L.A.'s "White Minority": Punk and the Contradictions of Self-Marginalization

Abstract

Part of popular music's allure is that it offers fans tools for identity construction. Lawrence Grossberg argues that musical choices open sites for people to negotiate their historical, social, and emotional relations to the world; the way fans define and understand themselves--what they believe and value--is intertwined with the varying codes and desires claimed by a taste culture associated with a specific genre (Grossberg, "Another," 31). An example of claiming social and cultural difference through music occurs in Dissonant Identities, Barry Shank's study of the Austin music scene. In explaining her impetus for joining the punk subculture, a fan states, "[I]t really had something to do with just wanting to do something different. With in a way being an outcast but then being accepted. . . . And you were sort of bound together because the other people hated you. I think that [sic] might be part of the attraction, too, is being in a minority. Being in a self-imposed minority" (122). This tactic of self-marginalization to articulate a politics of dissent is central to the Los Angeles punk scene from (roughly) 1977 to 1983. 1 To resist meta-narratives they found static and repressive, in order to form an [End Page 30] independent sense of self, a small fringe group of youth pursued a life based on that inner-city underclass denied access to the American dream, an identity I will call the "sub-urban."

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