"The first pair are used in an epochal sense, with postmodernity conveying the idea of a shift from, or transformation of, modernity, such that we have made, or are in the process of making, a move to a new historical period or form of society."
"This historical focus should be kept in mind throughout this chapter, for my aim is to examine what implications there might be for subcultures if we are, indeed, moving towards a postmodern society. I intend to explore this theme, as it relates to both fashion in general and subcultural style more specifically, through examining the assertions of other writers and commentators on this topic."
"The idea seemed to me was never to fit in . . . and if you never fitted in, then there was never going to be any competition. Malcolm McLaren on the Sex Pistols and Punk Rock: ‘Mavericks’, (BBC Radio One, Feb. 1995) Have no rules... I don’t have many friends, but the few I still have are worth keeping because of just that. Highly individualistic. Unable to fit cozily into systems."
"These provide the necessary conceptual clarification to enable us to assess empirically the extent to which a sample of contemporary subculturalists display a postmodern sensibility."
- Indicates a differentiation from the pre-existant culture.
"Whereas images once reflected and represented reality, or even produced an ideological mystification of reality (as in the Marxist sense), the image now serves to distract us from the fact that there is no reality to which it seems to refer."
- Showing that the mass social population have no way of interpreting these subcultures, as they are intially see nothing with which they are familiar, they have nothing that they can refer back to, other than it's differentiation from their own culture.
"Certainty and absolutism must be replaced by indeterminacy and difference. Baudrillard (1983b) theorizes how ‘information networks’ and media proliferation have brought about a transition from an ‘industrial order’ of mass production to a society premised on the reproduction of signs and images (ibid.: 100). Whereas images once reflected and represented reality, or even produced an ideological mystification of reality (as in the Marxist sense), the image now serves to distract us from the fact that there is no reality to which it seems to refer. Indeed, Baudrillard goes so far as to claim that free-floating signs reach a stage in which they refer only to each other: the image ‘bears no relation to any reality whatsoever"
- Focuses on how media outlets have the power to distort ideologies by choosing the most aesthetic and stylistic of "signs", to represent these subcultures.
"On the basis that such changes are occurring we can put forward two hypotheses. First, that group identifications (such as, I’m a punk; I’m a mod) would be problematized, and that subculturalists would not regard themselves in such specific terms. Second, that the fragmentation of both conventional and subcultural style has led to a de-differentiation (Lash 1990) of the subcultural– conventional divide, meaning that subculturalists would be unable to maintain this boundary through comparisons with conventional style."
- Showing the inevitable deconstruction of the subculture as it becomes analysed and intergratedinto mainstream culture.
by James
