PUNK! Las Americas Edition

Reviews / Votes

'The book moves beyond the analysis of a single scene, city or nation to consider the 'radical heterogeneity and simultaneous interconnectedness of the Americas through a series of critical punk lenses' (16). Contributors explore Spanish-speaking parts of the Americas, native Alaskans, the English-speaking Caribbean and Brazil. The geographical reach is vast and the cultural approaches to punk in these parts of the Americas display both commonalities and unique characteristics and struggles. [...] The chapters include a mix of traditional academic essays, interviews, a manifesto, an excerpt from a novel, photo essays, a blog reproduction and contributions that are more journalistic in form. The inclusion of different types of materials and diverse analytical approaches yields an edited collection with a rich texture. Moreover, the varied approaches to engaging and analysing punk provide a much more interesting opportunity for a reader to consider how punk exists as a blend of music, cultural practice, ethical framework and way of being in the world. [...] The diverse types of contributions to PUNK! Las Americas Edition make for an engaging intellectual experience that mirrors the myriad ways punks materialize a punk life.' -- Daniel Makagon, Punk & Post-Punk 'PUNK! Las Americas Edition expands the understanding of punk and serves a very important anti-colonial purpose in punk-related scholarship.' -- David Vila Dieguez, University of Texas at El Paso 'Showcasing the work and testimony of scholars, artists, and activists from Alaska to Patagonia, and many places in between, through essays, interviews, record reviews, poems, novel excerpts, photographs, zines, record and cassette covers, and manifestos, PUNK! Las Americas Edition invites us to think about punk otherwise. By critically engaging with punk as a musical genre and subculture and as an aesthetic and disposition with multiple interconnected manifestations across the hemisphere, this book demonstrates that punk has much to teach us about the Americas and that the Americas have much to teach us about punk.' -- Paulo Drinot, University College London 'This volume is a practice: it shows "contradiction" empirically and uses it abstractly, it distinguishes between "the visual" and "the sonic" and mixes them ch'ixi style as it does "the oral" and "the written" - but sorry: because heterogeneity is a main analytics, there is not "the" singular anything: sonic, visual, oral or written - and therefore, perhaps, neither of those fields should be separated ... but they are: ch'ixi style! On transgressing, this volume shows complexity and its "method" becomes tangible, as tangible as all the brilliant hiStories it tells and hints at. An academic book through and through, the transgressions this volume performs run the risk of becoming exemplary. An inspiring thrill to read and indeed to think through. Congratulations to its heterogenous editors!' -- Marisol de la Cadena, UC Davis