When I assessed social movements such as Occupy, I always looked for requirements and political programme, hegemony and its weak point, class composition and contradictions, potential allies and relative strength. I never looked at style so far. But my photo album shows me with the Sergeant Pepper uniform of the late 60s, the Che Guevara beard of the radical 70s and the yellow raincoat of the antinuclear movement. Reading Dick Hebdige’s “Subculture - The Meaning of Style” I learned that questions of style should become part of the political analysis of social movements. I am a 68er and I still recognize those younger or elderly people on the streets who share my disdain for the system. This is because of – Style.
Dick Hebdige’s book appeared in 1979 and became one of the bestsellers of Cultural Studies. Hebdige heavily relies upon the Birmingham CCCS anthology “Resisting through Rituals – Youth Subculture in Post-Britain” (1975). Hebdige starts with an analysis of Reggae and Rastafarianism in the West-Indian community in London. He then portrays white working class youth subcultures such as the teddy boys, skinheads and punks. He describes subcultures as a series of responses to the presence in Britain of a sizeable black community. But there is a large difference between the 1975 CCCS anthology and Hebdige’s 1979 book. Actually Hebdige has received the theory of structuralism, particularly the works of Lévi-Strauss and the younger Roland Barthes. Hebdige confirms the definition of culture as “coded exchange of reciprocal messages” and Style as a “signifying practice”. There are also the first repercussions of Louis Althusser’s Structuralist Marxism, when Hebdige talks about ideology of the way of perceiving other groups as well as one’s own group.
But how are subcultural styles created? Hebdige uses Lévi-Strauss’ concept of “bricolage”. Prominent forms of discourse, particularly fashion, are adapted, subverted and extended by the subcultural bricoleur. The teddy boys for example take and transform the Edwardian style and create something new out of it. Punk takes dancing and turns it into a dumb show of blank robots.
For the hegemonic system subcultures are “noise” and constitute breaches in expectations. These breaches are accompanied by hysteria in the press. The subcultural stylist gives the lie to what Althusser called the false obviousness of everyday practice. Hebdige introduces Gramsci’s notion of hegemony and argues subcultures are a challenge to hegemony.
Hebdige describes how spectacular subcultural styles are incorporated by the system. Signs such as dress and music are conversed into mass produced objects. Youth culture styles may begin by issuing symbolic changes but then must inevitably end by establishing a new set of conventions, new industries or rejuvenating old industries. There is a process from the subculture to the fashion market.
It is important to establish that Hebdige does not believe class has disappeared. Class did not disappear in Britain after WWII, but the forms in which the experience of class found expression in culture, did change dramatically with the advent of mass media, changes in the constitution of the family, in the organization of school and in the relative status of work and leisure. These changes served to fragment and polarize the working-class community and strengthen the role of the mass media. The development of a youth culture should be seen as part of this process of polarization of the working-class community. The increase in the spending powers of the working class youth, the creation of a market and changes in the education system led to the emergence of a generational consciousness amongst the young. Hebdige argues with several sociologists that youth is not classless.
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