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 Edge Scene ..... 104
4.1 “Don’t Smoke, Don’t Drink, Don’t Fuck –
At Least I Can Fucking Think!”: Contextualizing Straight Edge ..................... 104
4.2 The HIV/AIDS Discourse: Hegemonic Masculinity under Threat ................... 108
4.3 The Straight Edge Movement as White Male Neoliberal Form of Life ............ 111
4.3.1 The Subversive and Affirmative Potential
of ‘Reserving Sex for Caring Relationships’ ....................................... 111
4.3.2 “Straight Edge Meets the Hitler Youth”:
The Radicalization of Straight Edge .................................................... 121
4.4 Countermovements and the Other Body of Straight Edge:
Posicore, Revolution Summer, and Antifa Straight Edge ................................. 131

5. Representing and Resisting White Male Neoliberal Forms of Life
in the U.S. Hardcore Scene: Part III – The Hardcore Punk Scene ............. 137
5.1 “White Riot”: Dialectically Approaching the Hardcore Punk Scene ................ 137
5.2 The Discursive Production of Racialized and Gendered Bodies
in Discourses Around Affirmative Action and Colorblindness ......................... 144
5.3 White Privilege and Racial Ambiguity in the Early Hardcore Punk Scene ...... 148
5.4 Male Privilege, Sexism, and Homophobia in the
Early Hardcore Punk Scene .............................................................................. 168
5.5 Countermovements and the Other Body of Hardcore Punk:
Queercore, Riot Grrrl, Latino Punk, and Powerviolence .................................. 174

6. Conclusion: “This is America”: The Dialectics of the
Hardcore Form of Life in the Post-Civil Rights Era .................................... 183

7. Works Cited ..................................................................................................... 190