Waker Cells and Subcultural Resistance

Abstract

A back alley hovel amidst glimmer of 1990s Seattle, Blaek Cat Cafe proelaimed a disjunction with spaee of Ameriea. Hidden amidst asphalt, painted blaek, and surrounded by junk, Cat was uninviting to most passers-by. Like gargoyles meant to scare off demons, Cat's facade seared away most everyone but punks, and declared space to be an autonomous zone; as if to say, All Ye Who Enter, cheek your hierarchical, law-bound, regulated, capitalist ideas of domination at door, for you are about to enter an underground. Here, in this underground, in this place lurking below dominant landscape, punks practiced and elaborated a defiant eulture, a life and polities steadfastly eritical of the System. The sentiment here is based largely on my extensive experienee at Blaek Cat Cafe, a eooperatively owned and run restaurant, whieh thrived for five years (1993—1998) in Seattle. It was primarily a place defined by anarehopunks—those punks who adhere to anarchist principles and ways of being—and it was a powerful site for solidarity and resistanee. Indeed, poteney and tenor of Black Cat Cafe starkly eontrasts with composition of many subcultural trends. Consider, if you will, punks of Cat in a context where youth subeultures are increasingly experienced through eapitalist and internet mediations. Corporate music, fashions, and entertainment are ready-made with an alternative sales pitch. Meanwhile, eleetronic media are subsuming more interpersonal time; friendships and subcultures often rely on email more than on group outings. The neighborhood hangout, a site for subeultural activity, is on wane, and internet ehat rooms are encroaching on its territory. The neatly bounded subeulture is more in doubt than ever before and eyberculture is increasingly central to many eultures. There ean be no doubt that subcultures are thriving through electronic media, but their characteristics are markedly divergent from those of classical youth subcultures. Subculture is practiced differently at a computer than when it is shared in a bed or a basement. Subcultural compromises, however, are not new to youth subeultures, whieh have often had to negotiate with dominant culture. Subcultural resistance in wealthy nations has frequently depended upon eapitalist institutions; subeultures can be, in this sense, parasites on eapitalist businesses. Things such as music venues, reeording industry, bars, restaurants, and universities have long been used by subcultures, and this dependence upon capitalism has often compromised subcultural resistance. When a subculture is bathed in alcohol at a club, centered on reverence for musieians, or forced to endure constant surveillance, its ability to resist and be autonomous is in jeopardy.