What does a hemispheric Americas look like when done through the lens of punk music, visuals and literature? That is the core premise of this book, presented through a collage of analytical, aesthetic and experiential takes on punk across the continent.
This book challenges the dominant vision of punk – particularly its white masculine protagonists and deep Anglocentrism – by analysing punk as a critical lens into the disputed territories of 'America', a term that hides the heterogeneous struggles, global histories, hopes and despairs of late twentieth and early twenty-first century experience. Compiling academic essays and punk paraphernalia (interviews, zines, poetry and visual segments) into a single volume, the book seeks to explore punk life through its multiple registers, through vivid musical dialogues, excessive visual displays and underground literary expression.
The kaleidoscopic accounts include everything from sustained academic inquiry and photo portraits to anarchist manifestos and interview excerpts with notable punk figures. The result is a radically heterogenous mixture that seeks to reposition punk and las Américas as intrinsically bound up in each other’s history: for better and for worse. Out of critical pasts, within an urgent present and toward many different possible futures.
This volume critically refashions punk to suggest it emerges from within the long-term historical experience of las Américas in all their plurality and is useful as a mode of critique towards the hegemonic dimensions of America in its imperial singularity. The book is rooted in a theory of 'radical heterogeneity' and thus represents a collage-like juxtaposition of punk perspectives from across the entire hemisphere and via divergent contributions: academic, experiential and aesthetic.
Readership for this collection will include both academic and general readers.
Primary readership will be academic. It will appeal to researchers, scholars, educators and students in the following fields: American studies, Latin American studies, media and communication, cultural studies, sociology, history, music, ethnomusicology, anthropology, art, literature.
General readership will be among those interested in the following areas - anarchism, music, subculture, literature, independent publishing, photography.
Russ Bestley is a professor of graphic design and subcultures at the London College of Communication, editor of the journal Punk & Post-Punk and co-editor of the Global Punk book series published by Intellect Books and the Punk Scholars Network. His most recent publication, Turning Revolt into Style: The Process and Practice of Punk Graphic Design (Manchester University Press, 2025), charts the relationship between amateur cultural producers, design studios and printers during a period of significant technological change that impacted established labour relations across the design and print professions of the 1970s and early 1980s. His research archive can be accessed at https://www.hitsvilleuk.com.
Contact: London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, Elephant & Castle, London SE1 6SB, UK.
Mike Dines is programme leader for BA (Hons) Music at Middlesex University in London, United Kingdom. As a musician, writer, scholar and DIY punk publisher, Mike has written extensively in the field of subcultures and punk and is currently Chair of the Punk Scholars Network.
Contact: Middlesex University, The Burroughs, Hendon, London NW4 4BT, UK.
Paula Guerra is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the Universidade do Porto, and a researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the same university (IS-UP). She is also associate professor of the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Australia.
Contact: Via Panorâmica, s/n, Porto 4150-564, Portugal.
