Punk's such a multifaceted beast -impossible to pin down, yet instantly recognizable when it hits. I think Joe Strummer had the clearest lens in the early scene. He saw music as part of the architecture, but never the whole building itself (check this clip where he talks about it: https://youtu.be/djJTIUmNUQU). Viewing punk as a medium -a way to do things, not just sound like something -feels more intentional than people give it credit for.
There's a constant paradox at its core (Greg Graffin's memoir Punk Paradox nails this great read for academic punks). Positing punk as a direct response to nihilism rings true from my experiences in scenes across different countries. It's not really a rejection of values or establishment itself; it's a refusal to let those be the only ones, or even just the form they take. There are other ways.
Even Sid Vicious's sneering cover of "My Way" fits that: the gory, upsetting violence is meant to shock, but he still chose a song that clearly resonated with him on some level. It's like saying, "Yeah, the old world's 'my way' is bullshit… but this still means something to me, fuck you very much."
Framing punk as the antidote to tech-driven nihilism helps. Doing things that matter together, loudly, unoptimized. Spot on.
Juan, thanks for much for your comments, and for the juicy references you shared (Strummer, Greg Graffin, and your take on Sid Vicious's 'My Way'-- all very compelling; and I hadn't seen that Strummer clip or read Graffin's book yet, though I did buy a copy). Are you an academic-punk yourself? What's your area of study?
Scott, thanks for asking — happy to share. I'm Colombian. The academic trajectory was a zigzag: I started in mathematics, moved to Latin American literature, and ended up at the University of Chicago doing history of the book. Always moving from the abstract toward the material — from numbers to texts to the actual objects that carry knowledge around.
What I really wanted to study was what the internet was doing to how we know things. But that question didn't have a home at UChicago yet, so I came at it through the printing press — trying to understand what a medium's architecture does to the knowledge it produces. Same question, older machine.
I finished the doctoral program and then I left. I'm a woodworker now. I build and sell furniture, I make things. Going from studying how books get physically made to making physical things with my hands — it didn't feel like leaving so much as following the thread to where it actually goes.
Here's the fun part: I'm married to John Haugeland's stepdaughter. Dasein lives in this house. I think about him when I'm shaping wood — he was quite the woodworker himself. I suspect you're in that same Berkeley orbit, given your work with Dreyfus and Flores.
I've been reading your piece on Heidegger and skilled work. The carpenter in the workshop — that's my daily life.
This is wonderful to hear, Juan. Thanks for sharing some of your fascinating story with me (though I'm still curious about your connection to the punk world). And it is amazing to learn about your connection to John Haugeland. I only met him a handful of times, but his reading of Heidegger has deeply influenced me. Yes, I was a close student and friend of Hubert Dreyfus, and also worked with Fernando Flores (whom I met through Bert) for 10 years. Thanks again for connecting.
I was a teenager in the 90s, growing up in Bogotá, and I needed an outlet that was punk for me. South American cities in the 90s were big on heavy metal. When Metallica went to Colombia, it was like the first major concert in decades — probably the most important cultural event in that city for a while. Santiago de Chile, similar story. Metal was the thing. But punk's allure for me was that it was less static and more thoughtful in ways I know non-punk rockers don't understand. They only see the Sid Vicious thing. But the more I learned about it, the more it felt like an intentional stance — angsty for sure, but not just disruptive.
Now, punk happens late in the Spanish-speaking world. You have to remember that most of Latin America is coming out of decades of right-wing dictatorships — Spain in '75, Argentina, Chile, and so on. And when those dictatorships fall, what crystallizes is basically nothing. The new liberal democracies don't keep their promises. Not even the promises of what a non-dictatorship was supposed to be. So by the late '80s, early '90s, the no-future narrative is very real for kids in these places. It's not borrowed from London — it's homegrown. In Colombia, that's especially true because we're going through decades of civil conflict with no end in sight. The no-future thing isn't a pose. It's the weather.
Musically, what happens is that Latin American punk is already leaning more toward The Clash than toward, say, Black Flag. There's a natural affinity with Caribbean and tropical music, so ska is very familiar territory. Then, with the explosion of pop-punk in the '90s — which we used to call neo-punk in South America — and its connection to the ska wave, everything coalesces for a moment. But it also dissolves. The scene produces very good bands with a whole proposal, but most of them never fully break through.
The big exception, I think, is Mano Negra — the French-Spanish band led by Manu Chao, who later becomes his own thing. Mano Negra was huge in Latin America, and most people wouldn't call them punk, but I think they're fully punk. What they did was bridge a gap that Joe Strummer had opened but then renounced — the guy who wrote "this machine kills fascists" on his guitar and then went punk. Mano Negra went the other way around: they brought punk back to the people, back to folk traditions, back to the street. They gave Latin American punk a very specific flavor — less California garage, more plaza, more cumbia, more alive in a different way. That mattered.
Punk's such a multifaceted beast -impossible to pin down, yet instantly recognizable when it hits. I think Joe Strummer had the clearest lens in the early scene. He saw music as part of the architecture, but never the whole building itself (check this clip where he talks about it: https://youtu.be/djJTIUmNUQU). Viewing punk as a medium -a way to do things, not just sound like something -feels more intentional than people give it credit for.
There's a constant paradox at its core (Greg Graffin's memoir Punk Paradox nails this great read for academic punks). Positing punk as a direct response to nihilism rings true from my experiences in scenes across different countries. It's not really a rejection of values or establishment itself; it's a refusal to let those be the only ones, or even just the form they take. There are other ways.
Even Sid Vicious's sneering cover of "My Way" fits that: the gory, upsetting violence is meant to shock, but he still chose a song that clearly resonated with him on some level. It's like saying, "Yeah, the old world's 'my way' is bullshit… but this still means something to me, fuck you very much."
Framing punk as the antidote to tech-driven nihilism helps. Doing things that matter together, loudly, unoptimized. Spot on.
Juan, thanks for much for your comments, and for the juicy references you shared (Strummer, Greg Graffin, and your take on Sid Vicious's 'My Way'-- all very compelling; and I hadn't seen that Strummer clip or read Graffin's book yet, though I did buy a copy). Are you an academic-punk yourself? What's your area of study?
Scott, thanks for asking — happy to share. I'm Colombian. The academic trajectory was a zigzag: I started in mathematics, moved to Latin American literature, and ended up at the University of Chicago doing history of the book. Always moving from the abstract toward the material — from numbers to texts to the actual objects that carry knowledge around.
What I really wanted to study was what the internet was doing to how we know things. But that question didn't have a home at UChicago yet, so I came at it through the printing press — trying to understand what a medium's architecture does to the knowledge it produces. Same question, older machine.
I finished the doctoral program and then I left. I'm a woodworker now. I build and sell furniture, I make things. Going from studying how books get physically made to making physical things with my hands — it didn't feel like leaving so much as following the thread to where it actually goes.
Here's the fun part: I'm married to John Haugeland's stepdaughter. Dasein lives in this house. I think about him when I'm shaping wood — he was quite the woodworker himself. I suspect you're in that same Berkeley orbit, given your work with Dreyfus and Flores.
I've been reading your piece on Heidegger and skilled work. The carpenter in the workshop — that's my daily life.
This is wonderful to hear, Juan. Thanks for sharing some of your fascinating story with me (though I'm still curious about your connection to the punk world). And it is amazing to learn about your connection to John Haugeland. I only met him a handful of times, but his reading of Heidegger has deeply influenced me. Yes, I was a close student and friend of Hubert Dreyfus, and also worked with Fernando Flores (whom I met through Bert) for 10 years. Thanks again for connecting.
I was a teenager in the 90s, growing up in Bogotá, and I needed an outlet that was punk for me. South American cities in the 90s were big on heavy metal. When Metallica went to Colombia, it was like the first major concert in decades — probably the most important cultural event in that city for a while. Santiago de Chile, similar story. Metal was the thing. But punk's allure for me was that it was less static and more thoughtful in ways I know non-punk rockers don't understand. They only see the Sid Vicious thing. But the more I learned about it, the more it felt like an intentional stance — angsty for sure, but not just disruptive.
Now, punk happens late in the Spanish-speaking world. You have to remember that most of Latin America is coming out of decades of right-wing dictatorships — Spain in '75, Argentina, Chile, and so on. And when those dictatorships fall, what crystallizes is basically nothing. The new liberal democracies don't keep their promises. Not even the promises of what a non-dictatorship was supposed to be. So by the late '80s, early '90s, the no-future narrative is very real for kids in these places. It's not borrowed from London — it's homegrown. In Colombia, that's especially true because we're going through decades of civil conflict with no end in sight. The no-future thing isn't a pose. It's the weather.
Musically, what happens is that Latin American punk is already leaning more toward The Clash than toward, say, Black Flag. There's a natural affinity with Caribbean and tropical music, so ska is very familiar territory. Then, with the explosion of pop-punk in the '90s — which we used to call neo-punk in South America — and its connection to the ska wave, everything coalesces for a moment. But it also dissolves. The scene produces very good bands with a whole proposal, but most of them never fully break through.
The big exception, I think, is Mano Negra — the French-Spanish band led by Manu Chao, who later becomes his own thing. Mano Negra was huge in Latin America, and most people wouldn't call them punk, but I think they're fully punk. What they did was bridge a gap that Joe Strummer had opened but then renounced — the guy who wrote "this machine kills fascists" on his guitar and then went punk. Mano Negra went the other way around: they brought punk back to the people, back to folk traditions, back to the street. They gave Latin American punk a very specific flavor — less California garage, more plaza, more cumbia, more alive in a different way. That mattered.
Wonderful, thank you so much for sharing.
I very much appreciate your thoughts on this!
Spotted a few parallels between our writing and thinking - good to know you're out there, Scot.
Keep it up! :)
EDIT: Or is it "B"?
Thanks, Christopher! My friends call me "B" - I will check out your stuff.