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Punk Rock and Philosophy
“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.” Karl Marx might have been thinking of punk rock when he wrote these words in 1847, but he overlooked the possibility that new forms of solidity and holiness could spring into existence overnight. Punk rock was a celebration of nastiness, chaos, and defiance of convention, which quickly transcended itself and developed its own orthodoxies, shibboleths, heresies, and sectarian wars. Is punk still alive today? What has it left us with? Does punk make any artistic sense? Is punk inherently anarchist, sexist, neo-Nazi, Christian, or—perish the thought—Marxist? When all’s said and done, does punk simply suck? These obvious questions only scratch the surface of punk’s philosophical ramifications, explored in depth in this unprecedented and thoroughly nauseating volume. Thirty-two professional thinkers-for-a-living and students of rock turn their x-ray eyes on this exciting and frequently disgusting topic, and penetrate to punk’s essence, or perhaps they end up demonstrating that it has no essence. You decide. Among the nail-biting questions addressed in this ● Can punks both reject conformity to ideals and complain that poseurs fail to confirm to the ideals of punk? ● How and why can social protest take the form of arousing revulsion by displaying bodily functions and bodily abuse? ● Can punk ethics be reconciled with those philosophical traditions which claim that we should strive to become the best version of ourselves? ● How close is the message of Jesus of Nazareth to the message of punk? ● Is punk essentially the cry of cis, white, misogynist youth culture, or is there a more wholesome appeal to irrepressibly healthy tendencies like necrophilia, coprophilia, and sadomasochism? ● In its rejection of the traditional aesthetic of order and complexity, did punk point the way to “aesthetic anarchy,” based on simplicity and chaos? ● By becoming commercially successful, did punk fail by its very success? ● Is punk what Freddie Nietzsche was getting at in The Birth of Tragedy, when he called for Dionysian art, which venerates the raw, instinctual, and libidinous aspects of life?
- GenresPhilosophyMusic
346 pages, Paperback
Published August 23, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 2, 2023
Honestly this history research is a slag
August 16, 2023
"I enjoy punk more because I have read Nietzsche".---Susan Sontag, speaking to ROLLING STONE
"If you were not around for the Sixties", I once told a bosom friend, the next best year to be alive was 1977, the year of punk". It was one of those magical times when everything seemed possible and we could all get up on that stage and be rock gods. While the world around us crumbled faster than Diane Feinstein's brain, with the U.K. economy turning into shit and America switching the gear to neutral by electing Jimmy Carter, some of us heard salvation. On the Monday The Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen" was released in England the Sunday night before they played it on American radio stations, on KROQ in Los Angeles, and when you heard that music for the first time you knew something fantastic was going on here, something no one had ever done before. I jumped out of my bedroom chair, danced and screamed the lyrics. The long tyranny of Yes, Genesis, ELP and, God help us, Peter Frampton, was over. Yet, there was more. The cacophony of the music gave us all an appetite for destruction, "of all existing values" as both Nietzsche and Marx would say. These essays on the philosophy of the '77 revolution brilliantly capture our collective creative confusion. Yes, we were iconoclasts, blasphemers and seditionists. I got up and danced but know punks who tore up their rooms, slashed their wrists, a la' Sid Vicious, and wore shirts with safety pins to school. (I did this at Catholic high school. You can imagine the reaction from the priests, nuns and other goons.) We plastered our bodies with hammer & sickle and the swastika to show our contempt for consumer fascism. The more hate we received from the media the better. If we were "young, loud and snotty", to quote THE DEAD BOYS, at least we were alive in an era of designed boredom. This "revolt into style" as Greil Marcus of ROLLING STONE called it, had to end; it had to be incorporated into late capitalism. Sting, of The Police, says his band was originally formed when they were hired to play punks in an English TV commercial. But, for one brief, shining moment we destroyed the image the bourgeoisie had created of a silent, sullen generation and made the world ours.
"If you were not around for the Sixties", I once told a bosom friend, the next best year to be alive was 1977, the year of punk". It was one of those magical times when everything seemed possible and we could all get up on that stage and be rock gods. While the world around us crumbled faster than Diane Feinstein's brain, with the U.K. economy turning into shit and America switching the gear to neutral by electing Jimmy Carter, some of us heard salvation. On the Monday The Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen" was released in England the Sunday night before they played it on American radio stations, on KROQ in Los Angeles, and when you heard that music for the first time you knew something fantastic was going on here, something no one had ever done before. I jumped out of my bedroom chair, danced and screamed the lyrics. The long tyranny of Yes, Genesis, ELP and, God help us, Peter Frampton, was over. Yet, there was more. The cacophony of the music gave us all an appetite for destruction, "of all existing values" as both Nietzsche and Marx would say. These essays on the philosophy of the '77 revolution brilliantly capture our collective creative confusion. Yes, we were iconoclasts, blasphemers and seditionists. I got up and danced but know punks who tore up their rooms, slashed their wrists, a la' Sid Vicious, and wore shirts with safety pins to school. (I did this at Catholic high school. You can imagine the reaction from the priests, nuns and other goons.) We plastered our bodies with hammer & sickle and the swastika to show our contempt for consumer fascism. The more hate we received from the media the better. If we were "young, loud and snotty", to quote THE DEAD BOYS, at least we were alive in an era of designed boredom. This "revolt into style" as Greil Marcus of ROLLING STONE called it, had to end; it had to be incorporated into late capitalism. Sting, of The Police, says his band was originally formed when they were hired to play punks in an English TV commercial. But, for one brief, shining moment we destroyed the image the bourgeoisie had created of a silent, sullen generation and made the world ours.
December 31, 2023
Amazing book, thorough enjoyed listening along to each song referenced
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews