Style, Resistance and Bricolage
How subcultures construct meaning by reassembling everyday objects into expressive styles that challenge and unsettle dominant codes.
Definition
Bricolage is the practice of constructing meaning by recombining existing objects and signs into new arrangements; in subcultural theory, style is the bricolage of clothing, music and artefacts through which a subculture expresses its identity and signals symbolic resistance.
Scope
This topic examines the semiotic analysis of subcultural style, above all Hebdige's reading of punk and other British youth subcultures. It covers the concepts of bricolage and homology, the idea of style as a form of refusal, and the process by which subcultural styles are recuperated through commodification and ideological labelling. It complements the CCCS topic by focusing on signification rather than social structure.
Core questions
- How does subcultural style produce meaning through bricolage?
- What does Hebdige mean by style as 'refusal' or as a challenge to hegemony?
- How does the concept of homology link style to a subculture's values?
- How are subcultural styles recuperated by the commercial and ideological mainstream?
Key concepts
- bricolage
- homology
- style as refusal
- recuperation
- the commodity form
- signification
Key theories
- Style as bricolage
- Hebdige, drawing on Lévi-Strauss, argues that subcultures appropriate ordinary commodities and recombine them into styles whose new meanings disrupt the everyday codes from which they were taken.
- Homology
- Subcultural theory holds that there is a structural fit, or homology, between a group's values and self-image and the objects, music and style it adopts.
- Recuperation
- Hebdige describes how subcultural styles are defused over time, either by being turned into mass-market commodities or by being ideologically labelled and normalised.
History
The semiotic turn in subcultural analysis drew on Lévi-Strauss's notion of bricolage and on Barthesian semiology. John Clarke's essay 'Style' in Resistance Through Rituals (1976) set out the framework, which Hebdige developed brilliantly in Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979), reading punk as a spectacular assault on the codes of everyday life. The model became, and remains, a touchstone for the cultural analysis of fashion and youth style.
Debates
- Reading style versus living it
- Whether the semiotic decoding of style captures what subcultures mean to their members, or imposes the analyst's interpretation on practices experienced quite differently from within.
Key figures
- Dick Hebdige
- Claude Lévi-Strauss
- John Clarke
Related topics
Seminal works
- levistrauss1962
- clarke1976
- hebdige1979
Frequently asked questions
- What is a famous example of bricolage in subcultural style?
- Hebdige's classic example is punk's use of the safety pin: an ordinary, mundane object wrenched from its everyday context and worn as body adornment, where its shocking new meaning depended precisely on the violation of its normal use.