Sober Living For The Revolution: Hardcore Punk, Straight Edge, and Radical Politics

Description

Straight Edge has persisted as a drug-free, hardcore punk subculture for 25 years. Its political legacy remains ambiguous and is often misrepresented as a Puritan conservatism. However, as this study shows, its history is more complex. Since its origins in 1980s, the scene has been linked to radical thought and music. Tracing this history, the book includes contributions from famed Straight-Edge rockers like Ian MacKaye (Fugazi), Mark Anderson (Dance of Days) and Andy Hurley (Fall Out Boy) and numerous other activists dedicated to a sober, liberated world.

Gabriel Kuhn is the author of Life Under the Jolly Roger: Reflections on Golden Age Piracy and Women Pirates and the Politics of the Jolly Roger.

An 'ecstatic sobriety' which combats the dreariness of one and the bleariness of the other--false pleasure and false discretion alike--is analogous to the anarchism that confronts both the false freedom offered by capitalism and the false community offered by communism. --CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective Kuhn's book can be credited as the first deeply international account of straight edge and perhaps the first to draw from the voices of women and queer folks as central (rather than ornamental) to the subject's history. --www.UppingTheAnti.org Perhaps the greatest reason I am still committed to [straight edge, also known as sXe] is an unfailing belief that sXe is more than music, that it can be a force of change. I believe in the power of sXe as a bridge to social change, as an opportunity to create a more just and sustainable world. --Ross Haenfler, professor of sociology, University of Mississippi, and author, Straight Edge: Clean-Living Youth, Hardcore Punk, And Social Change Less 'get pissed, destroy', more 'use your brain, change the world'. And it's for all ages, too. --Classic Rock Magazine