Malcolm Klein is probably one of the leading experts on twentieth century street gangs, their activities and social formations. His first books on the subject were published in the early 1970s, when modern street gangs were in their nascent stages (The Crips, for example, now the largest of the Los Angeles street gangs, and prone to internal fracture and conflict, was only a few years old at that time, and still operating with the Black Panthers as their model). Klein currently holds emeritus status at the University of Southern California with their department of sociology, and he is also a popular media expert on gangs.
Klein analyzes the gangs as social units and largely discerns them from other units which may look similar (like motorcycle clubs, for example) according to a number of different social factors. Many of which are personal factors wherein the gang is an appropriate social forum in which to express them, such as the need for respect, recognition, and achievement, while other factors are more broadly social, such as poverty. Klein is, however, sure to note that no single factor, including poverty, is sufficient in describing what directs young people to a gang life.
Klein also discusses the criminal activities of gangs, noting that while police exaggerate the crimes of gangs and reduce them to purely fighting units, often the gang members exaggerate their own criminal antics as well. Furthermore, according to Klein, while gang members gain respect for their demonstrated willingness to do violence or transgress against norms, gang leaders are not necessarily the most violent members, according to Klein, and may not be violent at all.
Much of Klein's analysis comes from speaking through his experiences in conducting past research and in working directly with law enforcement and with gang members in affected areas.The determination of a city as a 'gang city' circa 1995 had a politics surrounding it with both benefits and detriments to the urban centre that gained such a distinction so he acknowledges that some of his data might be questionable. This book was published during a peak period of gang popularity and hysteria, when music by Death Row Records hip-hop artists, and films like Menace II Society and Boyz In Da Hoodwere pushing very specific symbols and images of LA gang culture into the mainstream and it serves as a strong academic voice to counter the effects of such cultural forms.
Louis Adamic, the author of Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in America, was not an academically trained historian. He was rather one of the working class intellectuals that Antonio Gramsci theorized in his essay The Formation of the Intellectuals published in the Selections from the Prison Notebooks. That is, an individual who emerged from his or her specific form of class consciousness to act as philosopher from their social situation. Adamic was, as a young man, an unemployed and unskilled worker, a member of the radical Industrial Workers of the World, the international radical labour union, to become a speaker and historian of that movement. He lacked formal education but possessed a will to compile the history of a movement that, in his time, no academic historian was likely to produce. That is, the history of fighting labour in the United States from the mid-19th century through to the 1920s.
Adamic’s history begins with the Molly Maguires, or “Mollies”, a group of ruthlessly aggressive Irish immigrant miners who would kill any mining bosses that created unfavourable conditions. This history then progresses into early wildcat strikes which led to the organization of labour unions. Adamic has a fondness for the more radical unions (such as his own IWW) and opposes them to the more bureaucratic and conservative unions like the American Federation of Labor (AFL) formed under the boss-like cigarmaker Samuel L. Gompers. The heroes of Dynamite are probably Bill Haywood, the brawling Miners Union leader, and Eugene V. Debs, the radical leader of the Industrial Workers of the World, who personally led their rank and file into street battles with police and strikebreakers. Adamic appears to have a fondness, as well, for the users of dynamite, as the statement “Dynamite! That’s the stuff!” appears throughout his text as an affirmation of radical labour’s fighting spirit. Woven into Ademic’s historical narrative of violent labour activity are the stories of anarchists who have taken up the cause, or of related persecution of anarchists of this period, including the episode of Alexander Berkman’s attempted assassination of mine boss Henry Clay Frick, Louis Lingg and the Haymarket Explosion, and the Sacco and Vanzetti trial and execution, which occurred while Ademic was researching and writing this text.
Adamic seems to adore the fighting spirit, even the willingness to use dynamite to advance the interests of working people. Conversely, he speaks with derision of Gomper’s willingness to compromise, negotiate with bosses, which he portrays as the behavior of one who was essentially a career politician. Furthermore, when Adamic speaks of Miner and IWW leader “Big” Bill Haywood’s willingness to leap into combat with only his fists as weapons, he discusses with loathing the AFL’s alliances with Mafia ‘protection’ men, and hired brutes who fought against the bosses’ Pinkerton (for-hire strikebreaking muscle) bullies. Thus Adamic identifies a rift in the American labor movement and firmly priviledges one side over another in his narration of the history of labor-centered violence.
One of the things I love about library books are the handwritten notes that are left in the page margins by other patrons. I know that vast numbers of library patrons hate that people make marks in these books and consider it disrespectful, but I love that each book can, over time, accumulate the specific signs of its use. Almost every page of the copy of early sociologist George H. Mead’sMind, Self and Societythat I borrowed from UofT’s Robarts Library was so heavily underlined that it had the stippled texture of 19th century Japanese Prints. My secondhand copy of Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall’sDown To This, a diary of living in Toronto’s turn-of the century tent city, includes a handmade index on the inside back cover so that a previous reader could make certain aspects of the text accessible on his or her return to the book.
I borrowed a copy of The Anarchists by James Joll, a British historian whose career was mostly focused on the politically radical (he also wrote a book about the Socialist Second International, and a biography of the Italian Marxist leader and philosopher, Antonio Gramsci) from the UofT Scarborough Library, and includes notes by other borrowers recommending other, better books on anarchist history. While Joll’s book can now be seen as a truncated survey of anarchist thought that has, since its publication, been eclipsed in importance by more thorough studies like Peter Marshall’sDemanding the Impossible, at the time of its first publication The Anarchists was basically opening up the field of anarchist studies. Joll charts a history of anarchist thought from the Gnostics of early Christendom to the anarchists of the Spanish Civil War, although he focuses most of his work on the anarchists of the 19th century: in particular on the thought and deeds of Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin.
Joll’s analysis takes a close look at the effects of anarchist writings and speech and the competing philosophical tendencies within the broad anarchist scene. One of the notes written in the copy of this book that I read stated “an excellent book which, among other things, clears up many seemingly inconsistent ideas in anarchist thought is “Anarchism: A Theoretical Analysis” by Alan Ritter, 1980.” This note doesn’t dissolve the value of Joll’s history but, in its recommendation of another text, it does mark the social function of library books and their ability to communicate between patrons.
Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour is a historical survey of ‘black power’, an umbrella term applicable to social movements dedicated to empowering black communities in 20th century United States. The book charts a path from figures such as the pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey to the millenarian Nation of Islam, through to the American Civil Rights movement (and the specific organizations that constituted it) up to the Black Panthers. Author Peniel E. Joseph (a professor of history working at Tufts University in Massachusetts) is as thorough as possible with his material charting the splintered path each leader and organization takes to their conclusion. His narrative peters out as it moves into the 80s when it focused mostly on mainstream political figures such as Jesse Jackson (who was, himself, a civil rights activist as a young man), as a kind of apotheosis to the far more radical past that allowed figures such as him to move closer to the moderate centre.
Of course, the narrative is dominated by all of the figures that would be expected: Malcom X, Martin Luther King Jr, Stokely Charmical, and finally the Black Panther leadership (Cleaver, Seale, Newton, etc). There are, of course, a large number of other important figures but these are the names that drive Joseph’s (and possibly any) narrative of American black activism. There are also a number of binaries at play in Joseph’s narrative: Marxist vs protestant influence, separatist vs integrationist, non-violent civil disobedieance vs armed resistance/violent struggle. One thing that I hadn’t quite noticed until after completing the book is that it is primarily focused on the radical edge of black social movements. Figures such as W.E.B. DuBois and organizations like his NAACP are discussed, of course, but are given far less attention than groups like the SNCC or the Black Panthers. Also, the book has a detailed bibliography subdivided into publication type and the index is structured so that subtopics of major topics are indexed.
Hi there, fellow cybernet users, I borrowed Free Comrades: Anarchism and Homosexuality in the United States, 1895-1917 from the Toronto Public Library.
Anarchists,
social anarchists in particular, have always stood with the socially
vulnerable and have often expressed a degree of sympathy (if not
outright support) for the culturally deviant. Terence Kissack’s book Free Comrades: Anarchism and Homosexuality in the United States, 1895-1917
examines the interest and support pledged to GLBT issues by prominent
anarchist during the late 19th and early 20th century, when
homosexuality was largely criminalized by American society. Most of the
anarchists discussed in Kissack’s book were not avowedly homosexual,
but they spoke in favour of decriminalizing homosexuality and included
it in their visions for an anarchist society.
Terrence Kissack is the current treasurer (and was, formerly, the executive director) for the GLBT Historical Society
based in San Francisco California. This society, formed in the
mid-1980s, manages an extensive archive (and associated reading room) of
GLBT related documents and historical materials. The society also
sponsors the GLBT History Museum, which is currently featuring an
exhibition titled, “Our Vast Queer Past: Celebrating San Francisco's GLBT History”
that attempts to represent all aspects of Queer history in San
Francisco through historical objects and images. The museum also
curates online exhibitions using social media/user created content web
platforms, such as the Dykes on Bikes exhibition that’s now viewable on as a YouTube clip.
Free Comrades
is a book adaptation of Kissack’s doctoral dissertation, which he
received in 2004 from New York University. The book takes its title
from a publication called The Free Comrade,
published by John William Lloyd, an ardent supporter of radically
transcendentalist (and widely assumed to have been homosexual) American
poet, Walt Whitman.
Kissack's book does not, necessarily, focus upon homosexual anarchists, and
rather directs its spotlight upon issues and controversies of
homosexuality during the late 19th century and early 20th century, and
the anarchist interaction. An example is the second chapter, a
discussion of the support shown by anarchists such as Emma Goldman for Oscar Wilde during his persecution (and prosecution) for engaging in "gross indecency with other men".
Each
chapter develops along such lines, and Kissack is always sure to
contrast the Anarchist support for sexual freedom in America against
dominant voices of moral indignation at such ideas. While the
anarchists argued passionately for Wilde’s right to express his
sexuality in the wake the great writer’s arrest, mainstream cultural
commentators came to a collective revelation that Wilde’s work was
actually terrible. Kissack carefully contextualizes each of the sexual
crises or the queer-friendly cultural forms he discusses in its broad
socio-historical setting to create a strong sense of the hostile climate
anarchists and homosexuality was operating under. Even among
anarchists or political radicals the atmosphere was tense, as Kissack
notes that even some anarchists struggled with accepting anything other
than hetero-normative sexuality. John William Lloyd, the previously
mentioned great admirer of Whitman and who is noted, in Kissack’s text,
as having argued for a vast array of sexual experimentation as part of
an overall social revolutionary program, came to renounce Walt Whitman
and same-sex relations. Kissack calls this turn, “a moment of literary,
political and sexual panic,” and discusses a change in Lloyd’s writing
and use of language that involved a divestment of any word the radical
author perceived as having homosexual connotations. Kissack goes on to
discuss the cultural context for this change which demonstrates the
shifting intellectual ground that lay beneath these issues and createed
political tensions for those who gave voice to them.
Kissack’s
book is also full of histories of anarchists who never wavered from
their positive attitude towards queer rights and issues. Foremost among
them was Emma Goldman, who appears throughout Kissack’s text, and
throughout virtually any text that discusses the intersection of
anarchists and the socially vulnerable in early 20th century America.
There is also a chapter devoted to Alexander Berkman and his book, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist,
which included memories of homosexual desire that Berkman experienced
during his 14 year incarceration. Furthermore, Kissack discusses how
cynical political commentators of the early 20th century used
insinuations of lesbianism, particularly in regard to the friendships
Emma Goldman had with other women, as a derogatory metaphor for radical
politics - a rhetorical flourish that persists in the right-wing
repertoire. In fact, many of the historical issues Kissack raises in
this text are ongoing today. What has whithered from the popular public
sphere is the voice of the radical left.
By the way - Here’s part one of a video of Terrence Kissack discussing, and reading from, this book:
Ridin’ High, Livin’ Free is a collection of fourty-one motorcycle related stories collected by Sonny Barger, the former national president of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, and Keith and Kent Zimmerman, the twin brothers who collaborated with Barger on his 2000 autobiography, Hells Angel and also worked with John Lydon (also known as Johnny Rotten, the frontman for seminal punk group, The Sex Pistols) on his autobiography, Rotten. Barger and the Zimmerman brothers present the reader with biker tales from a number of different aspects of motorcycle culture (many of them about 1% bikers) and demonstrate just how varied the subculture of motorcycle enthusiasts can be.
The book begins with the story 'The Wandering Gypsy and The Silver Satin Kid', with photos of the ‘kid’ showing a young Sonny Barger. The story tells how Barger became the leader of the Oakland Hells Angels and thus transitioned motorcycling from a practice to a subculture in the popular imagination. From this story of outlaw genesis, Barger and associates tell a number of stories that shine a light onto a number of lesser-known aspects of the motorcycling subculture, both outlaw and lawful.
Many of the stories contained in Ridin’ High, Livin’ Free are stories of outlaws, some are tales of interaction with celebrities such as actor Steve McQueen, singer David Crosby, and outlaw country musician, Kinky Friedman. Many of them are stories of kindness, done by or for outlaw motorcyclists, in an effort to oppose the stereotype of the maniac biker, however others are stories that detail the outrageous biker behavior we all expect from such a book. ‘Blake’s World Record Whore-House Jump’ for example, describes a biker jumping a motorcycle into a brothel bedroom that was already in use by a fellow brother. ‘On the Lam’ is a story of running from law enforcement personnel. The most interesting stories, however, are those that highlight some aspect of biker culture that is seldom made visible by other media coverage. One of the first stories describes a long running black biker club called the East Bay Dragons, a club that the Zimmermans have recently devoted a full book to, distorting the concept of the 1%ers as a purely white (and to a lesser extent Hispanic) phenomena. Other stories discuss the experiences of women bikers, and another story, 'The Ballad of Rocky's Green Gables,' discusses the conversion of an old biker bar into a Christian ministry and church....for bikers. These stories illustrate how people of all kinds gravitate towards the technology of the motorcycle and make it mean more than a mode of transportation.
Ridin’ High, Livin’ Free is also interesting because it points towards something that simply must exist although its almost completely absent in literature. That is, it points towards a folklore of counterculture. In one sentence in A Secret History of the IRA, Ed Moloney makes a passing reference to IRA folklore, but presents no examples of it. Barger et. al. have created a volume of biker stories that has many similarities to folklore. The authors even using the folklorist term of ‘capturing’ stories, to refer to their transcription of the tails included. The stories of Ridin' High, Livin' Free are all told in what is presumably a outlaw vernacular of rough speech, and while many of the stories are probably based on a kernel of truth (with accompanying photographs of the people who populate them) they also often have a fantastic edge to their tellings that suggests the embellishments that build with repeated oral transmissions.
The book also presents a fuller range of biker activities than other biker books and not the simply criminal that are represented by true crime authors and former undercover infiltrators, not is it bogged down by the rhetoric of a victim of social misconception. Finally, Ridin' High, Livin' Free conveys the appeal of the activity of riding to the reader, an aspect of the subculture that should often be foregrounded but is actually often absent from too many biker books that instead focus on the wild lives of the people who join 1% clubs.
Cedar Lewisohn, a curator at Tate Modern gallery in London, U.K. has written an insightful study of the international phenomena known as graffiti and street art. Street Art is, by my estimation, far more substantive than such publications as the already profiled Stencil Graffiti or Graffiti NYC. Lewisohn’s book attempts to theorize the differences between graffiti and the new, emerging forms it inspires, which he refers to as ‘street art’ proper. Furthermore, Lewisohn’s text comprises an attempt, which has already been seen in Tristan Manco’s Stencil Graffiti, to formulate a canon of street artists.
This book was released to coincide with a Lewisohn-curated Street Art exhibition held at the Tate Modern from 23 May – 25 August 2008. I am often skeptical of the relevance of graffiti or street art gallery exhibitions because I believe the loss of the ‘street’ setting empties such works of much of their essence. Lewisohn’s show was accompanied by a walking tour lead by a number of practicing street artists, thus returning the street to the academic discourse on the cultural form. In Street Art, the author makes calls for academic and high-art institutions to recognize street art and in particular he requests that museums begin including such works in their collections. While Lewisohn’s arguments are more nuanced and articulate than the simplistic griping about lack of recognition done by Hugo Martinez in Graffiti NYC, the call for graffiti to appear museums still sounds problematic to me. The transposition from street to gallery for a work of art creates for it a radical change of status, because graffiti/street art is not simply imagery and its street setting is of critical importance to its value.
Graffiti and Street art (its questionable whether or not people who are not hip to the scene differentiate between the two the way Lewisohn does) normally exist in a tension between the street artists and the city officials who believe that nothing can improve upon the appearance of an unadorned concrete wall. Spectators play in the balance, choosing their level of engagement with the art as they move through the city, and making evaluations as they proceed. Combining a gallery exhibition of street art with a walking tour is perhaps a strategy for attempting to reconcile the transposition of street art into the gallery, with the original experience of viewing such art in the street.
As has already been stated, Lewisohn’s book operates in a manner different from many other street art texts, and this is first evidenced in the images he uses. While Stencil Graffiti and Graffiti NYC often displayed closely cropped images (with some exceptions) of street art, Street Art often displays a work of graffiti surrounded by a number of other markings, tags, stickers, etc. The images in the book display the hypergraphic reality that works of street art exist in. They are seldom discreet graphic objects and are almost always on a surface with a myriad of other ‘works’ of similar art.
Another aspect to Lewisohn’s text that makes it an interesting book in the graffiti art literature is its construction of a history for the craft. Lewisohn operates along two lines of history, the first is with regards to the art, which he grounds in NYC graffiti of the 1970s and 1980s as well as practices by the “high-art” artists who used the street as a showplace, including Jenny Holzer, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Fekner, and some others. Lewisohn reaches as far back as Brassai, a photographer of mid-20th-century streetlife and his photos of children’s scratchings on the sides of Parisian buildings. Lewisohn’s history of the art draws on both folk and fine art traditions, radical politics, and desires for illegal thrills, which lead into his descriptions of the most reputable contemporary practitioners of street art. Street Art, for Lewisohn, is the culmination of the convergence of all of these traditions. The canon of contemporary street artists includes Blek Le Rat, Banksy, Judith Supine, Lady Pink, Shepard Fairey, and Miss Van. The author's prehistory of street is varied and comprehensive and it is fitting that Lewisohn's list of currently relevant artists is also varied in terms of location, style, motivations, and materials.
The other history Lewisohn presents is that of the documentation and theory about graffiti and street art. Lewisohn includes discussions with Henry Chalfant (author of early books about graffiti and director of the 1984 graffiti documentary film, Style Wars). He also includes photographs and discussions with Martha Cooper who produced the 1988 book Subway Arta seminal photobook of the era of NYC subway graffiti. Numerous references are made throughout the book to seminal writings on the art form, including Norman Mailer’s text The Faith of Graffiti, and French postmodernist Jean Baudrillard’s discussion of NYC tagging in Symbolic Exchange and Death. Interspersed with Lewisohn’s profiles of the most reputable members of the international street artist scene are some notes considering specific cultural influences such as punk culture or the formative art-school environment. Lewisohn’s text and innovative 2008 exhibition has placed himself as a recent figure in the field of graffiti research, and his book is as much about the history of graffiti history as it is about the emerging street art scene. It should also go without saying but this Tate publication is filled with full colour images of examples of the art Lewisohn finds to be such a vital form of modern expression.
