil 119 O’Connor, A. 77 Ogbor, J. 75 O’Hagan, Sean 102 O’Hara, Craig 45, 114–115 On Critical Pedagogy (Giroux) 109 One Little Indian 78 One Tree Hill (tv show) 96 “One Way” (Levellers) 196 organization, punk graduate students and 53–54 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) 113 Orwell, George 137 Oxford Handbook of Music Making and Leisure (Smith and Mantie) 199 pain, punk and 4 Parkinson, Tom 193, 202 parody 24 Paroxysm 119 Passeron, Jean-Claude 215 pastiche 24 Patti Smith Group 113 pedagogic authority 199 pedagogies of insurrection 175 Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire) 95, 109–110, 112, 129

232 • Index “Pedagogy Pissed: Punk Pedagogy in the First-Year Writing Classroom” (Kahn-Egan) 4 Peel, John 92 Penaluna, A. 79 Pennywise 59, 160 performativity 198 Perry, Mark 92 per-zines 147 Peterson, Richard A. 31 Pettibon, Raymond 27 philosophy of punk 15–19 Philosophy of Punk, The (O’Hara) 117 physical space 212 Pinnacle 75 Pittaway, L. 78–79 Plant, Sadie 25 Please Kill Me (McCain and McNeil) 92 pleasure principle, punk and 4 postcard punk 96 Postman, Neil 131 postmodernism, graphic design and 19–22 Powers, Ann 98 Poynor, Rick 20 Pridmore, Jason 150 Prinsloo, Paul 148 problem posing education 220 Propagandhi 59 Przybylski, Liz 201, 204 Public Enemy 129; comedic dissidence case study 138–140 Public Image Ltd 77 punk: as an approach 13; characteristics of 1–2, 213; conceptualization of 211; defining principles of 4; in democratic school music education 157–160; as DIY 73–75; education systems and 2; as epistemology 194; as a free space 221–222; Furness definition of 46; graphic design 22–23; ideology and 1–2; institutional education and 174–178; music education

and 2–3; neoliberalism and emergence of 131–132; as ontology 194; philosophy of 15–19; political philosophies of 1; as space of and for resistance 212; students, punk graduate students and 45–46; studies 15–19; survival of 214 punkademics 46, 197 Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower (Furness) 5, 44 punk attitude 45 punk bricolage model 23 punk by association 100 punk entrepreneurship 57–70; amah story of rent-seeking 57–59; financial crisis, 2008 62; free market connection to 66–70; higher education system and, UK’s 62–66; in Hong Kong 57–60; in London 60–66; punk rock and 59–60 punk graduate students 43–54; alienation and, suppressing feelings of 52–53; commodification of knowledge and 50–52; critical thinking and 46–49; defined 46; emotional/psychological conditions among 54; introduction to 43–44; organization/togetherness and 53–54; punk pedagogy as selfempowerment 44–45; punk students and 45–46; social knowledge and 52 punk lens in teaching 110, 122–125 Punk London (celebration) 101–102 PUNK magazine 92, 128 punk pedagogies: blockchain technology, entrepreneurial learning and 73–86; defining 45; design education and 13–27; enterprise pedagogy as 78–79; entrepreneurship 57–70; eudaimonism and 194–197;

Index • 233 for graduate students 43–54; history of 3–6; introduction to 1–3; music education and 30–41; practice of 194–197, 205–206; reasons for adopting, as principle and/or praxis 205; Torrez on 5 “Punk Pedagogy: Education for Liberation and Love” (Torrez) 4–5 “Punk Pedagogy or Performing Contradiction: The Risks and Rewards of Anti-Transference” (Miklitsch) 3–4 Punk & Post Punk (Bestley) 130 Punk & Post-Punk (journal) 6, 15 punk record labels, types of 74–78 Punk Rock, So What! (Sabin) 101 Punk Rock: An Oral History (Robb) 92 punk rock history, teaching 91–106; course description 92–93; early versus present day punk and 95–97; versus Neoliberal University 93–95; organization of material for 97–102; overview of 91; studying past and present 102–105; as upper division elective 92 Punk Scholars Network 9, 15, 44, 175, 179 punk students: defined 45; punk graduate students and 45–46 punk studies 44 punk subculture 16–17 punk visual tropes, resourcefulness of 26–27 Raam 30–31, 38–39 Radicalization of Pedagogy: Anarchism, Geography and the Spirit of Revolt, The (Springer) 3 Ramone, Johnny 114 Ramones 58, 74, 99–100, 102, 113, 128 Rancid 76, 96 Rancière, Jacques 129, 157, 161–162 Rashidi, Waleed 193

Rastafari 114 Reagan, Ronald 131 Reddington, Helen 73 Refill label 74 “Reflections on the Peripheral: Punk, Pedagogy and the Domestication of the Radical” (Dines) 5 Reid, Jamie 23–24, 27, 92 Reimer, Bennett 158 Rentschler, R. 75 research about design 14 research into design 14 research through design 14 Residents, The 77–78 Resolution Foundation 63 Reynolds, Simon 73 Richard Hell and the Voidoids 100 Ridenhour, Carlton (Chuck D) 138 Riot Grrrl movement 114, 144, 147 Robb, John 92, 97 Robertson, Bronwen 34–35 Rock Against Racism 16 Rock Against Reagan Festival 135 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum 98 Rollins, Henry 67 Rombes, Nicholas 99 Rose, Tricia 129, 132, 139 Rotten, Johnny 99, 103 Rough Trade 75–77, 80, 92 Roxy nightclub 92 Rubin, Rick 138 Sabin, Roger 101 Sassen, Saskia 111 Savage, J. 73–74, 77, 80 Schumpeter, Joseph 75 Schur, Edwin 162 Schwartz, Jessica A. 6, 94, 106 Scritti Politti 80 self-empowerment, punk pedagogy as 44–45 Sex Pistols 24, 45, 74, 77, 96, 99–103 Shantz, Jeffery 148, 175–176, 221

234 • Index Shaull, Richard 112 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 210 Shelley, Pete 18 Shocklee, Hank 138 Shock of the New, The (Hughes) 25 Sideburns fanzine 74 Silva, Augusto Santos 219–220 Silverman, Marissa 159 Sirc, Geoffrey 4 Situationist International 21–23, 25–26; détournement and 24 “Skank Bloc Bologna” (Scritti Politti single) 80 Slits 101, 105 Smith, Gareth D. 77–78, 199 Smith, Kyle 1 Smith, Patti 100, 128 Smith, Winston 27 Sniffin’ Glue fanzine 92 Socialist Workers Party 16 social knowledge, punk graduate students and 52 social space 212 Sofianos, Lisa 1, 194 Soft Revolution, A (Postman and Weingartner) 131 “Somos uma só voz” (X-Acto) 220 Sonic Youth 96 Soudien, C. 218 Spartan 75 Spiral Scratch (EP) 18, 74, 80 Springer, Simon 3 SST 78 Stations of the Crass (album) 75 Step Forward Records 75 Stephney, Bill 138 Sterling, Linder 23 Stiff Little Fingers 96–97 Stiglitz, Joseph E. 60 stigma contests 162 St Pancras label 80 Strummer, Joe 99 Styrene, Poly 92 Subhumans 121 Suburban Press 24

Suicidal Tendencies 173 Suresh Canagarajah, Athelstan 146 Surrealism 22, 25 Swedberg, R. 76 Swiss punk 20 Talking Heads 100, 113 Tan, S. S. 79 Taussig, Michael 130 teaching: comedic dissidence 128–140; democratic school music education 156–168; History of Punk, The 109–127; punk rock history 91–106; zine making 144–153 Teaching as a Subversive Activity (Postman) 131 Television 100, 105, 113 Temple, Julian 102 Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ) 38, 175 thick democracy concept 157 This Is Spinal Tap (movie) 132 Thomas, David R. 179 Thomas, Dylan 191 Thompson, Hunter S. 177, 198 Thompson, John B. 47 Throbbing Gristle 78, 105 Tidd, J. 75 togetherness, punk graduate students and 53–54 Torrez, Estrella 4–5, 16–17, 44, 47, 79, 81, 140, 152, 176–177, 193–194, 196–197, 200–202 Travis, Geoff 76–77, 92 Trowell, Ian 18 Vans Warped Tour 96 Vaucher, Gee 23, 27 Vegan’s Guide to People Arguing with Vegans, The 144 Waits, Tom 60 Wall, Sarah 145 Wan, Amy J. 147

Index • 235 Ward, Colin 36 Warren, John T. 146 Wasserman, Kevin “Noodles” 122 Watts, Alan 133 Weingart, Wolfgang 20–21 Weingartner, Charles 131 Westerlund, Heidi 161, 167 Westoxification (gharbzadehgi) 34 Westwood, Vivienne 92, 101–102 “White Noise Supremacists” (Bangs) 113 “‘Who Is An Entrepreneur?’ Is the Wrong Question” (Gartner) 76 Williams, Joanna 70 Williams, Raymond 16 Winnipeg Folk Festival 115 Winter, R. 174 Wire 102 Woodford, Paul 206 World Economic Forum 85 world of perception 212–213 Wright, Ruth 115

X-Acto 220 Xerox punk labels 74–75 X-Ray Spex 92, 102 Yang, Andrew 147, 152 Yankovic, Weird Al 132 year zero 21, 73, 97, 101 Yo! Bum Rush the Show (Public Enemy) 138 Young, D. 78 Youssefzadeh, Ameneh 34 zines: autoethnographic approaches to 145–147; creation, in teaching/learning context 148–151; defined 144; gaining understanding of, example of 150–151; history of 144; introduction to 144; making 144–153; potential of, in classroom 147–148; as punk pedagogical tools 151–152; reflection purposes example of 149–150