Resisting Stasis: The Politics of Motion in Underground British Dance Music (2012)

Undergraduate: Austin Cooper

Faculty Advisor: David Pier
Department: Comparative Literature

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Simon Reynolds first proposed the idea of a “UK Hardcore Continuum” in the 1990s to refer to the ever-mutating sounds of urban Britain’s dance clubs. Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic, also a product of the ‘90s, illustrates that Reynolds’ “Continuum” is but a contemporary section of an older, wider cultural web woven by centuries of economic and cultural exchange between the Americas, Europe, and Africa. At no time were postmodern theories of fluidity, mutation, and hybridity more needed than in 2011, by which point Dubstep’s rigidifying commercialization had sent DJs and dancers alike in search of fresh sonic material. Martin Clark illustrates that, on the one hand, the various and diverse ways in which the scene had splintered were the cause of much anxiety, on the other, “the links, interaction, and free-flowing ideas between different waters of this archipelago of creativity” represented a uniquely powerful moment. Clark’s prose bears a striking resemblance to the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, whose theorization of the rhizome provides a node at which the discourses of musical aesthetics, philosophy, and politics may connect. This presentation explores the ways in which the UK Hardcore Continuum’s perpetual shredding and shedding of genre constitutes an act of subcultural politics predicated on the assertion of a new musical epistemology.