Jews, punk and the Holocaust: From the Velvet Underground to the Ramones: The Jewish-American story

Punk is usually thought of as a radical reaction to local circumstances. This article argues that, while this may be the case, punk’s celebration of nihilism should also be understood as an expression of the acknowledgement of the cultural trauma that was, in the late 1970s, becoming known as the Ho...

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Main Author: Stratton, Jon
Format: Journal Article
Published: Cambridge University Press 2005
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/17488
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author Stratton, Jon
author_facet Stratton, Jon
author_sort Stratton, Jon
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Punk is usually thought of as a radical reaction to local circumstances. This article argues that, while this may be the case, punk’s celebration of nihilism should also be understood as an expression of the acknowledgement of the cultural trauma that was, in the late 1970s, becoming known as the Holocaust. This article identifies the disproportionate number of Jews who helped in the development of the American punk phenomenon through the late 1960s and 1970s. However, the effects of the impact of the cultural trauma of the Holocaust were not confined to Jews. The shock that apparently civilised Europeans could engage in genocidal acts against groups of people wholly or partially thought of by most Europeans as European undermined the certainties of post-Enlightenment modernity and contributed fundamentally to the sense of unsettlement of morals and ethics which characterises the experience of postmodernity. Punk marks a critical cultural moment in that transformation. In this article the focus is on punk in the United States.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-174882017-09-13T15:43:29Z Jews, punk and the Holocaust: From the Velvet Underground to the Ramones: The Jewish-American story Stratton, Jon Punk is usually thought of as a radical reaction to local circumstances. This article argues that, while this may be the case, punk’s celebration of nihilism should also be understood as an expression of the acknowledgement of the cultural trauma that was, in the late 1970s, becoming known as the Holocaust. This article identifies the disproportionate number of Jews who helped in the development of the American punk phenomenon through the late 1960s and 1970s. However, the effects of the impact of the cultural trauma of the Holocaust were not confined to Jews. The shock that apparently civilised Europeans could engage in genocidal acts against groups of people wholly or partially thought of by most Europeans as European undermined the certainties of post-Enlightenment modernity and contributed fundamentally to the sense of unsettlement of morals and ethics which characterises the experience of postmodernity. Punk marks a critical cultural moment in that transformation. In this article the focus is on punk in the United States. 2005 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/17488 10.1017/S0261143004000315 Cambridge University Press fulltext
spellingShingle Stratton, Jon
Jews, punk and the Holocaust: From the Velvet Underground to the Ramones: The Jewish-American story
title Jews, punk and the Holocaust: From the Velvet Underground to the Ramones: The Jewish-American story
title_full Jews, punk and the Holocaust: From the Velvet Underground to the Ramones: The Jewish-American story
title_fullStr Jews, punk and the Holocaust: From the Velvet Underground to the Ramones: The Jewish-American story
title_full_unstemmed Jews, punk and the Holocaust: From the Velvet Underground to the Ramones: The Jewish-American story
title_short Jews, punk and the Holocaust: From the Velvet Underground to the Ramones: The Jewish-American story
title_sort jews, punk and the holocaust: from the velvet underground to the ramones: the jewish-american story
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/17488