Screaming for Change: Articulating a Unifying Philosophy of Punk Rock

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Screaming for Change advances an understanding of punk rock by going beyond description of punk as a musical, political, social, and cultural genre of communication. Previous scholarship about punk rock has primarily dealt with those boundaries of genre. Previous scholars neglected to examine the ideology of punk across the decades and continents. That ideology, in a word, is deviance. Through Gramscian textual analysis, this book uncovers this ideology of deviance with some surprises along the way. Students and scholars of punk rock will value the book's attention to both well known and more esoteric punk artists. Punk is arguable the most studied "subculture" to ever launch itself onto the larger social agenda as a possible counterbalance to the mainstream cultural hegemony. During the late 1970s, punk scenes sprouted up in large numbers all over the globe, and it appears that deep feelings of discontent towards the inherent alienation present in the capitalist system were the motivational seed that facilitated their growth. Unconvinced that the historical accounts have been successful in adequately describing and proficiently capturing the essence of punk, this study examines the phenomenon in slightly different terms. This study proposes that punk should be understood as a way of seeing the world, as a way of reasoning, or, essentially, as a philosophy on its own terms.

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Contents

Previous Ponderances of Punk
25
Identifying the Unifying Philosophy
47
Punks Unifying Philosophy Uncovered
63
Copyright

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About the author (2012)

Lars J. Kristiansen is a communication Ph.D. candidate at the University of Missouri.

Joseph R. Blaney is associate professor of communication at Illinois State University, and co-authored The Rhetoric of Pope John Paul II.

Philip J. Chidester is assistant professor of communication at Illinois State University.

Brent Simonds is associate professor of communication at Illinois State University, and co-authored Communication as Critical Inquiry: Becoming Critical Producers and Consumers of Messages.

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