ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the creative underground is theorized in terms of youthful counterculture and subculture, as part of a broader theoretical analysis of modern and postmodern concerns. This is applied initially to the 1960s and 1970s and draws on a historical definition by Theodor Roszak and Dick Hebdige. Countercultural practices offer a widespread reengagement with oppositional ideas, politics and the everyday, whereas subculture focuses on smaller-scale symbolic resistance and style. Such a neat discourse is complicated by postmodern thinking and the decentred realities of contemporary culture, which is complex and contradictory, as signified by the notion of post-subculture. Resistant thinking and counterhegemonic practices are situated theoretically within the broad terrain of the cultural public sphere and counterpublic space, which includes an ana lysis of the different models. On the basis of Jürgen Habermas’s ‘ libe ral’ democratic conception, Oscar Negt and Alexander Kluge developed an oppositional proletarian public sphere. This conception was revised in relation to plurality by Nancy Fraser who took a feminist position and by Michael Warner with regards to private (and queer) space. They recog nized competing public spheres or counterpublics which are distinct from the hegemonic standpoint of a heterosexual white bourgeois male. A reconfiguration of the public sphere in relation to a collective commons by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri has reengaged with utopian communitarianism; while Jim McGuigan by employing the terminology of a cultural public sphere has focused on areas commensurate with the creative underground.
