Going Underground: The Politics of Free Music around 1968
Going Underground situates the demand for “free music” as part of a broader contestation of the terms of cultural consumption in the radical milieu of the long 1960s. At stake in the mobilizations recounted in the reflections of Action Directe-member Jean-Marc Rouillan was not just access to popular...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Éditions de l'EHESS
2020-03-01
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| Series: | Transposition |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/transposition/4863 |
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| Summary: | Going Underground situates the demand for “free music” as part of a broader contestation of the terms of cultural consumption in the radical milieu of the long 1960s. At stake in the mobilizations recounted in the reflections of Action Directe-member Jean-Marc Rouillan was not just access to popular music, but the validity of the subversive meanings ascribed to cultural production under capitalism. Struggling with the system’s ability to co-opt challenges to its hegemony by putting them up for sale, activists insisted that it was they, and not promoters or other financially-interested middle men, who had the right to determine the conditions under which liberatory cultural expression such as rock‘n’roll would be consumed. The insistence that music be “free” embodied a characteristic demand of the radical moment around 1968: that culture actually matter. |
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| ISSN: | 2110-6134 |