King Krule: Rock & Roll in Neoliberal Britain

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This song, by King Krule, caught my attention recently.

One of the interesting things here for me is the way in which the song and the video use the figure of the ‘juvenile delinquent’ in (slightly different) ways, which resist and contest this stereotype and the associations that go with it.

The song creates a different kind of space in which to consider urban, working-class youth — different vectors for identity and ‘culture’. Rather than being the product of an ‘underclass’ characterised by ‘dysfunctional families’ and a ‘culture of hopelessness and failure’ (as commonly represented by mainstream political discourse), here King Krule (significantly, a play on King Creole) is able to question these politicised assumptions.

In part, this is through a deliberately stylised performance that connects itself with a long, rich, hybrid working-class tradition of blues, rock & roll, punk (and other more contemporary music – dub step, &c – in other songs, as well as jazz, ). In fact, rock & roll is not only a ‘working-class’ tradition, but a tradition that is founded on the transgression of racial and class based social and cultural demarcations, in the postwar US. That is to say, it is a tradition that itself resists certain forms of ‘classification’.*

This is not a ‘culture’ that can be pigeonholed, readily, then. It is one which (re)produces different sites and codes of belonging, of ‘attitude’, of authenticity (e.g. think about his voice). It is a tradition with particular, situated aesthetics and ideologies. It is one that is able to articulate certain truths on the basis of certain experiences: ‘same old bobbies same old beat’; likewise, ‘your dead end job, sucking away your life.’ There’s also a great line about Tesco’s sandwiches: the sheer bathos sums up so much about contemporary Britain.

More than simply ‘borrowing’ from this musical tradition, then, King Krule deliberately reactivates rock & roll’s political content — as a transgressive tradition. In doing so, he recalls it to its ‘first principles’, recuperating it from middle-class appropriation as a ‘specialised’ and restricted (i.e. pretentious) discourse, whilst also finding new ways to use it by combining different musical elements — e.g. electronic beats, &c. In doing so, he crosses certain classed, gendered and racialized musical distinctions or classifications; for popular music is a mapped and segregated (if also complex, hybrid, informally organised, unevenly policed and constantly shifting) terrain. It is also a terrain particularly susceptible to forms of deliberate ‘rewriting’ and ‘mis/use’.

One final note: the real power of the song probably comes from this. Unlike the music video of ‘Happy Muslims’ doing the rounds at the moment (see Richard Seymour’s discussion of this), this song does not attempt to contest oppressive forms of classification by simply inverting them, in an attempt to show them up as fabrications. Neither is it a sloppy mess of affirmative sentimentality. Rather, I would suggest that it works by seizing hold of our imaginary relation to the real conditions and lived experience of the contemporary working-class youth (through discourses of authenticity, &c), wresting the power of representation from its class enemies.

In short, worth a listen.

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* Cf. Imogen Tyler’s Revolting Subjects: Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain (Zed books, 2013).

Back to the Future

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Neil Montier, ‘The Belt’ (2009-11).

Nicolas Moulin, ‘Blanklümdermilq’ (2009).

“The best art comes from the shit.” (Moulin)

Brutalist architecture has become quite abstract – forms without function, when they used to be functional forms. (Moulin, paraphrase from memory)

The ‘contemporary’ was a postmodernist concept. Now, when we think about the present, we must also think about the present in relation to the past and the future. (Moulin, paraphrase from memory)

See also: Owen Hatherley’s interesting review of Moulin’s Site Gallery exhibition.

See also: Rowan Moore’s interesting discussion of the Park Hill estate renovation.

Following from Moulin’s description of brutalist architecture in the present as ironic ‘forms without function’, along with Hatherley’s critique of ‘pseudomodernism’ in A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, we might note of the Park Hill renovation that it is literally a kitsch appropriation of the forms of brutalism evacuated of its radical content. That is, it is the architectural shell evacuated of its working-class inhabitants — the vitality of modernism recycled (gentrified) for middle-class consumption.*

CW — with thanks to Brian Baker.
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* Cf. Clement Greenberg, ‘The Avant-Garde and Kitsch’ (1939) in Art and Culture (1961): as much as I would distance myself from CG, his description of kitsch is (despite himself) prophetic here.

Our Line on Ukraine (April 2014)

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A response to: Sunny Hundal, Why Ukraine is past the point of no return with Russia, and we have to get involved (April 15, 2014), Liberal Conspiracy (blog).
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Sunny, you’re well off the mark here.

Why should we start demanding our capitalist states mobilise troops to defend another capitalist nation state – one with an openly fascist government, that is a puppet of the Troika and the US? How would that benefit anyone?

Moreover, as even the UK media recognise, this is not a ‘straightforward’ situation of Russia using undercover troops to invade Ukraine. There is popular support for the autonomy of Eastern Ukraine. And part of this is about the crisis of authority of the Kiev government.

Is it the role of the UK Left to call for the repression of dissent in Ukraine and the shoring up – by force – of a capitalist government that includes fascists? No. Clearly it is not. Could this be successful, anyway? No, probably not.

What should the left-wing line be, then? From here in the UK it is hard to really grasp the complex play of forces in the Ukraine. But, we do understand – to some degree – the UK state’s role in global, imperialist capitalism. And we should fight our own battles first – that is, chiefly, our struggle against the neoliberal austerity project. So:

* No to Troika restructuring of the Ukraine.
* No to the UK/EU supporting an openly fascist government.
* No to the UK supporting military intervention in Ukraine.

That is our line.

Inauthenticity and Desire: Cribbing from UKip

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A Response to: The Fabian Society, ‘Being Human: Is Greater Authenticity in Politics Possible?’
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To answer the title question – ‘Is greater authenticity in politics possible?’ – it is first necessary to interrogate the question itself: what does ‘authenticity’ mean here? Why is its possiblity in doubt?

Cutting to the chase, the real story here is about the decline, over the last 40 years, of the organised labour movement; of labour having a central role within the Labour Party; and of participation by ordinary people in institutional politics (e.g. party memberships down, voting down, &c.) Add to that the decline in working-class people’s standards of living over the last few decades – increasing wealth inequalities, declining wages, high inflation, increasing indebtedness – and you can see why many ordinary people feel antipathetic towards politicians. For, there is a real sense that neither New Labour nor the ConDems have their interests at heart.

What does ‘inauthenticity’ mean in this context, then? First, it means less working-class people participating in politics; second, it means less representation of working-class issues in politics. Consequently, it also means that the electioneering attempts of political parties to ‘appeal to voters’ come across as cynical and patronising attempts by political elites to wink and wave across the gaping disconnect between them and the electorate.

Note: this void is not simply a formal or technical problem, to be solved by ‘changed behaviour’. Rather, this disjunction between the electorate and the elected is highly charged with the politics of class, gender and ethnicity.

If we want ‘authenticity’ in politics we need parties that are really ‘of the people’. Nigel Farage and Ukip’s success is partly based on this desire. But, ultimately, Farage represents only a flimsy and demeaning impersonation of ‘ordinary people’, no more substantial than ‘Vicky Pollard’ or ‘Lauren Cooper.’ He is sure to come unstuck – if not through some gaffe then through the crucial fact that Ukip does not represent the real interests of working-class people.

But, does Miliband’s Labour Party?

The question of ‘inauthenticity’ and of ‘appealing to voters’ is a cynical and blinkered way of approach the real question, at stake here. This question is: how do we locate and cultivate the political agency to the working-class?

The question that necessarily follows from this, however, is exactly the one that Labour organisers don’t want to pursue, as they shuffle towards the next election. That is, ‘is the Labour Party still a means through which the working-class are able to realise their political agency?’ And, given that the clear answer to this is no – ‘can the Labour Party become a means by which the working-class are able to realise their political agency?’

This is still to be decided. But, it won’t happen whilst we look wistfully at Farage’s clowning populism and clothe our envy in the political baby-talk of ‘inauthenticity’, phlegmatically tempered with ‘a firm commitment to door-knocking’.

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Jessica Asato, ‘Being human: Is greater authenticity in politics possible?’ (24 March, 2014) Fabian Society Essays, Fabian Society Website. <http://www.fabians.org.uk/being-human-is-greater-authenticity-in-politics-possible/>

Millbank, 10-11-2010

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Millbank, 10-11-2010

What was the meaning of Millbank? What is the meaning of Millbank? What will the meaning of Millbank be?

At the time I was working in a small group of dissenting postgraduate teaching assistants. We felt utterly isolated. The student movement under the NUS was floundering, pathetic, far too close to the bosses for comfort. Our fellow academics and students seemed like sleep-walkers, hypnotised. So we organised by conspiracy. Paranoia saturated everything, along with a certain hopelessness.

Then everything changed. We were overtaken. We became redundant, a relic of a past that, moments before, had seemed perpetual, monolithic, immovable. That very understanding was shattered – in the course of hours. The student uprising at Millbank – the coup, the rebellion – appeared as if from nowhere. We were euphoric: at last, a signal flare, a point of light in dark times.

Here is a beautiful image from that moment, taken by a friend.

Some may argue, of course, that Millbank represented a turning point to the extent that it damaged the credibility of the student movement and scared off many students. This theory is, frankly, bollocks. Millbank was a rebellion against the NUS’s failure to provide adequate leadership and against a political class who, to put it simply, did not even recognise us as political agents. It was right to rebel against these reactionaries. More, Millbank was an expression of popular feeling – not of ‘violent minorities’. Beyond anything, it was an expression of the irreverant, overflowing joy of youth; this was the real force behind the 2009-11 student movement.

CW