Stephen Duncombe

I first read parts of this book for my master's thesis three years ago, and I was wanting to return to it and read the whole thing for a while. This book thoroughly discusses various aspects of zines and zine culture, including the sincere nature of zines, the anti-authority, and the independent, anti-corporate attitude of many zines. Duncombe is himself a zinester, and so is quite knowledge. He avoids being too academic, while drawing on academic discussions and theory in accessible, show more interesting ways. I appreciate his own investment in zines as well: he has a stake, and he's quite explicit about his own viewpoints in aspects of zine culture (for instance, his argument that the self ghetto-ization of anti-conformists can lead to de-politization and that zinesters need to be actively engaged with others and not just "write to the choir"). Very comprehensive and engaging read. show less

WHITE RIOT: PUNK ROCK AND RACISM - FROM LONDON TO JAKARTA

Ken Olende explores the international diversity of the punk movement as charted in the new book White Riot

In the early 1980s, the black US punk band Bad Brains would get their audience to chant, “Black and white, we come here to unite.” This was partly a celebration of unity among the fans, but also a challenge to a movement that had flirted with racism.

White Riot sets itself the daunting task of exploring punk’s relation to show more race. It is a collection of diverse articles, starting with novelist Norman Mailer’s romanticisation of black culture in the 1950s—and immediately followed by the hard-hitting response by novelist and civil rights activist James Baldwin.

The book can seem quite disjointed—one of its editors is an academic and the other a journalist and musician. Some articles are self-indulgent, others are reprints of fanzine interviews. It touches on Rock Against Racism (RAR) in Britain and racist skinheads. And it explores international traditions, largely in the US, but also Mexico and Indonesia.

Over the past 35 years punk has developed multiple traditions. It means utterly different things to different people.

In the first few years the music and its fans were fluid and experimental. Early bands developed in a wide range of directions, and most stopped playing anything that would be identified as “punk” within a few years.

Many punks since then have been very conservative, wanting an unchanging form of vaguely oppositional music and lifestyle.

In the early days the kind of romance that Mailer creates appears again in Patti Smith’s ill-conceived song, Rock N Roll Nigger.

A different attitude came from bands like the Clash, where Joe Strummer’s call for a White Riot was in solidarity with black people. An article from the time by Socialist Workers Party member David Widgery captures this. Others entirely miss the point. Roger Sabin is amazed to discover that some bands who supported RAR sometimes used racist language. RAR brought together bands with all sorts of ideas in a bid to break the hold of the fascist National Front on young people. In the process many artists had their ideas challenged.

Rock journalist Lester Bangs’ classic 1979 article “White Noise Supremacists” explores the casual racism on the New York punk scene. He regrets that something like RAR “could never happen in New York” because he wished rock could “reach some point where it might not add to the cruelty and exploitation already in the world”.

The book can occasionally forget that a real world exists beyond rock. Some essays act as if punk appears in isolation. One of the more bizarre pieces here is a racist history of modern rock and pop music that claims it was not influenced by black music. This diatribe, from a magazine called Skinned Alive, is included because it is so ignorant as to be laughable. But there is an echo of its ideas in many histories of popular music.

Some articles are part of an argument within punk about what it should be.

Daniel S Traber talks about how middle class punks would move into poor, often black, areas. “The punks treated the Canterbury [block in Los Angeles] the way they thought it deserved. “They behaved like spoiled kids who refuse to clean up after themselves and showed no respect for a place some are forced to live in because they lack a choice.”

But these have little in common with Los Crudos and their followers, who sang about anti-Latino racism in Spanish, defiantly stating, “We’re that spic band”.

Variants of punk have offered a chance for people to resist racism. Examples include the south London Asian band Alien Kulture in the late 1970s, and Taqwacore, the Muslim punk movement which spawned a recent film.

Both feature in the book, keeping its later sections interesting—as does the section on the Indonesian scene with its idolisation of the Sex Pistols.

At its best, punk gives a voice to those at the grassroots. But this means the ideas it expresses are far from uniform.

Reprinted from Socialist Worker. https://www.repeatfanzine.co.uk/Reviews/white%20riot%20book.htm show less

Notes from Underground provides a brief evolutionary history of the modern zine. Zines come about as a response when dominant culture is found lacking or just straight up wrong by an individual. Stephen Duncombe cites the pamphlet press of associations in colonial America and Thomas Paine’s Common Sense as early examples. The most commonly accepted origin of the ‘fanzine’, as it is known today, occurred in the 1930’s. Science fiction fans created publications that included critique show more of fiction, short stories, and space for forming sci-fi communities. In the 1970’s with the rise of the punk music and lifestyle, came another wave of zinesters. The 80’s saw the creation of whole zines dedicated to only reviews of other zines. These review zines included all genres, and the most famous is Factsheet Five. The importance of zines like Factsheet Five is that it connects and creates a greater zine community of authors and readers. This coalescing of zinesters forms an underground alternative zine culture.
Two of the main incentives- cited by Duncombe- for publishing zines are, the rejection of dominant culture and the lack of a community. Zines authors are often self-proclaimed losers or freaks, people who feel alienated from- or refuse to accept- mainstream society, politics, and media. Zines are a response to alienation that remains underground; they are not acknowledged or distributed by mainstream press. “Although the world of zines operates on the margins of society, its concerns are common to all: how to count as an individual, how to build a supportive community, how to have a meaningful life, how to create something that is yours.” (Pg 15) This struggle is highly personal, tangible form of creation and expression.
In zines the personal is political, they allow publishers to manufacture and label themselves. “In an era when every conceivable identity has been catalogued or packaged, yet ordinary people have little to say in this process, zines offer a way for their publishers to ‘package’ the complexity of themselves and share it with others.” (Pg. 38) The expression of a complex authentic self is contaminated, however, when dominant culture “discovers” and labels zines as “cool”. The seizure of zines, punk, riot grrl, and leftist politics by popular culture, only to be sold back to the masses as a fashion trend, is the direct opposite of alternative underground culture. However, “it won’t be repression that forces zines out of the light and back underground…it will be lack of interest…” (Pg. 172) Once zines have their fifteen minutes of fame and become passé, then the underground may reclaim them and the cycle of fringe culture and co-optation continues.
Duncombe labels alternative culture as “…counterhegemonic…: a culture arising out of dissent and providing a countervision of society.” The complexity of this counter-vision’s existence is one of the major themes of Notes. Zines are the creation of the very society they are negating, “…the only defining image of the underground is a camera obscura reflection of the dominant culture; its identity is an anti-identity. While this negation is an asset in rebelling, it quickly becomes a liability in building.” (Pg. 184) The anti-identity that zine publishers are creating dies with the negation of dominant culture, and nothing positive is left to build from. It is easier to label the problem rather than create a solution, easier to have a revolution rather than build a new society. While the dominant relies on the alternative for originality, the underground -in order to remain opposed to dominant culture- becomes restricted and shackled by its own rules. This is the catch 22 that Duncombe comes back to again and again; without dominant culture the underground alternative would not exist. And I believe, without the underground alternative the dominant would be uninspired and boring.
There is no mass revolution on the horizon, just a new way of saying the same thing over and over again. Given enough time the “revolution” only becomes cool and given even more time, dominant culture looses interest. A “new” alternative culture arises underground and the cycle continues. Zines (the physical product and the time-consuming act) are pre-political- the thought before the action. Duncombe goes as far as to call them a lie; “Zines and the underground culture from which they come are a lie that gives direction and sustenance, solidarity and a sense of accomplishment. Against a world dragging you back they keep you moving forward.” (Pg. 195) The cycle of alternative culture is where small but meaningful changes have the potential to be made reality. Notes from Underground concludes that zines are a free space in which survival happens; a space in which fun, creativity and self-expression can take place without feeling fake, or consumer-driven. Zines are a free space in which the networking of individuals makes political change and solidarity possible. show less

Fascinating history of zines and "alternative" culture as well as a thorough critique; the updated Conclusion, with its discussion of internet publishing and the difference between that and true DIY, is revelatory.