Postwar youth subcultures may have harbored democratic potential invisible to political surveys

Evidence

After the radical liquidation of unorthodox and critical thought and behaviour that had taken place, the liquidated traditions were not yet once again `on offer’; one question that remained, therefore, was whether there might not be a potential for discontent and protest that was incapable of being assessed by investigating political awareness. The 1950s were, after all, the years of rock and roll and teddy boys, showing that, since the time of the research for Group Experiment, new phenomena had appeared. While it might not be possible to account for these using the categories of political activity and political knowledge, those involved with such phenomena might perhaps have given greater democracy an enthusiastic welcome and sensed it as a liberation. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2353

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: how Herbert Marcuse’s later ‘repressive tolerance’ and the Frankfurt critique missed the emancipatory meaning of 1950s rock and teddy-boy subcultures — what the Institute saw as apolitical noise was arguably the beginning of youth culture as proto-resistance.
• XREF: connects to: Youth revolts in style predate postwar consumer culture and carry racial politics; Popular culture and youth media destabilize entrenched class repression from within — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 1119; Youth subcultures are defined through bricolage, recombining cultural fragments across time — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2982 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Popular culture and youth media destabilize entrenched class repression from within #corroborates (0.85) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1119
• Youth revolts in style predate postwar consumer culture and carry racial politics #complicates (0.80)
• Political struggle generates historically emergent self-recognition of subjects #expands (0.75) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 234
• Youth subcultures are defined through bricolage, recombining cultural fragments across time #expands (0.70) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2982