Post-Punk Politics and British Popular Modernism: The Reception of French Theory Within A “Renegade Tradition” of Music Journalism

Abstract

This article examines the reception of French Theory within a tradition of British music journalism consolidated around key writers at the weekly music magazine New Musical Express (NME) during the post-punk period (1978–1984). The fact that complex theory had a rich reception in popular magazines aimed at wide-reaching readerships is interesting in itself for its exemplification of a kind of popular modernism. While giving an introduction to this scene of cultural translation, our article examines the specific conceptions of French Theory in this context. For Simon Reynolds, the appeal of French Theory is for its powers of intellectual inebriation. Rather than turning to theory to “explain” music, the journalists and writers I examine are interested in theory for its capacity to enhance the mythology and convey the same unruly energies of the music. They use French Theory in their writing to try and achieve the same sorts of affective intensities and disorientation normally associated with the music itself. In this sense, French Theory is also used by Reynolds as a means of critiquing British Cultural Studies where there is a tendency to read popular culture in search of points of subversion and meaning. Reynolds and other music writers, in contrast, find French Theory seductive for its capacity to reject any quest for “meaning” and “subversion”, preferring instead the disruptive implications of theorists such as Jacques Derrida, Georges Bataille and Roland Barthes. Our article interrogates the conflicting conceptions of the political and anti-political which arise from this engagement with French Theory, while also considering the implications for cultural translation.