Online Articles by Jarek Paul Ervin
Critique
This article rethinks Karl Marx’s infamous base-superstructure schema. Despite rampant controvers... more This article rethinks Karl Marx’s infamous base-superstructure schema. Despite rampant controversy about its use–not to mention widespread confusion as to what it actually references–I argue that there is an enduring utility to understanding art through a superstructural framework. Drawing on the writings of G.A. Cohen and Dileep Edara, I formalize a restrictive conception of the superstructure, narrowly understood as the group of institutions that comprise the State and civil society. After theorizing some implications of this account, I use the example of the contemporary Nation-State to illustrate its applicability. Ultimately, I demonstrate that there are ways to meaningfully consider the role of economic relations in determining the character of aesthetic practices, as well as the functionalist nature of art under capitalism.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Popular Music and Society
This article provides an historical and theoretical account of a tradition of LGBTQ-oriented punk... more This article provides an historical and theoretical account of a tradition of LGBTQ-oriented punk music in New York City during the 1970s. Queer punk – a scene comprised of LGBTQ people and shaped by discourse around gender and sexuality – was central to U.S. punk’s most infamous moment in a way that has largely been ignored. In order to make sense of why, I draw on period criticism and historical research into the LGBTQ community in New York, suggesting that New York punk participated in a new moment of queer cultural representation that Rosemary Hennessy terms “queer visibility.” I further theorize this by recourse to the claim by Tavia Nyong’o that punk exists in a “frozen dialectic” with queerness. Ultimately, early punk’s ferment and ferocity stem from its doubled identification with and renunciation of queer culture.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
In Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-1983, Tim Lawrence (University of East London... more In Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-1983, Tim Lawrence (University of East London) recalls a largely unknown history of the New York party scene in the early 1980s. Lawrence shows that in this period, New York was home to a cultural renaissance that flourished until Reaganomics, gentrification, and the HIV/AIDS crisis transformed the social and economic fabric of the city. In so doing, he complicates conventional narratives of popular music history, arguing that lines between punk, disco, and hip hop were far from clear in the New York music scene. In September, IASPM-US web editor Jarek Paul Ervin (Westminster Choir College) spoke to Lawrence via Skype, discussing the untold story of 1980s party culture, the complicated social map of New York’s music scene, and the democratic ideals of the New York dance floor.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
A short set of liner notes with a mixtape. Essentially, my mix highlights a broader selection of ... more A short set of liner notes with a mixtape. Essentially, my mix highlights a broader selection of artists working in NYC during the heyday of punk than is commonly highlighted in canon-centered narratives about punk. Originally published on the IASPM-US website: http://iaspm-us.net/mixtape-series-2016-punk-rock-new-york-by-jarek-paul-ervin/
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
My article focuses on the long-running struggles between left- and right-wing strains of punk. I ... more My article focuses on the long-running struggles between left- and right-wing strains of punk. I wrote the piece in response to the movie Green Room, which revisits a commonplace "punks vs. skins" trope that emerged from this struggle - the assumption that punk is a form of left-wing opposition to right wing skinheads. I provide a longer and more nuanced history of punk to show that the story is a little more complicated than the film lets on. See the original at: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/06/punk-green-room-saulnier-skinheads-rar-rac-oi-national-front/
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Book Reviews by Jarek Paul Ervin
Published in Popular Music and Society 39:04 (October 2016): 476-478.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Published in Popular Music 35:02 (May, 2016)
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Dissertation Project by Jarek Paul Ervin
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Conference Presentations by Jarek Paul Ervin
presented at AMS/SMT 2016 Joint Meeting
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Teaching Documents by Jarek Paul Ervin
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Papers by Jarek Paul Ervin
Nocturnes: Popular Music and the Night, 2019
Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” has become a symbol of sexual openness in the late 1960s and e... more Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” has become a symbol of sexual openness in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Even so, it is easy to feel that Reed’s engagement with matters of gender and sexuality is inadequate to the complexities of his subject matter. Set against a backdrop of musical irony and camp disavowal, the song all-too glibly presents the difficulties experienced by LGBTQ people, women, and people of colour. In this chapter, I argue that the song inherits its contradictory mix of sincerity and flippancy from Stonewall era representations of New York’s LGBTQ community. Reed provides a musical depiction of what the novelist John Rechy calls the City of Night, the nocturnal queer community hiding in the City that Never Sleeps. In this spirit, the record captures both a sensibility of freedom, the possibility and experimentation offered by the shadows, but also the darkened affect of a world experienced in terms of secrecy, defensiveness and shame. For better and worse, then, “Walk on the Wild Side” embodies the doubled hopefulness and despair of the City of Night.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Modernism/Modernity Print Plus, 2021
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Online Articles by Jarek Paul Ervin
Book Reviews by Jarek Paul Ervin
Dissertation Project by Jarek Paul Ervin
Conference Presentations by Jarek Paul Ervin
Teaching Documents by Jarek Paul Ervin
Papers by Jarek Paul Ervin