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ToolsMcKay, George (2021) Rethinking the Cultural Politics of Punk:Antinuclear and Antiwar (Post-)Punk Popular Music in 1980s Britain. In: The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 481-501. ISBN 9780190859565
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
This chapter is a reconsideration of the contribution punk rock made to antinuclear and antiwar expression and campaigning in the 1980s in Britain. Much has been written about the avant-garde, underground, independent, DIY, and grass-roots (counter)cultural politics of punk and post-punk, but the argument here is that such scholarship has often been at the expense of considering the music’s hit and even chart-topping singles. The chapter has three aims: first, to trace the relations between punk and cultures of war and peace; second, to reframe punk’s protest within a mainstream pop music context via analysis of its antiwar hit singles in two key years, 1980 and 1984; third, more broadly, to further our understanding of (musical) cultures of peace. Punk was a pop phenomenon, but so was political punk: the vast majority of the many pop hit songs and headline acts with antiwar and antinuclear messages in the military dread years of the early 1980s were a lot, or a bit, punky. This chapter argues that a wider and at the time significantly higher-profile social resonance of punk has been overlooked in the subsequent critical narratives. In doing so it seeks to revise punk history, and retheorize punk’s social contribution as a remarkable music of truly popular protest.
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | punk,post-punk,popular music,anti-nuclear,anti-war,protest song,hit single,cnd,antiwar,antinuclear,nuclear disarmament,pop,punk,music,cultural studies,arts and humanities(all),sdg 16 - peace, justice and strong institutions,3* ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1200/1210 |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Art, Media and American Studies (former - to 2024) |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Film, Television and Media Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Comics Studies Research Group |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 14 May 2021 23:41 |
| Last Modified: | 14 Jul 2025 08:30 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/80015 |
| DOI: | 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190859565.013.40 |
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