Generation Reagan Youth

Hardcore punk radicalized punk rock in the U.S. at the end of the 1970s and was initially composed for the most part of white, male, and suburban youth. Both the scene's self-perception and academic accounts have tended to perceive hardcore as a musical subculture per se rebelling against the conservative zeitgeist of Reagan's America. In this study, the author conceives of hardcore as a particular form of life emerging in its distinct social practices within an umbrella form of life itself structured by neoliberal principles and white male privilege. Generation Reagan Youth historicizes hardcore's form of life across three scenes, namely skinhead, straight edge, and broader hardcore punk by taking into account lyrics, fanzine discourses, performance footage, and album cover artwork. Within this framework, the author demonstrates how white male performances in hardcore represented the white neoliberal form of life, while also offering opportunities for resistance - not the least in tandem with politicized hardcore manifestations like Queercore, Riot Grrrl, or Latino Punk.






TABLE OF CONTENTS




1. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 1


1.1 The Haunting and Haunted History of Hardcore .................................................. 1


1.2 The White Male Body of Hardcore in the Historical Context

of the Post-Civil Rights Era .................................................................................. 4


1.3 Hardcore as a Form of Life ................................................................................. 10


1.4 How to Read the Body of Hardcore .................................................................... 14


1.5 The Historiography of Hardcore ......................................................................... 17


1.6 Structure of this Study ........................................................................................ 21




2. Theorizing the White Male Neoliberal Body .................................................. 23


2.1 Neoliberal Culture as a Form of Life in the Post-Civil Rights Era:


Biopolitics and Governmentality ........................................................................ 24


2.2 The Perceived Crisis of White Masculinity and its 'Solutions':

Colorblindness and Hegemonic Masculinity ...................................................... 29


2.3 Criticizing the Neoliberal Form of Life:

Performed Body-Identities in Hardcore .............................................................. 38


2.4 Processes of Learning in Hardcore:


Becoming Gay and Becoming Un-Sutured .......................................................... 46




3. Representing and Resisting White Male Neoliberal Forms of Life


in the U.S. Hardcore Scene: Part I - The Hardcore Skinhead Scene ........... 55


3.1 "We are skins! We are skins!":


Theoretical Approaches to the Hardcore Skinhead Community ......................... 55


3.2 The Discursive Production of Racialized and


Gendered Bodies in the Welfare Reform Dispositif ........................................... 62


3.3 The Discursive Production of the Soldierly Male Body


in the Aftermath of the Vietnam War ................................................................. 68


3.4 The Hardcore Skinhead Scene as White Male Neoliberal Form of Life ............. 73


3.4.1 (Self-)Stigmatization and Othering in the Hardcore Skinhead Scene .... 73


3.4.2 The Glorification of the Nation in the Hardcore Skinhead Scene .......... 90


3.5 Countermovements and the Other Body of Skinhead: SHARP and RASH ...... 102




4. Representing and Resisting White Male Neoliberal Forms


of Life in the U.S. Hardcore Scene: Part II - The Straight Ed