112 / redefining a movement
The problem of bringing a subcultural studies model to bear
on Riot Grrrl, then, may have less to do with what such a model
imposed on the movement and more to do with what the model
effectively obscured about the movement’s origins, influences,
and long-term impacts. As Fateman observes, “The ‘girl gang’
image was cultivated by some within the movement, and it was
‘real’ in terms of certain guerilla tactics and punk antics, but
Riot Grrrl was also an aesthetic thing (rhetorical, theorized).”
72
Fateman adds, “Its status as a political movement and social
phenomenon still seems to overshadow its status as an artistic
movement. Its products still aren’t discussed much as art.”
73
In Gender in the Music Industry (2007), Marion Leonard also
addresses this oversight. She recognizes that “riot grrrl’s devel-
opment parallels the way a number of youth subcultures have
established themselves. It emerges from within ‘underground’
music circles; was promoted through gigs, events and zine
networks; and was greeted with considerable levels of fascina-
tion by the mass media.”
74
Leonard goes on, however, to warn
that applying this model of analysis to Riot Grrrl is mislead-
ing. Emphasizing that “one of the flaws of subcultural theory
has been its tenacious grasp of the concept of delinquency,”
she observes, “Youth subcultures have often been positioned as
oppositional to the ‘parent culture’ and thereby at odds with
societal norms.”
75
This approach, she emphasizes, has “par-
ticular relevance to Riot Grrrl” because “to place riot grrrl
in a tradition of delinquent youth theory would be to ignore
the nature of its protest and dismiss its feminist objectives as
mere teen dissent.”
76
Again, the scope and range of radical lit-
eratures, critical theory, and avant-garde works included and
referenced in Hanna’s files in the Riot Grrrl Collection suggests
that at least at its point of origin, Riot Grrrl was already far too
self-reflexive and entangled in the institutions and industries it
sought to occupy and critique to be understood simply through
a framework of youth dissent.
Thus, on the one hand, the fact that the Riot Grrrl Collec-
tion is unavailable to every fan on a pilgrimage may appear to
redefining a movement / 113
come into conflict with Riot Grrrl’s commitment to locating
girls and young women as agents of knowledge and cultural
production and social change. On the other hand, the collec-
tion’s development is entirely in keeping with the movement’s
longstanding relationship to the academy. Like the movement
itself, the collection reflects a tactical deployment of the acad-
emy’s resources and represents an attempt to use the academy
as a means to shape how the movement will be taken up in a
larger public sphere. In our interview, Darms reflected briefly
on her own early experience of Riot Grrrl. Her recollection
reveals the extent to which the movement is not only indebted
to punk but to multiple and overlapping aesthetic and intellec-
tual traditions. Indeed, she emphasizes these complex lineages
while simultaneously making a strong case for why the Riot
Grrrl papers are at home among existing collections at Fales
Library:
For me, Riot Grrrl is absolutely an off-shoot of punk. I
don’t think that everyone experienced it that way, but his-
torically, it was definitely a reaction to punk and the fail-
ures of gender in that radical aesthetic. But there are also
important intellectual connections. Take, for example, the
Semiotexte Collection. The people who are in that collec-
tion, like Kathy Acker and Eileen Myles, are people who
women involved with Riot Grrrl were reading and inspired
by. But there’s also other connections—even the little
pocket Baudrillard that I remember seeing at a friend’s
house for the first time when I was still in Olympia—it was
like an introduction to a whole world. The same day I saw
the Baudrillard, my friend played me Kathleen’s spoken
word 7-–inch. So in my mind, there are many connections
both aesthetically and intellectually. Also, both collections
[The Downtown Collection and the Semiotexte Collection]
are very queer.
77
From punk to Semiotexte, from Myles to Baudrillard, from a
college-age Kathleen Hanna to New York’s downtown art scene,
114 / redefining a movement
Darms covers immense ground here, but in so doing she effec-
tively demonstrates the slippages and connections that are inte-
gral to understanding Riot Grrrl. Far from a “bona fide subcul-
ture,” as Gottlieb and Wald argue in their early theorizing on
the movement, Darms represents Riot Grrrl as queer feminist
hybrid of punk, continental philosophy, feminism, and avant-
garde literary and art traditions. Thus, the Riot Grrrl Collection
at Fales Library represents neither a form of institutionalization
nor assimilation but rather foregrounds something that was
always already part of the Riot Grrrl movement—its link to both
the academic apparatus and to some of the theoretical and aes-
thetic movements it has sustained.
Avant-garde Heritage
The idea that a radical movement might have an “avant-garde
heritage” is, I admit, at least somewhat contradictory. If we
understand the avant-garde along Bourdieu’s lines, then avant-
garde movements are by definition without a “heritage” or “lin-
eage” to which they can truly lay claim because “‘young’ writers,
i.e., those less advanced in the process of consecration . . . will
refuse everything their ‘elders’ . . . are and do, and in particular
all their indices of social ageing, starting with the signs of con-
secration, internal (academies, etc.) or external (success).”
78
But
this, evidently, is a perspective that is either no longer relevant to
theorizing on how avant-gardes are formed or one in which Riot
Grrrl stands as a notable exception.
As Fateman emphasizes, “Some Riot Grrrls (especially after
the Newsweek, USA Today, Sassy articles) were quite young and
knew nothing about Kathy Acker, Karen Finley, Diamanda
Galas, Barbara Kruger, etc but those in the most notorious Riot
Grrrl bands most certainly did.”
79
It seems unlikely that a song
like “Hot Topic,” released on Le Tigre’s debut album in 1998,
could exist without such an awareness:
Carol Rama and Eleanor Antin
Yoko Ono and Carolee Schneeman
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