“Less Art and More Machine”: The California Crucible

Early American punk had its most explicit identity crisis in Los Angeles during the late 1970s, and the sounds created in California during this time, including San Francisco, effectively defined American punk moving forward. Punk in Los Angeles in particular reflected some of the most extreme changes of the post-war era, with substantial migration, new development, and geographic segregation. California became the major site for debates over the meaning of punk styles, with growing tensions between older punks in the downtown or “Hollywood” scene, such as X and the Screamers, and the younger punks in suburban and beach areas, such as Circle Jerks and Black Flag, and ultimately, the style of suburban hardcore punk that was forged in California came to define punk for American listeners. It was in California where punk morphed from an expression of the sixties generation into a voice for Generation X heading into the 1980s. This chapter also takes a close look at punk’s relationship to violence, especially with respect to the confrontations between punks and the LAPD. The musical life of Latinx punks (and Chicano or Mexican American punks specifically) serves as a case study for further investigations of social and musical complexities in Los Angeles.

Beyond the Sixties

The book concludes with a discussion of the continued importance of this generation beyond the decade of the sixties. It traces the transformation of the sixties generation from an emerging group of writers to established members of the literary and cultural sphere in Egypt, who came to occupy positions of prominence in the field. It presents the career trajectories of the figures at the heart of this book including; the reception of their fiction; the conferral of awards; and the translation of their works. In doing so it also explores the impact of the sixties generation upon contemporary writers, particularly the nineties generation in Egypt. Despite the differences in political and ideological positions, the struggles of the writers of the sixties generation are not wholly divorced from those of their successors. Both were generations contending with the aftermath of revolutionary change, the realities of the failings of democratic projects, and the role of artists and intellectuals in confronting the injustices of the state. As the chapters of this book show, with the sixties generation came the disappearance of the idealised Egyptian nation in the novel. The works of their successors continue to grapple with its aftermath.

Introduction: Space and the Sixties

The first part of the chapter presents the members of the sixties generation, telling the story of their emergence onto the cultural scene in Egypt. It outlines the socio-economic and political context of which they were both a part and an expression. Who are these writers? When and how did they emerge? What is significant about their work? Why did they appear at such a critical moment in Egyptian history? What are the sources of literary and aesthetic inspiration? This chapter draws on an array of primary material from the journals of the time whose pages were filled with discussions about this emerging generation. This presentation of the sixties generation is undertaken with an attention to the broader context of the literary sphere in Egypt, what Bourdieu calls “the field of cultural production.” The second part of the chapter focuses on the theoretical arguments for the examination of space in literature, examining the broader “spatial turn” in the humanities and social sciences, engaging this approach within the context of modern and contemporary Egyptian literature. A focus upon spatial representations expands our analysis of the work of the sixties writers, bringing together the thematic, the aesthetic, and the political.

Masks in the Iraqi Hell: On the Works of Iraqi Writer ʿAbd al-Sattār Nāṣir

ʿAbd al-Sattār Nāṣir (1947–2013) belonged to the group of Iraqi writers and intellectuals called Jīl al-Sittināt "the Sixties Generation", which dominated the cultural scene at the time. This article examines Nāṣir as a driven writer, who initially wrote out of a morally induced reaction to expose the suffering and brutalization of all Iraqi peoples and ethnicities by a controlling totalitarian regime, and as a once-incarcerated author of brave novels he hoped would someday catalyze a popular overthrow of the lawless, abusive leaders, thereby ending the fears and violence possessing Iraq’s body politic. Two themes -- the destruction wreaked by those with extraordinary power and their use of lies and deception to control the people –- are central to the three novels chosen as representative of Nāṣir’s oeuvre: Abū al-Rīsh (2002), Niṣf al-Aḥzān 'Half Sorrows' (2000) and Qushūr al-Badhinjān 'Eggplant Peels' (2007). In these three novels, Nāṣir exposes the unimaginable terror, violence and cruelty of Saddām Ḥusayn and his henchmen, as well as their propaganda, which consisted of lies and deception. Saddām is depicted as a ruler who presents himself as an inspiring revolutionary, but in fact is a tyrant who deceives the citizens, subjecting them to brutal control and leading them into deadly wars. Following George Orwell’s 1984, Nāṣir’s literary corpus attempts to rip the masks from the faces of the dictator and his lackeys, who oppress the people, deny them any freedom of thought and keep them under constant surveillance.