I'm less interested in these clearly theorised and theorisable approaches than in looking, as a starting point, at the very term itself. Critical ways of approaching it have largely revolved around the interface between technology and the body, a cyborgian criticism, or in terms of postmodern theories of the simulacrum, a spectacular criticism, or through postmodern constructions and explorations of cyberspace, and information networks. The cultural history of the (not only spotty adolescent) body has one clear contemporary manifestation in the recent science fiction literary practice which has become known as cyberpunk. It concludes with a view of punk’s “cultural legacy” in the disability arts movement.
The essay contains two main areas: an initial discussion of subculture and counterculture in terms of theory and of disability and a focus on the original British punk scene of the late 1970s and three major artists, varyingly disabled, from it: Ian Dury, Johnny Rotten, Ian Curtis. Here I concur with, and seek to develop, the observation by David Church that “disability has been one of the most foundational-and yet, one of the least explored-representational tropes of the punk milieu”. It aims to extend our understanding both of punk itself and of subcultural theory, adding to ideas around postsubculture by cripping it, that is, by identifying the sounds and styles and bodies of the disabled, who are the neglected already-present of punk, and whose presence disrupts subculture theory, even while such theory exists in large part to understand the disruptive potential of gesture, music, youth, fashion, attitude, and modes of walking and talking.
This essay is focused on (post)subculture and disability and specifically on punk rock.
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