Agents of Change: Cultural Materialism, Post-Punk and the Politics of Popular Music

Wilkinson, David

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-52911-4_7

David Wilkinson¹⁷

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music ((PSHSPM))

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Abstract

This chapter offers a summary of the ways in which cultural materialism can help illuminate the politics of British post-punk. By drawing on Raymond Williams’ humanist rapprochement with Marxist thought, and the humanist attention to lived experience, with reference to the work of Herbert Marcuse, I show how theorisation of the materiality of culture can enrich our understanding of popular music as an integral component of social change; in other words how making a noise really can make a difference.

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Notes

1.
D. Wilkinson, Post-Punk, Politics and Pleasure in Britain (London, 2016) (Wilkinson 2016).
2.
U. Baines of The Fall quoted in Chris Brazier, ‘United They Fall’, Melody Maker 31 December 1977.
3.
R. Williams, Politics and Letters: Interviews With New Left Review (London, 1979) pp. 163–4 (Williams 1979).
4.
A. Milner, Re-Imagining Cultural Studies: The Promise of Cultural Materialism (London, 2002), p. 73 (Milner 2002).
5.
Examples include queer, mixed-gender bands like Shopping and Downtown Boys who share familiar post-punk preoccupations such as feminism, the politics of the personal and economic independence. The work of Manchester’s Lonelady, meanwhile, deliberately avoids explicit political commentary, though there is something clearly oppositional in its romantic investment of utopian possibilities in post-industrial ruins – not to mention its staunchly independent production in affordable, DIY spaces. ‘You can’t just have middle-class people making music’, Lonelady has pointed out in an interview about her second album Hinterland. See J. Doran, ‘Interiority complex: Exploring Manchester’s hinterlands with Lonelady’, Quietus, 5 February 2015, http://thequietus.com/articles/17173-lonelady-interview-hinterland [accessed 26 July 2016] (Doran 2015).
6.
S. Reynolds, Totally Wired: Post-Punk Interviews and Overviews (London, 2009), p. 431 (Reynolds 2009).
7.
R. Williams, ‘Culture is ordinary’ [1958], in R. Gable (ed.), Resources of Hope: Culture, Democracy, Socialism (London, 1989) (Williams 1989).
8.
See Alan Sinfield, Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain 3rd edn (London, 2004), especially chapter 11, ‘The rise of left culturism’ (Sinfield 2004).
9.
D. Dworkin, Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain (Durham, 1997) p. 163 (Dworkin 1997).
10.
R. Williams, Towards 2000 (London, 1983), pp. 145–6 (Williams 1983). ITV’s serialisation of Brideshead Revisited and the ‘nominal’ radicalism of postmodernist art came in for particular stick.
11.
See, for example, J. Toynbee, Making Popular Music: Musicians, Creativity and Institutions (London, 2000), pp. x–xii (Toynbee 2000); K. Negus, Popular Music In Theory (Cambridge, 1996), p. 220 (Negus 1996); and Music Genres and Corporate Cultures (London, 1999) p. 151 (Negus 1999); D. Hesmondhalgh, ‘Post-punk’s attempt to democratise the music industry: The success and failure of Rough Trade’, in Popular Music 16 (3) (1997 Oct), 255–74 (Hesmondhalgh 1997).
12.
R. Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford, 1977), p. 110 (Williams 1977).
13.
R. Williams, ‘Base and superstructure in Marxist cultural theory’ [1973], in Culture and Materialism (London, 2005), p. 43 (Williams 2005).
14.
Williams, Marxism and Literature, pp. 112–114.
15.
A. Thrills, ‘Spandau Ballet’, NME, 1 August 1981, pp. 25–7.
16.
S. Reynolds, Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984 (London, 2005), p. xxv (Reynolds 2005).
17.
S. Reynolds, Totally Wired: Post-Punk Interviews and Overviews, p. 431.
18.
Williams, ‘Base and superstructure in Marxist cultural theory’.
19.
A. Sinfield, Faultlines: Cultural Materialism and the Politics of Dissident Reading (Berkeley, 1992), p. 9 (Sinfield 1992).
20.
A. Milner, Re-Imagining Cultural Studies, pp. 104–5.
21.
T. Gitlin, ‘The Anti-political populism of cultural studies’, in M. Ferguson and P. Golding (eds.), Cultural Studies in Question (London, 1997), p. 27 (Gitlin 1997).
22.
Sinfield, Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain, p. 29.
23.
For institutions, see Williams, Marxism and Literature, pp. 115–18 and Williams, Culture (Glasgow, 1981), pp. 33–56 (Williams 1981).
24.
Wilkinson, Post-Punk, Politics and Pleasure in Britain, pp. 29–31, 52–6, 63–7.
25.
These terms are taken from Williams’ discussion of cultural production and the market, Culture, pp. 44–52.
26.
Williams, Culture, p. 52.
27.
Toynbee, Making Popular Music, p. 1.
28.
Toynbee, Making Popular Music, p. 2.
29.
Reynolds, Rip It Up and Start Again, p. 93.
30.
T. Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford, 1990), p. 11 (Eagleton 1990).
31.
F. Mulhern, Culture/Metaculture (London, 2000), p. xv (Mulhern 2000).
32.
Sinfield, Literature, Politics and Culture, p. 46.
33.
Mark E. Smith on Dave Fanning’s radio show, RTE (Ireland), broadcast 18 October 1980.
34.
Steve Sutherland, ‘The sane old blues’, Melody Maker, 1 May 1982.
35.
Author interview with Una Baines.
36.
Williams, Culture, p. 72.
37.
Williams, Marxism and Literature, pp. 15–17, Milner, Re-Imagining Cultural Studies, p. 14.
38.
Sinfield, Literature, Politics and Culture, p. 323.
39.
S. Frith and H. Horne, Art Into Pop (London, 1987), pp. 51–2 (Frith and Horne 1987).
40.
P. Willis, Profane Culture (London, 1978), p. 93 (Willis 1978).
41.
Reynolds, Totally Wired, p. 410.
42.
D. McCullough, ‘The nitty gritty on Scritti Politti’, Sounds, January 1979.
43.
K. Gildart, ‘From ‘Dead End Streets’ to ‘Shangri Las’: Negotiating social class and post-war politics with Ray Davies and the Kinks’, in The Subcultures Network (eds.), Youth Culture, Popular Music and the End of ‘Consensus’ (London, 2015), pp. 9–34 (p. 14) (Gildart 2015).
44.
T. Adorno, ‘On the fetish character in music and the regression of listening’, in J.M. Bernstein (ed.), The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (London, 1991), pp. 33–5 (Adorno 1991).
45.
Mulhern, Culture/Metaculture, p. xix.
46.
Toynbee, Making Popular Music, p. 2.
47.
A. Thrills, ‘Up Slit creek’, NME, 8 September 1979.
48.
Toynbee, Making Popular Music, pp. ix–x.
49.
R. Gosling, ‘Dream boy’, New Left Review, 1 (3) (May–June 1960), 30–34 (Gosling 1960).
50.
Toynbee, Making Popular Music, p. 26.
51.
Toynbee, Making Popular Music, p. 25.
52.
Toynbee, Making Popular Music, pp. xi–xii.
53.
P. York, Style Wars (London, 1980), p. 27 (York 1980).
54.
L. Verrico, ‘Are you talking to me?’, Dazed and Confused, December 1998, pp. 56–60 (Verrico 1998).
55.
Scritti Politti, ‘Rock-A-Boy-Blue’, Songs to Remember (Rough Trade, 1982) (Scritti 1982).
56.
Quoted in Reynolds, Rip It Up, p. 364.
57.
Negus, Music Genres and Corporate Cultures, p. 178.
58.
Sinfield, Literature, Politics and Culture, pp. 324–5.
59.
Frith and Horne, Art Into Pop, p. 180.
60.
Sinfield, Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain, p. 325
61.
J. Savage, England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock 2nd edn (London, 2005), p. 43 (Savage 2005).
62.
T. Parsons and J. Hamblett, Leeds: Mill City’, NME, 5 August 1978, pp. 7–8 (Parsons and Hamblett 1978).
63.
See for example, S. Taylor, ‘The popular press or how to roll your own records’, Time Out, 2 February 1979 (Taylor 1979)_; P. Morley and A. Thrills, ‘Independent discs’, NME, 1 September 1979, p. 23 (Morley and Thrills 1979); C. Burkham, ‘Cabaret Voltaire: Prepare to meet your Mecca’, Sounds, 25 July 1981 (Burkham 1981); Anonymous, ‘Scam’, City Fun, 1 (7) (1979) (Anonymous 1979).
64.
T. Gracyk, ‘Kids’re forming bands: Making meaning in post-punk’, in Punk & Post-Punk 1 (1) (2011), 73–85 (p. 83) (Gracyk 2011).
65.
Williams, Marxism and Literature, p. 117.
66.
Williams, Culture, p. 86.
67.
Reynolds, Totally Wired p. 408
68.
Williams, Culture, p. 62.
69.
J. Savage, ‘Cabaret Voltaire’, Sounds, 15 April 1978, pp. 16–17 (Savage 1978).
70.
‘From the pressing plants to the concert halls, we want some control’, After Hours fanzine, 1979.
71.
O. Lowenstein, ‘A Question Of Identity’, Sounds, 19 August 1978, p. 21 (Lowenstein 1978).
72.
Reynolds, Rip It Up, p. 212.
73.
Reynolds, Totally Wired, p. 408.
74.
Reynolds, Rip It Up, p. 93.
75.
Williams, Culture, p. 70.
76.
Milner, Re-Imagining Cultural Studies, p. 73.
77.
Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic, p. 13.
78.
Sinfield, Literature, Politics and Culture, p. 179.
79.
Sinfield, Literature, Politics and Culture, p. 319.
80.
Gosling, ‘Dream boy’.
81.
Sinfield, Literature, Politics and Culture, p. 193.
82.
S. Ford, Hip Priest: the Story of Mark E. Smith and The Fall (London, 2003), pp. 14–15 (Ford 2003).
83.
R. Middleton, Studying Popular Music (Milton Keynes, 1990), p. 247 (Middleton 1990).
84.
Sinfield, Literature, Politics and Culture, p. 202.
85.
Jim McGuigan, Cool Capitalism (London, 2009), p. 1 (McGuigan 2009).
86.
Savage, England’s Dreaming, p. 27.
87.
Wilkinson, Post-Punk, Politics and Pleasure, pp. 37–67.
88.
A. Davis, ‘Preface: Marcuse’s legacies’, in Douglas Kellner (ed.), Herbert Marcuse: The New Left and the 1960s (London, 2005), p. vii (Davis 2005).
89.
Davis, ‘Preface: Marcuse’s legacies’, p. xiii.
90.
The term is used in the sense of a ‘vision of the future on which a civilisation bases its projects, establishes its ideal goals and builds its hopes’, following Marcuse’s friend and fellow New Left thinker André Gorz – see A. Gorz, Critique of Economic Reason (London, 1989) p. 8 (Gorz 1989).
91.
Williams, Marxism and Literature, p. 212.
92.
Williams, Politics and Letters, pp. 340–41.
93.
H. Marcuse, An Essay On Liberation (Harmondsworth, 1972), p. 20 (Marcuse 1972b).
94.
K. Marx, Early Writings (Harmondsworth, 1975), pp. 327–30 (Marx 1975).
95.
Williams, Marxism and Literature, p. 212, and Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston, 1972), p. 64 (Marcuse 1972a).
96.
Gorz, Critique of Economic Reason, p. 22.
97.
Williams, ‘On reading Marcuse’, Cambridge Review, 30 May 1969, pp. 366–88 (Williams 1969); P. Jones, Raymond Williams’ Sociology of Culture (Basingstoke, 2004), p. 64 (Jones 2004).
98.
Milner, Re-Imagining Cultural Studies, p. 8.
99.
Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt, p. 106.
100.
Williams, Towards 2000, p. 18.
101.
Williams, Towards 2000, pp. 146–7.
102.
Williams, Towards 2000, p. 13.
103.
Williams, Towards 2000, p. 14.
104.
Milner, Re-imagining Cultural Studies, p. 64.
105.
Williams, Towards 2000, p. 14.
106.
H. Marcuse, ‘Liberation from the affluent society’, transcript of Marcuse’s contribution to the Dialectics of Liberation conference, in Herbert Marcuse: The New Left and the 1960s, pp. 76–86 (p. 78).
107.
R. Williams, ‘Culture is ordinary’, in Resources of Hope, p. 96.
108.
R. Aronson, ‘Marcuse today’, Boston Review, 17 November 2014, available online at http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/ronald-aronson-herbert-marcuse-one-dimensional-man-today [accessed 25 June 2015] (Aronson 2014).
109.
Reynolds, Rip It Up And Start Again, p. xxv.
110.
H. Pimlott, ‘Militant entertainment? “Crisis music” and political ephemera in the emergent “structure of feeling”, 1976–1983’, in The Subcultures Network (eds.), Fight Back: Punk, Politics and Resistance (Manchester, 2015), pp. 268–86 (Pimlott 2015).
111.
O. Lowenstein, Dangerous Logic, no. 1, 1978.
112.
Williams, Towards 2000, pp. 10–11.
113.
Williams, Towards 2000, p. 14.
114.
Steve Walsh, ‘Pop group mania’, NME, 18 February 1978, p. 19 (Walsh 1978).
115.
Max Bell, ‘Idealists In distress’, NME, 30 June 1979, pp. 24–7 (Bell 1979).

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Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
David Wilkinson

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University of Wolverhampton , Wolverhampton, United Kingdom
Keith Gildart
University of Roehampton, London, United Kingdom
Anna Gough-Yates
Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, United Kingdom
Sian Lincoln
London Metropolitan University , LONDON, United Kingdom
Bill Osgerby
University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom
Lucy Robinson
University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom
John Street
University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom
Peter Webb
University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom
Matthew Worley

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Wilkinson, D. (2017). Agents of Change: Cultural Materialism, Post-Punk and the Politics of Popular Music. In: Gildart, K., et al. Youth Culture and Social Change. Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52911-4_7

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52911-4_7
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