Punk rock’s messages for the neoliberal university

ABSTRACT

This article theorises punk rock’s messages for the neoliberal university by exploring the contrasting approaches punk culture and higher education have taken to the influence of neoliberal discourse and ideology. Punk culture’s foundational opposition to mainstream culture often enables it to function as an educative context in which participants formulate critiques of exploitative socioeconomic conditions. Although universities are contested spaces which are at-times receptive to grassroots and student-led activism, they face increasing pressure to prioritise economic development and generate revenue. The rise of the neoliberal university has, in some ways, enabled punk culture to assume the academy’s responsibility as the critic and conscience of society. Should universities insist upon a role in the construction of ethical futures, they would do well look to certain corners of the punk underground which prioritise community-responsiveness, reflexivity, and solidarity with marginalised communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Punk rock
• higher education
• neoliberalism
• feminism
• decolonisation

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Noah Romero

Noah Romero’s work explores the decolonial potential of nonformal learning and how autonomy, responsibility, and intersubjectivity are central to transformative education. His research emerges from insider ethnographies of unschooling families, skate cultures, and punk scenes in settler societies like Australia, Canada, Aotearoa New Zealand, the United States, and the Philippines.