hi list,
I am researching modified-car culture and I have come to a particular
junction in my thinking. I was hoping the list might be able to help me
by pointing me in the direction of any research on similar situations
or whatever.
My specific problem is that I have been dealing with what in Australia
we call 'hoons' (in the UK and NZ they are called 'boy racers' in the
US it is sometimes the more traditional 'hot rodder'). Basically
the 'hoon' is an iconic cultural figure: a loud and aggressive young
man, driving a loud and aggressive car in a loud and aggressive way
(often playing loud and aggressive music on a booming car stereo;).
Anyway, the problem is that I can see there is a shift across three
phases in the power relations from the 'normative' governance of the
system of automobility (ala Jeremy Packer's essay on road safety)
through general anxieties about the 'at risk' group labelled 'young
drivers' to the moral panics that have recently emerged in Australia
around this figure of the hoon.
What I am interested in finding out is if anyone on the list had come
across any work that attempts to reconcile a Foucaultian
governmentality methodology with traditional moral panic theory. My
problem is in the way power relations operate differently in the two
situations. I have been thinking Agamben's work on the state of
exception may be a useful way to think about how moral panics are the
expression of a kind of localised state of exception within the
institutionalised cultural formations of a given society. By 'localised
state of exception' I mean organised around a particular social problem
and discursively constructed around a necessarily problematic figure,
such as the hoon. This would be thinking about folk devils as some way
equivalent to Agamben's conception of homo sacer, and, well, generally
offering a specific (but I think productive) misreading of Agamben.
These things can be worked around. However it becomes very problematic
when Agamben and Foucault's respective approaches are thought alongside
the neo-Gramscian approaches of the British cultural studies tradition,
specifically the work of Hall and others on the 'Exceptional State' and
the 'Law and Order Society'.
Hmmm, I may just leave it as an unresolved, but productive tension in
my thesis. But if someone has come across some work or has some
thoughts on how to think through this tension I would love to discuss
it with them.
ciao,
glen.
--
PhD Candidate
Centre for Cultural Research
University of Western Sydney
Read my rants: http://glenfuller.blogspot.com/
I am researching modified-car culture and I have come to a particular
junction in my thinking. I was hoping the list might be able to help me
by pointing me in the direction of any research on similar situations
or whatever.
My specific problem is that I have been dealing with what in Australia
we call 'hoons' (in the UK and NZ they are called 'boy racers' in the
US it is sometimes the more traditional 'hot rodder'). Basically
the 'hoon' is an iconic cultural figure: a loud and aggressive young
man, driving a loud and aggressive car in a loud and aggressive way
(often playing loud and aggressive music on a booming car stereo;).
Anyway, the problem is that I can see there is a shift across three
phases in the power relations from the 'normative' governance of the
system of automobility (ala Jeremy Packer's essay on road safety)
through general anxieties about the 'at risk' group labelled 'young
drivers' to the moral panics that have recently emerged in Australia
around this figure of the hoon.
What I am interested in finding out is if anyone on the list had come
across any work that attempts to reconcile a Foucaultian
governmentality methodology with traditional moral panic theory. My
problem is in the way power relations operate differently in the two
situations. I have been thinking Agamben's work on the state of
exception may be a useful way to think about how moral panics are the
expression of a kind of localised state of exception within the
institutionalised cultural formations of a given society. By 'localised
state of exception' I mean organised around a particular social problem
and discursively constructed around a necessarily problematic figure,
such as the hoon. This would be thinking about folk devils as some way
equivalent to Agamben's conception of homo sacer, and, well, generally
offering a specific (but I think productive) misreading of Agamben.
These things can be worked around. However it becomes very problematic
when Agamben and Foucault's respective approaches are thought alongside
the neo-Gramscian approaches of the British cultural studies tradition,
specifically the work of Hall and others on the 'Exceptional State' and
the 'Law and Order Society'.
Hmmm, I may just leave it as an unresolved, but productive tension in
my thesis. But if someone has come across some work or has some
thoughts on how to think through this tension I would love to discuss
it with them.
ciao,
glen.
--
PhD Candidate
Centre for Cultural Research
University of Western Sydney
Read my rants: http://glenfuller.blogspot.com/