ABSTRACT
For punks, ‘What is punk?’ is the question that won’t go away. In 1991 the mainstream arrival of something calling itself ‘punk’ placed this question at the heart of the punk underground. In the UK, by that point, punk was supposed to be ancient history in any case; once big news, punk was now considered old hat. In the US, by contrast, punk had had a certain socio-cultural luxury: for more than ten years prior to the release of Nirvana’s Nevermind, very few people beyond punk’s tiny microcosmos knew that the punk scene even existed. Because of this, punk identity in both the UK and the US seemed largely unproblematic since punks were ‘us’ whereas the ‘them’ against which the underground identified itself were unmistakably other to a punk scene rich in micromatic solidarity: they didn’t even know we existed, or at least that’s how it felt.
