On Wed, 16 Aug 2000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Not necessarily my rebuttal, but an interesting one, from Jeremy Gilbert and
> Ewan Pearson quoted without permission from "Discographies - Dance Music,
> Culture, and the Politics of Sound":
>
> "The only reason for staying underground is that in relation to dominant
> structures of power, you are weak. To celebrate that weakness rather than
> to try to overcome it is to concede social authority to those dominant
> discourses. It is, in fact, to _choose_ too remain in a subordinate
> position and to condemn others to a similar position."
I find this statement to be rather naive and reductionist in a number of
ways.
Firstly, what if you don't support the dominant structures of power and
the political stance you impose upon yourself by working together with
them? This has nothing to do with being weak or strong, and everything to
do with supporting and influencing change. By staying underground, you
are making a statement that you have no interest in supporting these
structures. This is done in hopes that reasonable people will recognize
this and be influenced by it (thus affecting change).
Secondly, it assumes that everyone is interested in power and that people
are only either in a subordinate or dominant position (depending on the
power they wield). While to a certain extent it is true that the desire
to affect change is a struggle for power, it is certainly not individual
power that is desired (this is often why those wanting to affect change
don't reveal their identity or make public apperances). It is a struggle
for power of reason. To open people's minds to something they might not
have thought about, not fully understood, or not cared about before. One
certainly does not gain individual power by supporting a cause greater
than themself, nor are they in a dominant (or subordinate) position by
making lifestyle decisions to help affect change (namely staying
underground and often poor because of it).
As for things said about not making a website and not telling anyone about
your music in order to keep it underground... that's just missing the
point entirely. Underground is about a state of mind, not crawling under
a rock. Anyone who uses the term underground in an elitist, exclusionary
way doesn't get it.
g
