Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979) was a landmark study that cast its shadow over research, analysis and interpretation of post-war youth subcultures in and out of academia. The summaries on the back of the original edition were from Rolling Stone (the US popular music magazine), Time Out (the British listings magazine) and the New York Times, revealing the book’s global reach. In their synopses, moreover, they hint at the insights, theoretical limits and absences that have since generated so much debate.
[…] complex and remarkably lucid, it’s the first book dealing with punk to offer intellectual content. Hebdige … is concerned with the UK’s postwar, music-centred white working-class subcultures, from teddy boys to mods and rockers to skinheads to punks. [Rolling Stone]With enviable precision and wit Hebdige has addressed himself to a complex topic – the meanings behind the fashionable exteriors of working-class youth subcultures – approaching them with a sophisticated theoretical apparatus that combines semiotics, the sociology of deviance and Marxism. [Time Out]This book is an attempt to subject the various youth-protest movements of Britain in the last 15 years to the sort of Marxist, structuralist, semiotic analytical techniques propagated by, above all, Roland Barthes. [The New York Times]
Such issues—and more—will be discussed through this edited collection. ‘White working-class subcultures’? Well, Hebdige also wrote about reggae, Rastafarianism, Caribbean immigration and race relations, arguing that British youth cultures were oft-born out of a relationship and a dialogue with British immigrant communities. But was such an influence one way, as Hebdige suggests, or were black Britons equally informed by white working-class cultures? More to the point, essentialising notions of ‘black’ and ‘white’ culture has long raised thorny questions. And any notion of subcultures being inherently working class will always render challenge and discussion. Theory-wise, the domains of Marxism, structuralist, post-structuralist and semiotic analysis deployed by Hebdige invite critique, allowing for useful ideas as to how best interrogate and research youth and subcultures into the current period and beyond. And is this a boy’s only story? Is it transnational? What about sex and sexuality?
Subculture drew from a range of sources. Its focus was nominally punk, but it ranged far and wide to explain and contextualise the advent and meaning of the latest in a long line of ‘spectacular’ youth cultures. Scattered throughout are references to the Marxism of Gramsci and Althusser, the post-structuralism of Derrida and Barthes, the literary and semiotic theories of Saussure, Volosinov and Kristeva, the anthropology of Lévi-Strauss and the philosophical musings of Genet. His emphasis on class and ethnicity have become major reference points for academics and researchers; but they have also informed popular understandings of subcultures past and present. Back in 1979, Hebdige was continuing in the tradition of the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), suggesting subcultures operated on a level of double articulation: that is, in relation to both the dominant (bourgeois) culture and the parental (generational) culture. He also used terms such as ‘polysemy’, ‘bricolage’ and ‘homology’ to explore the ways by which signs and signifiers could be read, used, adapted and subverted through time and space. So, with regard to punk, Hebdige noted how a safety-pin or bin-liner could become a sign of resistance to the disposability of popular culture or the atrophied state of Britain on the 1970s. He wrote of punk’s adoption and blending of objects that were either hidden by mainstream culture (e.g. fetishwear) or not then seen as fashion (e.g. ripped trousers and dog collars). He explored how systems of meaning were constructed around the ordering of seemingly disparate things.
In the 1970s, subcultures were visible, instantly recognisable and often deemed to have a stylistic unity. Subcultures and musical genres were woven together, with analysis focusing on connections between the two. As we moved through to the end of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, however, such presumptions began to break down. Lifestyle theories, bound to consumption and fluid identities, were proffered, leading to critiques of both Hebdige and the CCCS more generally. The concepts of scenes and milieu were presented as alternatives, with scholars debating the very idea of homogenous, unified subcultures. Attention turned to how subculturalists themselves lived the experience of subculture; how elements of locality and the impact of global flows shaped their understanding and presentation of subculture. Could we still, with conviction, say that subcultures existed; or were we in a post-subcultural world? What had happened to them and how had they developed since Hebdige’s work? Was Hebdige’s theoretical approach and research methodology still useful for anyone studying these phenomena in the new millennium? The literature and state of such debate will be explored in each of the following chapters.
Hebdige and Subculture in the Twenty-First Century is organised into three parts that hope to deal with various points of contention. It celebrates the importance of Hebdige’s work whilst also casting a critical eye. It asks how Subculture can still help and inform us. But also to what extent its shortcomings necessitate alternative perspectives and updated approaches. Part I, entitled ‘Theories and Debates’, analyses the theoretical focus that directed Hebdige’s work. Clearly the world has changed and we have had what is sometimes called the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ of mediated communication and the rise of the Internet. As a result, the theoretical terrain that Hebdige once inhabited has for some time been contested and critiqued by scholars such as David Muggleton, Andy Bennett, Steve Redhead, Sarah Thornton and others. Reflecting on this, Andy Bennett argues here that Subculture was in fact an already deeply postmodern study. Suggesting that Hebdige’s work has a much closer proximity to post-subcultural work than previously recognised, Bennett argues that Subculture presents punk as the last great British subculture. In predicting only ‘no future’, Johnny Rotten denied a ‘magical solution’ to the problems of the day and refused to propose another one. Punk, for Bennett and as written about by Hebdige, was in fact the moment when the idea of youth culture as a modernist project fell away. Instead, the subversive qualities of postmodernism that had always—in Bennett’s view—underpinned post-war youth subcultures became apparent.
In Chapter 3 Shane Blackman considers criticism of Hebdige’s empirical methodology, particularly the suggestion that he did not listen to or hear the voices of those to whom his theories applied. Blackman focuses on two criticisms: firstly that Hebdige’s work is overly determinist and, secondly, that his theoretical framework is too restrictive. Blackman counters this by stating that Hebdige’s theoretical framework does not get in the way of him understanding the subversive nature of, for example, punk. As importantly, he suggests the second criticism is in fact one of elitism. After all, Blackman reminds us, Hebdige’s work was based on participant observation, auto-ethnography and a ‘scavenger technique’. The idea, as Hebdige himself put it, was to ‘talk through the topic rather than about it!’ (Hebdige 2012).
Peter Webb, in Chapter 4, contextualises the theoretical development of Hebdige’s work, situating it in the tradition of F. R. Leavis, Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams and John Berger. In particular, Webb tackles the problems of class and ethnicity by illuminating the way in which Hebdige underestimates the intermingling of working-class and middle-class backgrounds in subcultural milieus. In the same way, Webb suggests punks were more ethnically integrated than Hebdige presumed, arguing that the relationship between punk and reggae worked in both directions. By critiquing the essentialised categories of ‘black’ and ‘white’, Webb reveals their porous nature and prioritises the lived experience as means to affect individual and collective identities.
Finally, in Part I, Pete Dale takes issue with the theoretical grounding of Subculture. Dale suggests Hebdige’s theories could be improved by taking a much more in-depth post-structuralist approach. He praises the use of Kristeva and Barthes. But, Dale argues, Hebdige’s use of Derrida was limited and allowed for missed opportunities/possibilities. If, for example, we take a deconstructive approach, then consideration of punk as countercultural rather than subcultural may offer original insight. Dale ends by saying that Hebdige’s analysis is still useful and does important work by not presenting a romanticised assessment of subculture. Complexities remain, however, and Dale urges future researchers not to ‘sweep’ their research subjects into too tidy a set of theoretical boxes.
Part II of the book looks at the ‘Others, Absence and Identity’ of Hebdige’s work. The first intervention is by Christine Feldman-Barratt, who asks and illuminates how Hebdige’s text connects to women’s experience of participating in and/or observing subcultures. Feldman-Barratt examines how young women are included in Hebdige’s text, before then exploring the absence of women’s voices and the ways by which women in punk used music and style to navigate and subvert gender identity. As Feldman-Barratt makes clear, female scholars have contributed much to the study of subcultures, responding to Hebdige and developing complementary and original analyses.
Rehan Hyder’s chapter, on the ‘phantom legacy’ of Subculture, takes up the issue of race and ethnicity. Hyder explores how stylistic and symbolic resistance have helped reflect debates about syncretic creativity and reshaped notions of youthful identity in multi-ethnic Britain. Hyder discusses the absence within Hebdige’s work of ethnicity in terms of music, e.g. there is no discussion of soul and funk in the syncretic mix. He also looks at the absence of Asian youth, presenting such gaps as spaces for further research and new readings of subcultural development. For Hyder, a new heritage and a new identity may be forged in the interaction of differing ethnic groups through subculture if the ethnic groups are not discretely bound. Hebdige, for Hyder, set the debate up well. But left too many questions unanswered and under-researched.
The third and final part assesses how well Hebdige’s analysis may be brought to bear on newer, more recently developed subcultures. The first contribution is by Edia Connole, looking at Black Metal from within the scene itself. Here she relates Hebdige to the idea that Black Metal is not representational and considers how far it is possible to develop an analysis through immersion in a subculture. To do this, Connole draws on ‘speculative realism’ and explores the meanings of key Black Metal signifiers relevant to environmental catastrophe and the obliteration of the human subject. Moving beyond Hebdige, she suggests we need new and different philosophical tools to understand the nature and lived experience of a subculture such as Black Metal.
Second in the final part is Martin Heřmanský’s study of Czech Emo subculture. In particular, he uses ethnographic research to consider offline and online cultural spaces, focusing especially on the agency of subjects. By so doing, Heřmanský challenges Hebdige’s reliance on structural factors and his contention that working-class subcultures unconsciously commented on their surroundings. For Heřmanský, Emo is mainly a middle-class subculture where the members experience alienation through their non-normative stance. Their practice is deliberate, or conscious, he argues, and thereby shapes and reworks public and private space for means of communication. The offline and online sites are complementary, allowing for connections to be made, identities to form and interaction across the subculture.
Third, Paula Guerra examines ‘resistance and sociability in the internet age’, using the Portuguese punk scene as a case study. Guerra considers how punks in Portugal used online apps and communication to make music cheaply and interact via social media. Now over forty years old, this continuing community has blurred the idea of subcultures being youth cultures, with punks young and old interacting in the same scene. For Guerra, Portuguese punk continues to acknowledge its history, but has also developed a fluidity—or elasticity—to adapt and reinvent itself. Hebdige, obviously, could not have anticipated such developments. Nevertheless, Guerra argues that the rigidity of some of his categories and observations are contested by the development of technologies and scenes such as in Portugal.
Finally in this part, Lucy Robinson and Chris Warne look at the process and uses of teaching Hebdige within academic institutions. The chapter firstly historicises how Hebdige has been taught. It then looks at wider trends and understandings of subcultural work, locating Hebdige therein before exploring how Hebdige may help us understand teaching as a practice. Robinson and Warne work through the problematic notion of teaching subculture; of presenting subculture and resistance within the academy. They finish by suggesting that although subculture is probably taught in the ‘wrong’ place, it is nevertheless a contradictory process. Universities recuperate and commodify ideological forms. But teaching Hebdige also prevents the trivialisation of subcultures; it can keep them charged. And in return, subcultures bring a toxin into the institution; what should not be taught is taught.
As a grand finale, the collection finishes with a collective interview with Dick Hebdige himself. This was conducted at the KISMIF conference of 2015, comprising Andy Bennett, Carles Feixa, Dick Hebdige, Paula Guerra and Pedro Quintela. Herein, Hebdige discusses the process of writing and generating the research for Subculture. We get a sense of Hebdige as a person and a young man. In particular, we get a sense of how Hebdige viewed his work as a positional piece written by someone interested and invested in working out what was happening in British popular culture in the 1970s. By reflecting on his work, Hebdige discusses pertinent questions relevant to subcultures and countercultures and the apparent tension between studying and experiencing cultural styles.
Taken altogether, this collection hopes to offer insight into Hebdige’s work and considers its value for the twenty-first century. There are, as in the original Subcultures text, absences that need to be addressed. Sexuality and sexual identity, for example. But despite this, we hope the book stands as testimony to a pioneering and seminal study. It is our contention that Hebdige’s analysis and approach still resonates. Over forty years since its publication, Subculture inspires us to find meaning in style and style in meaning.
Reference
- Hebdige, D. (2012). Contemporizing ‘Subculture’: 30 Years to Life, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 15, 3: 399–424.Crossref