Communication is Power

At the end of her book The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson pens this thoughtful dedication to its subject, her partner, Harry Dodge: “Thank you for showing me what a nuptial might be — a never-ending conversation, an endless becoming.” This address is, of course, profoundly personal and has nothing to do with the ’90s hardcore subculture, but I cannot help but appropriate it for its spot-on articulation of the sense of “hardcore” that I see in issue number 22 of HeartattaCk — the women’s issue, part 1. As this issue shows, punks exist in infinite conversation with one another, themselves, and the “scene” as it is.

 Central to my consideration of the “neverending conversation” in which I see this issue taking part is the assumption that this dialogue constitutes a form of sharing knowledge — in other words, education. As such, we must accept the idea that everyday components of the vast and vague structure of “culture” are necessarily engaging in forms of teaching and learning. Education does not only happen in schools. It happens in films, news broadcasts and, yes, in HeartattaCk #22. Seeing this issue as a site for producing and disseminating knowledge means accepting that we learn what it means to be a woman, a person and even a self through our everyday (inter)actions and those cultural apparatuses that structure them.

That a piece of printed writing could constitute a conversation may seem a fraught claim, but take note: I do not mean people consciously, actively speaking with one another — not exactly, at least. This interpretation of “conversation” is more open. An apt summation of it is contained in one zine contributor’s description of what this issue of HeartattaCk seeks to embody: “a forum for the exchange of ideas.” (41) In my sense of things, this forum exists inasmuch as the contributions to this zine embody — implicitly or explicitly — a response to ideas within or without the punk subculture. If I wanted to be really bombastic and precious, I might declare the knowledge-sharing I see here a “dialogical pedagogy.”

But let’s instead call it this: sharing knowledge through conversation.

Conversational knowledge-sharing is just one window into the moving, contradictory being that was the ’90s hardcore scene (whose legacy still beats in the hearts of many punks today). Yet this view introduces a network of other significant concepts and practices that help to illustrate what knowledge is and does. Is knowledge something one possesses, or does it always involve conditions and concepts outside of oneself, placing one into relations with others? What is the value of personal knowledge, especially in relation to forms of so-called “official” knowledge? Does one gain knowledge in a passive process of being taught what to think, or is knowledge a practice of actively deciding what one believes and what conditions structure such practices? And perhaps dearest to punks, is knowledge settled or is it forever open to criticism and revision? These concepts all hold potentials, all have limits and all are, in some way, informed by, and in turn inform, this conversational knowledge-sharing.

My aim here is not to argue for what hardcore is or isn’t, but to transcribe the voices I hear in this issue of HeartattaCk and to let them define the conversational knowledge-sharing, and how they relate themselves to the four concepts around it. These four concepts and the sections I’ve built around them are entitled RESPONSIBILITY — regarding the sense of mutual responsibility upon which this conversational knowledge-sharing is built, INTIMACY — the highly personalized knowledge for which this “conversation” makes room, ACTIVITY — considering the active participation it invites, and, finally, INFINITY — a conclusion on the heterogeneous and self-critical nature of conversational knowledge-sharing. I hope that these concepts will both exemplify and work to define the importance of conversation as a pedagogy that is so prominent in HeartattaCk #22. To me, all of these concepts make up the “neverending conversation” and “endless becoming” of hardcore.

An essential facet of what makes this mode of knowledge-sharing “conversational” is a hyperconsciousness of its relationality — that is, an awareness about the fact that it is engaging in a conversation with others. The cover of this issue illustrates this awareness by including the photograph of a piece of graffiti with a call to revolution addressed in the second person. One of the great potentials of conversation in HeartattaCk #22 is that ideas are given because of a shared sense that a personal revolution, or a revolution only for oneself, is not enough. “Resistance looks like YOU,” spelled out in spray paint in the cover-image, epitomizes this. It is at once outspoken in its call for the recognition of relations with others and marked with a deep interest in the personal — it is YOU that is being spoken to, but a responsibility towards the more-than-you that is being taken up.

RESPONSIBILITY

One of the great potentials of the dialogical relations in which HeartattaCk #22’s contributors participate is a call to engender responsibility towards others within the hardcore subculture. In twocolumns near the issue’s start, there are impassioned calls to take ownership for the rise of violence and right-wing politics in the hardcore scene. Both Felix Havoc and Jonathan L. ask for outward rejection of violent attitudes (16, 18). Jonathan L. emphasizes the fact that tolerating them only encourages the toleration of outward violence itself: “Why do we turn our heads and pretend it’s OK when a band says bitch and faggot all the time yet when someone in the scene is accused of rape we jump on them without a thought?” (18) Here, there is an ardent insistence that we recognize the importance of conversation as the first step to keeping hardcore free of this violence. The demand, “SPEAK THE FUCK UP! Silence is acceptance” and the explicit sentiment that “the words we use . . . reflect who we are in some form or fashion” testify to hardcore’s dialogue-based knowledge-sharing’s connection with engendering a sense of responsibility among its constituents (18).

Conversation is not always so direct in its aims, however. Consider the inclusion of a letter from someone who regretfully admits to having committed rape — an act that led to his dismissal from the hardcore community. He questions the productivity of the community’s knee-jerk condemnation, asking rhetorically whether it actually reproduces the ignorance that hardcore is so quick to denounce and suggesting it may have had something to do with his commission of the atrocity in the first place.

“It’s no coincidence that community and communication have the same root,” he says, explicitly laying out his aim with this letter: “to provoke thought and discussion, and more importantly, communication.” (8)

While I question HeartattaCk’s choice to use a letter from a confessed rapist to open a women’s issue (or any issue, for that matter), its presence testifies to that vital element of the hardcore “conversation” that encourages mutual responsibility amongst its constituents.

INTIMACY

In HeartattaCk #22, conversation among contributors and readers works to build community relations that promote safety and solidarity and this comes primarily in the form of expressions on intimacy. What I seek to address here is perhaps not totally encapsulated in the concept of “intimacy,” but points towards this spirit of safety and solidarity, towards a space that may serve as an outlet for conversations not easily had, or feelings not easily housed.

Consider Riot Grrrl, one iteration of the subculture that several contributors to HeartattaCk #22praise for the freedom it gives them to be vulnerable, with one woman explicitly emphasizing its “personal side” (51). Another echoes this sentiment, naming Riot Grrrl “a space for women to be mighty, flawed, emotional” (25).

Addressing issues rarely hospitably considered in the dominant culture is not limited to Riot Grrrl, though. Vique M.’s column in this issue addresses a you, someone with whom she has been in a relationship and from whom she has recently split. Her column works at first to condemn this you for the lack of information communicated to her in the exodus, and then turns inward and acknowledges her own healing and moving-on (19). This moving-on points to part of the potential of what a “dialogue” limited to its existence on paper, to a certain, insurmountable one-wayed-ness, might be: a sense of self-healing, of self-transformation. Vique’s personal zine, Simba, another elemental piece of the ’90s hardcore scene, often works in a similar vein. The highly intimate writings contained within this hybrid hardcore/riot grrrl zine, cut-and-pasted amongst children’s illustrations and covering everything from domestic abuse to autoeroticism, point to a similar sense of self-healing gained through the “forum for the exchange of ideas” that the hardcore movement facilitates.

There is plenty of other evidence of the creation of this safe space in HeartattaCk #22. When asked to comment on the political aspect of hardcore, Jen from Submission Hold emphasizes the importance of transcending “clichés” of (anti-racist, -sexist, -violent, etc.) politics and putting them into personal context. This is how she describes the aims of her band’s music — the personalization of anti-establishment and anti-violence politics so that the music might have a greater impact (64). Jen’s focus on rendering the political personal is a viewpoint implicitly shared by a number of HeartattaCk #22contributors.

Indeed, this personalization of the political is essential to engendering this critical sense of mutual responsibility.

The proliferation of personal accounts of sexual violence at the hands of intimate partners held between the two covers attest to this. The two referenced contributions from the previous section are examples of connecting hardcore’s hospitality towards violent attitudes and the explicit violence in which the subculture engages. This finds echoes in hardcore women’s accounts of the protection of abusers within the subculture. One anonymous columnist, Girl X, describes the loss of community and identity she experienced after being assaulted by a friend in the scene, emphasizing how the silence of those around her reinforced this rejection. She concludes by lamenting the isolation she has suffered and expressing her hope to regain her “hardcore” community by connecting with “pen pals” in the scene (46). A column by Kate Cooties also acknowledges the need for the dialogical sharing of information to keep sexual violence out of hardcore: “this lack of willingness to even question these predators perpetuates the cycle.” (48) Not unlike those sentiments expressed by Felix Von Havoc or Jonathan L., the need to sustain dialogical relations — to “call out” violent attitudes — is critical to the proper upkeep of hardcore, and in ensuring it remains a safe, non-violent (and even revolutionary!) space.

The sentiment that “all personal writings are political and revolutionary in their own right,” as Martin puts it, is sustained by the dialogical sharing of knowledge. With this mode of education in mind, calls for women to masturbate — which contributors Carrie C. and Kandis, amongst others, make (43, 44) — become a revolutionary feminist cry for women to re-assert power over their bodies. Similarly, columnist Kadd S.’s sharing of the reasons behind his decision to have a vasectomy is an appeal for cis men to take responsibility for sexual contraception (18).  Contributors like Carrie C. and Alexia reflect on how they regard other women as part of a strident plea for women to examine their internalized misogyny (42, 51). These, among so many other examples, epitomize Simba’s resolve to “never [be] scared of discussing something ‘too personal’.” HeartattaCk #22suggests that ’90s hardcore generally held the same belief: that discussing the most intimate subjects might alter the ways people think and behave, as Simba claims.

ACTIVITY

The concepts through which I have been considering the “hardcore conversation” are inseparably — even unexaminably — bound up with one another. Parsing them into separate sub-sections makes them more accessible, but should never suggest that any one might be divorced from another. With this in mind, my aim in this section is to consider that element of the dialogical education in which ’90s hardcore participates through HeartattaCk #22that serves as a call to action. Conversation is an active pursuit that elicits response.

Part of this “call to action” works towards the promotion of community. There are almost too many examples of this in HeartattaCk #22to count. Calls for response litter everything from the columns to the interviews. Girl X’s desire for hardcore pen pals so she might re-integrate herself into the scene is echoed in a column by Ron C., who openly admits to having stolen from those dear to him upon a recent release from prison: “will the community give me another chance?” (18). He leaves his address, directly begging a reaction to his piece. Dozens upon dozens of elements of this zine similarly invite a response, underlining the fundamental underpinnings of culture rooted in the comfort and community gained through spirited interactions within the hardcore scene. Two ads in the classifieds seek pen pals to share in the simple joy of communicating, one written in second person and beginning with the very personal dedication, “dear friends” (28). Towards the end of her piece on the volunteer-run hardcore club ABC NO RIO, Jen Hate discusses a correspondence that she took up in response to a column by a man who displayed “no patience for a previous column written by a woman dissecting the alienation she feels in a male dominated scene.” She concludes by remarking how productive and healing the correspondence became, pronouncing, “there’s the unity. (61).

That element of sharing knowledge through conversation that encourages active response, then, might be thought of as fundamental to the comfort and community with which the hardcore subculture furnishes its constituents.

This ad suggests another exciting potential of hardcore’s engagement in dialogical pedagogy: an alternative to mainstream capitalism and the passive consumption it promotes. Countless advertisements make a point of demanding active participation in this alternative community. One ad for Pensive *Recording* Group emphasizes the fact that they do trades for their products, as so many others in HeartattaCk #22 do, before pointedly stating: “Kids, start a Distro Today!” and asking, “shouldn’t your name be here?” (57). Another ad for the band Saddest Day states that their intention is to “revive our questioning, communication . . . reaffirm ALL of us as potentially creative, rebellious individuals” (27). Mentions of volunteer-run spaces are also common in this alternative hardcore economy, including 924 Gilman St., a Bay Area venue that is entirely communally run and which puts an emphasis on active contribution for its sustenance. To converse is also part of hardcore’s demand for engaged activity more generally, recognizing that building an alternative to capitalism — a sort of “gift economy,” as Ian MacKaye once cleverly put it — involves actively doing things. And all of this is inseparable from the sense of community and shared responsibility it aims to engender.

Perhaps more exciting than this, though, is that HeartattaCk #22suggests there is no single “knower” amongst a multitude of “learners” in hardcore. This model of education is unfortunately all too familiar in the dominant culture, from the mass media “schooling” its viewers on how to see and move through the world to professors lecturing students in colleges. Instead, through HeartattaCk #22, hardcore appears composed entirely of individuals who occupy the hybrid role of teacher-learner, in a not totally dissimilar way to that in which participants in the “gift economy” of hardcore occupy the hybrid role of producer-consumer. An obvious area through which to examine this might be the “letters” section, wherein a number of readers take to constructively critiquing the zine. One, for example, calls out their music reviews for their implicitly racist disregard for hardcore bands from the Global South (10); another condemns their DIY-themed issue for having focused on which bands were “sellouts” rather than discussing how to form alternative communities “based on caring and compassion” (11). This letter ends by explicitly stating: “communication is good.”

Reading the democratization of educational practices into a letters-to-the-editor section may seem a little obvious (where else can you directly respond to and critique contributions?), but the active response this “hardcore dialogue” solicits is reflected throughout the zine.

One column makes use of interviews with six of author Michelle L.’s “girl friends” in order to advance a consideration of lesbian women’s engagement with the hardcore scene (46). The promise of dialogical knowledge-sharing in hardcore, then, might also be this: a challenge to traditional modes of authority over knowledge to make and share in knowledge that is (at least somewhat) democratized. As Robyn M. puts it quite explicitly: the regeneration of discussion (in this case, around women’s issues) in hardcore might act as a challenge to the way in which “communication has been used for the maintenance of power.” (41)

This factor holds a prominent bond to that final element of the “hardcore conversation” that I see as more promising than anything else: an embrace of diversity and an infinitely transformative, self-critical existence. My purpose throughout this piece has been to highlight the exciting and hopeful potentialities that the knowledge-sharing enacted in hardcore promotes. However, it is necessary here — before I inject this “conversation” with the final, glorious promise of its “infinite becoming” — to recognize some of the limits the “hardcore conversation” holds, as expressed in HeartattaCk #22.

ON THE POTENTIAL LIMITS OF SHARING KNOWLEDGE THROUGH CONVERSATION:

• It is worth remarking first and foremost that there is no absolute way of measuring the success of HeartattaCk #22’sconversational sharing of knowledge. This is part of why I wanted to consider its “potentials,” first and foremost. I can only make guesses at its successes and failures.

• We might consider the ways in which this mode of sharing knowledge lends itself to a certain self-obsession or something of a “closed loop” when it comes to the hardcore subculture. In its preoccupation with what the community should or shouldn’t be or do, contributors often forget that they are part of a wider culture, that they have identities that go beyond those they have in hardcore. An ad that states its product is “by Nate and Niki,” “for the Delaware clan,” an impassioned ridicule of columnist Daryl V.  on the part of columnist Felix von Havoc for some “hippie-like” viewpoints he espouses and a vehement apology by Mikey C. for an unspecified crime all testify to this. My experience reading HeartattaCk #22was frequently one of an outsider looking in — of being at a loss as to what was being addressed or who was being spoken to. This is not to say that folks within hardcore totally fail to recognize this issue, but it is worth questioning the potential for conversation to alienate as well as inform readers. How much talk might fall on unhearing ears, not unlike my own?

• It is also worth considering the potential dangers of the “democratization of knowledge” as it is worked towards here — that is, the platform that HeartattaCk #22provides for people to occupy that hybrid knower-learner role. At its worst, the decentralization of authority over knowledge-making might support the possibility to speak to issues by which you are not directly impacted. This is, once again, not to say that participants in the ’90s hardcore subculture were totally unaware of this. Jen of Submission Hold, for instance, steers the conversation by cautioning against the fact that they are speaking about racism from a white perspective at one point (65). This is, in fact, what this issue does in several instances, in my view: this “women’s issue” reserves, for the most part, women’s voices to the final pages while it favours a number of men’s letters and columns that speak towards women’s issues. Jen Hate declares that more men than women replied to her support of another woman’s column on the isolation she experienced in a male-dominated scene. Felix von Havoc self-consciously addresses the preoccupation with masculinity of his column before turning his attention to “women’s issues,” never stopping to ask whether he ought to be taking up this space in a women’s issue.

• It is worth asking what forms of productivity get valued most highly in the hardcore “conversation.” Who can be productive? When is productivity valued? A number of women contributors testify to the ways in which their productivities go unnoticed and undervalued. Several lament the fact that their varying roles outsideof participating in bands go unrecognized (47, 49). The obsession with “conversation” that solicits active response in the way that the hardcore imagines it is the bypassing of certain voices — namely, here, those of women, who may “book shows,” distribute records and “bake vegan cookies” more often than they might participate in creating lyrics for a band or writing for a zine — those forms of productivity injected with the highest value in hardcore, according to them.

• Much of this points to the fact that the hardcore subculture fails to transcend the dominant culture and white men’s voices tend to be held up therein time and time again. Once again, though, hardcore individuals are aware of this: critiques of this very fact appear multiply throughout the zine (10, 18, 40-46).

• Can this form of dissent and critique be heard within a conversation? I hope so. And it is this capacity for self-criticism I want to address next.

INFINITY

The self-consciousness that hardcore seems to have about its inability to transcend the dominant culture points, in part, to what is perhaps the most promising element of HeartattaCk #22’s knowledge-sharing through conversation: a strong desire to exceed itself, to embody evermore than what it presently is. It stridently embraces its heterogeneity and passionately demands its own self-criticism.

         Most prominently perhaps, is the way in which all of HeartattaCk #22 exemplifies this as a whole piece of literature. Calls for the hardcore conversation to include new topics or extreme contrasts of opinion on the same subjects testify to the heterogeneity hardcore embraces. In the argument Felix Havoc takes up with fellow columnist Daryl V., he says “punk rock is a nice big movement with room for lots of opinions” (16). One letter makes the link to self-criticism plain:

One of the most prevalent criticisms of christianity is that it’s all about surrender; no one question their beliefs. This is absolutely true. The vast majority of christians don’t put real thought into their beliefs; they inherit them from their families or friends or just want a place to be accepted or wherever. But I ask, who is questioning hardcore? Who second guesses their positions before ranting about them in a ‘zine or at show that is only seen by others who already share the same opinion. Too often hardcore is more like a pep rally than a forum for debate and enlightenment.

Maybe it is just my misconception of it that leaves me disillusioned. The only thing that is apparent is that people are the same everywhere, whether they are lined up in pews or covered with patches and armed with guitars. Most people are too quick to accept whatever they are inclined to identify with. Most people are hypocritical. Most people are condemning, careless, and intolerant in their speech and action. I know by now it looks like I have digressed far from my original topic, but I think l know what I’m doing. I feel empty. I seek an understanding. And I am actively seeking. That means crossing the boundaries imposed by the scene and society and tapping the ideas or people who
are different than me, not just hearing another perspective but giving it a deep and since consideration.

Communication is power. It is no wonder that major corporation seek to control radio stations, print media, and network television. Those who participate in public dialogue shape public opinion. We do have a “public opinion’ in hardcore, no matter how complex, fluid, and heterogeneous it may appear at times. And, frighteningly enough, our public opinion is often far more superficially hospitable to women’s experiences than our public deeds. Men shape this public opinion as they enjoy substantial control over communications within punk and hardcore. They run the most record labels, play in the cool bands, publish the big ‘zines, do most of the shows, and so forth. Women must become part of the conversation not only by becoming active with their own record label , bands, ‘zines, and shows, but also by challenging the criteria through which we determine who get a voice and who does not. Thus, we might begin to challenge they ways in which communication ha been used for the maintenance of power.

This letter emphasizes the propensity for the “hardcore conversation” to engender self-criticism towards “debate and enlightenment.” The ability to question your own opinions is here part of that to which hardcore’s conversational mode of knowledge-sharing aspires. Though hardcore appears obsessive over policing its own parameters, Red Monkey’s Jen shares this hope for the value of growing the hardcore community rather than working to set its borders (24). This is what Vique M. epitomizes in describing her zine as “always searching, always questioning and always punk.” Columnist Scott S. ponders as to whether the meaning of life might be to simply question it. Here, the hardcore conversation works to embrace its heterogeneous nature and, in so doing, to constantly re-work what it means to contribute to it. This is the “endless becoming” that Maggie N.’s dedication summed up — the hardcore conversation is continuous, always looking to exceed its own borders. Resistance looks like YOU. YOU could be anyone. YOU are always becoming. YOU decide what this resistance means.

By K. G.