La fenomenología y el acceso a lo originario

Connected not only by their embrace of certain avant-garde devices and intellectual resources in their literature, Kathy Acker and Riot Grrrl are also drawn together by their mutual expression of punk feminism. Punk feminism is a subcultural phenomenon whereby punk aesthetics, practices, and punk ethos merge with feminist ideals, and punk is mobilised to serve the feminist

project (and vice versa) to liberate women from gender oppression, both in the punk scene and beyond. As an ideology, punk feminism combines punk’s activist impulse and critique of late capitalism and consumer culture, with a critique of patriarchal culture, and grew out of a feminist pessimism for the 1960s ‘free love’ movement that coincided with the burgeoning second wave women’s movement. Matthew Worley usefully summarises this origin story when he writes:

As the limits of the 1960s ‘social revolution’ became clear, and as misogynist tendencies revealed themselves beneath the banner of ‘free love’, so feminists began to dissect the gender politics of both the counterculture and wider society. (176)

First emerging in the UK (the birthplace of punk) in the late 1970s, bands like The Raincoats and Poison Girls approached punk from a feminist perspective, responding to the male-dominated music industry and the use of misogyny as provocative fodder for punk culture. As Worley crucially points out though, “the term ‘feminist’ was not necessarily embraced by those whose actions warranted its use”, and therefore the notion of a cohesive punk-feminist movement would be an inaccurate characterisation of these early expressions of punk feminism – that would come later in the 1990s with the emergence of Riot Grrrl in the US (178).

The confluence between punk and feminism was also realised artistically, which is perhaps unsurprising given punk’s deep aesthetic concerns. In Dick Hebdige’s pioneering study on the symbolic resonance of punk style, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979), Hebdige began the

important work of foregrounding punk as an artistic movement, which later studies have built upon in an attempt to define punk’s distinctive aesthetic.

Jesse Prinz, for example, argues that punk has three core aesthetic ideals that

coalesce to form a distinctly punk aesthetic –“irreverence, nihilism, and amateurism” – and that this formula “can be applied to persons as well to works of art” (590). I agree with Hebdige’s and Prinz’s assertion that punk should be contemplated as an artistic gesture as well as a political or social movement, and apply this to my understanding of punk feminism here. As an artistic gesture, punk feminism generally combines punk’s postmodern

aesthetic ideals (nihilism, amateurism, and irreverence) with twentieth century symbols of socially constructed femininity, often resulting in transgressive reconceptualisations of femininity and womanhood.

McCaffery explores the flourishes of punk feminism in its earlier 1970s forms, and situates Acker within this lineage of early female punk artists. He writes:

Reacting to and playing with societal expectations about the ‘proper’

nature of women artists and their work, punkers like Patti Smith, Acker, and Poly Styrene created a space where alternate, often

androgynous identities could be discovered and expressed and where women could openly explore passions (even ugly, violent, sexually perverse passions). [...] [W]hen [punk] women began to examine the sources of their separation from love and fulfilment by dramatizing violence, sexual oppression, and hidden desires, they were making an assertive, defiant break with restrictive cultural and aesthetic

assumptions. (McCaffery, 222)

McCaffery’s assessment of these early examples of women in punk highlights arguably the most significant contribution of punk women in a feminist context: their defiant response to oppressive femininity and undoing of

gender stereotypes that associate women with beauty, passivity, and chastity.

Though female punk musicians like Patti Smith and Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex had been expressing punk-feminist ideas since punk’s inception in the late 1970s, Riot Grrrl marked the first of what I consider to be a semi-cohesive punk-feminist movement. In Heywood’s encyclopedia of third wave feminism, The Women’s Movement Today, contributor Drake perhaps

inadvertently supports this understanding of Riot Grrrl, writing:

[F]ollowing in the footsteps of 1970s and 1980s women punk

revolutionaries such as Patti Smith, Deborah Harry of Blondie, Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex, Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, Kim Deal of the Pixies, and Exene Cervenka of X […] Riot Grrrls got loud together and proclaimed girl love. (226; emphasis added)

Drake’s description highlights how these early pockets of punk feminism, occurring by way of individual female punk acts in the first wave of punk, were brought together in the early 1990s by Riot Grrrl. Riot Grrrl aimed to cultivate a more defined punk-feminist scene and alternative feminist movement to the mainstream women’s movement. With this more coherent punk-feminist vision also came a distinct punk-feminist aesthetic. The Riot Grrrl aesthetic combines punk’s core aesthetic ideals (nihilism, irreverence, and amateurism) with symbols of socially constructed femininity, but with a particular emphasis on symbols of twentieth century girlhood and girl culture.

In more recent times, critics cite Riot Grrrl as an exemplar of punk feminism, looking to the movement as a means by which to cultivate a more secure definition of punk feminism. In her work on Riot Grrrl zines, Rebekah J. Buchanan suggests that punk feminism constitutes a sub-branch of

feminism that is specifically geared towards critiquing gender oppression in the punk scene. She contends that, “riot grrrl zine creators were using their work to argue that not only do women exist within punk, but that their

practices in punk should be normalised” (Buchanan, xxvii). Whilst I agree with Buchanan that part of Riot Grrrl’s punk-feminist critique centres on fighting against the misogynistic elements of their scene specifically, I think this definition is not fully representative of punk feminism’s critical scope. It suggests that punk feminism constitutes a relatively inward looking, scene-specific feminist critique, which is somewhat undermined by the feminist artists that I embrace in this thesis. For instance, Acker’s punk-feminist novels, which merge punk ideology and aesthetics with radical feminist ideas, are distinctly outward looking and non-community specific as they rarely focus on critiquing the punk scene specifically. Rather, Acker’s novels utilise punk aesthetics and philosophy to assist her feminist critique of modern American culture. Riot Grrrl flits between conducting intensely localised and community specific feminist critiques of the punk scene, with more comprehensive assessments of patriarchalism and misogyny in

dominant culture. Punk feminism, then, as a critique, is characterised by both of these functions: the utilisation of feminist ideas to assist a gendered critique of punk culture, as well as the utilisation of punk aesthetics to assist a feminist critique of mainstream culture.