ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author proposes to read the history of punk through two single punk stories: the narratives of his encounter with two youths who decided to identify with this lifestyle in different moments and in different places. Interpretations of the punk movement have been as numerous as serious research is scarce about the style’s form and content. Marie Roue compares the punk to Baudelaire’s dandyism, which is understood as a rebellious and nihilist attitude based on the awareness of the uselessness of any project and on insolence as a way of relating to others. Greil Marcus has seen in aesthetic experimentation and the punk’s vital attitude the echo of artistic and literary vanguards that emerged in the convulsion of Europe between the wars. Dick Hebdige interprets different reactions to the presence of black immigrants coming from Jamaica. Punks take from Dada a sense of play, the conversion of the stigma into an emblem and the negation of future.
