Is There Anything Left of the Mainstream?

On this Trip, Jem, Nadia and Keir debate the meaning of ‘mainstream’ – something none of them could ever possibly be, of course.

Is ‘woke’ the new ‘mainstream’? Can there be a mainstream if we don’t all have access to the same culture? Is Tommy Robinson shifting the Overton Window? Why is nonconformity associated with coolness? And who engineers the ‘typical girl’? The gang answer these questions and more, with ideas from Raymond Williams and Perry Anderson and songs from Pulp and The Slits.

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NB: At 1:27:10, Jem references an essay titled ‘The Pecularities of the English’. This was actually the title of EP Thompson’s essay replying to Perry Anderson’s and Tom Nairn’s theses about the specificities of English elite and working class culture, published in the New Left Review in 1964. Anderson made another important intervention into this discussion a couple of years later in his seminal essay ‘Components of the National Culture’. Another recommended essay is Ellen Meiksins Wood’s ‘The Peculiarities of the English and the Decline of Britain’.

Plus: we recommend Ian McQuaid’s on the new wave of ‘underground rap’, relating to Jem’s recent conversations with his students about their music practices.

Books: Raymond Williams – Preface to Film / Ben Anderson and Anna Secor – The Politics of Feeling: Populism, Progressivism, Liberalism / Jeremy Gilbert and Alex Williams – Hegemony Now / Tom Nairn and Perry Anderson / Hakim Bey – Temporary Autonomous Zone

Music: Yothu Yindi – Mainstream / The Slits – Typical Girls / Strange Boy – Follow The News / OutKast – Mainstream / Pulp – Common People / Hue & Cry – A Labour of Love / Underground Resistance – The Theory