Bodies: Punk, Love and Marxism

This thesis returns love to the purview of Marxism and punk, which had attempted to ban the interpersonal in respective critiques of abstractions. Love-as-sense—as it is figured by Marx— will be distinguished from the love-of-love-songs, and from commodity fetishism and alienation, which relate to this recuperated love qua perception or experience. As its musical output exhibited residue of free love’s failure, and cited sixties pop which characterized love as mutual ownership, American and British punk from 1976-80 will be analyzed for its interrogation of commodified love. An introductory chapter will define love as an aesthetic activity and organize theoretical and musical sources according to the prominence of the body. The second chapter considers fetishisms and the coerced body-as-commodity. The third chapter emphasizes gender, bodily inscribed alienation, and disruptions of punk’s material-immaterial cohesion. A concluding chapter employs Marxist theories of rhythms to posit atypical punk music as a spatiotemporal habitat conducive to love-as-sense.

Name thesis:degree_name

MA

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Theory and Criticism

Grantor dc:publisher

The University of Western Ontario

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Grant, Kathryn

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Christopher Keep

• Punk
• Marxism
• Love
• Bodies
• Needs
• Aesthetics

Language dc:language.iso

en_ca

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14721/33946

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uwo.scholaris.ca:20.500.14721/33946