Anger is an energy

So yelped Johnny Rotten on a PiL song, which is also the title of a book by Neil Nehring about a feature of punk that I stupidly forgot to explicitly mention today: ANGER. As some bloggers have said earlier, there's a predominant punk view that society is in conflict. I believe that assertion to be as true as anything can be. But what you then do with that truth depends on two things (1) how do you understand the power relations in that conflict and (2) what is your response to conflict.

Hopefully that 'anger' or 'disaffection' can be channelled creatively by having a good argument. That way you win a position of more power to yourself and others while being cognizant of other competing rights. That's what democracy is supposed to be about. That includes negotiation with others you can't stand. We could use more of that in these warlike times.

But one drawback of punk is a certain prescriptive aspect that is so fixated on anger as a tool of empowerment that it fails to concede that anger can be a form of violence. Punk also fails to register the usefulness of other ways of communicating to/with each other that might not be so 'in yer face' and aggressive.

While there is an anti-authoritarian and liberating aspect to punk (like many other types of music)--throw out the categories and all the rules!--there is also an incredible desire to fix people in boxes, put them down if they stray from the party line. That can mean anything from jibes about 'selling out to the man' to yearning for the exclusivity of a secret club or privileged elite with subcultural capital.

Punk seems to suggest that we must be disciplined in order 'to take on the machine' of the system. The irony is that it can become stuck in the same machinic logic, ordering every one about like the (thought) police.

In the end, negation is also not enough, unless it creates some new social forces for a better world. The politics of negation can also result in fascism, something that says a big fat 'fuck-you' to the diversity of humanity and the sanctity of life. That's another dark side of punk.

Like other cultural movements and expressive forms, punk is a mess of contradictions. But much of it looks and sounds good, all the same. You can like aspects of the stuff without buying the whole package. That's so Not Punk, but it's still true. However, there's still a place for the radical questioning of punk if not the wholesale negation. There are always going to be people who are pissed off and we need to have that voiced in our popular culture. So I'm glad the punk virus is still around.