‘Chaos in France’: Fieldnotes from the French punk experience

Abstract

While punk and skinhead experiences in the English-speaking world have been widely documented, the same cannot be said for the French space where these subcultures nonetheless took root from the end of the 1970s onwards. This article paints the portraits of punks and skinheads who each embody, in their own way, a certain sense of ‘chaos in France’. In doing so, it opens up a research avenue that not only fills a gap in existing studies but also suggests a new way of examining the signification of subcultural resistance to dominant normativities. The article draws on observation and interviews, as well as auto-ethnographic material and critical analysis of text, music and film archives. This produces a variety of perspectives, which bring out subcultural dynamics in an analysis that is as closely focused as possible on the lives of those who embodied these dynamics to the bitter end, in all the contradictions of rebellion.