Defiance labour and reflexive complicity: Illusio and gendered marginalisation in DIY punk scenes

Abstract

Since punk emerged in the 1970s as a music genre and subculture it has gained significant academic attention. Punk as a concept now alludes to specific places or scenes, and has been established as a general anti-establishment attitude, as well as an anti-consumerist disposition, with a need to do-it-yourself (DIY). Drawing upon ethnographic and interview data from the east coast of Australia, this article analyses struggles that occur within punk spaces where women and queer identifying punks negotiate historically established male dominance. Punk scenes have the general illusio of being resistant to dominant norms and practices, which is attractive to individuals who feel like outsiders. Yet through symbolic violence, systematic oppression can be perpetrated against those who do not invoke idealised forms of masculinity or femininity. Using the affective transference of gendered norms in punk spaces, we find struggles that are often homogenised in punk research which attends critically to subcultural themes of collectivism and resistance. By unpacking these themes, this article puts forth the concepts of reflexive complicity – where men and women reproduce inequality in punk spaces – and defiance labour – moments of overt challenge to symbolic violence within punk spaces and scenes.

“I don’t think anybody really knows”: Constructing reflexive ignorance in climate change adaptation

“…These nuances between self-reflexivity and broader social processes can be explained with the notion of hermeneutic reflexivity, a recognition that reflexivity involves the embodied interpretation of experiences in time and place and stresses how subjectivity informs the orientation of reflexivity (Lash, 1994). For example, Sharp and Threadgold (2019) have shown how gendered privilege can be ignored by men seeking to assert their feminist credentials-a practice they call "reflexive complicity." In this way, it can be argued that reflexivity needs to be understood in the shared practices of agents involved in knowledge (or ignorance) production (Adkins, 2003).…”

Organizations, Learning, and Sustainability: A Cross-Disciplinary Review and Research Agenda

“…However, recent literature suggests that there is no guarantee that even reflexive learning will lead to positive outcomes for sustainability. Sharp and Threadgold (2020) introduced the notion of 'reflexive complicity' in their study on gender marginalization, stating that: reflexive complicity is performed when one knows about unequal social relations or forms of marginalization, can observe them and claim to want things to change, but there are no significant changes in practice by the individual and little effort to engage in situational interventions that make a difference (pp. 619-620).…”

Punk is just a state of mind: Exploring what punk means to older punk women

“…Seeing their engagement in craft activities through a punk DIY lens allowed participants such as Lindsey and Sam to offer some resistance to such stereotypes. It might be argued then that instead of merely engaging in reflexive complicity (through a more private expression of punk DIY coded as traditionally feminine) they were actually engaging in defiant labour (Sharp & Threadgold, 2020).…”

“…Indeed Liptrot (2014) found that the punk women in her study were often attracted to punk initially because they saw it as transgressing conventional boundaries of femininity. Research of course has questioned, however, the degree to which such transgression can actually take place within a masculine space such as punk (Leblanc, 2002; Sharp & Threadgold, 2020).…”

“…There has been an increased focus on females within subcultural literature more broadly since the critique made above, including research on girls/women in Goth (Brill, 2007), metal (Hill, 2016), hip-hop (Vasan, 2011), rave (Pini, 2001) and skateboarding (Pomerantz et al, 2004). There is also now a growing body of research focusing solely on punk women (some of which is highlighted below) or considering gender in punk more broadly (Hanson, 2017; Liptrot, 2014; Sharp & Threadgold, 2020).…”