Abstract

The Straight Edge hardcore movement at the end of the twentieth century managed to achieve a remarkable inversion of lifestyle values. Turning their lifestyle choice of no drinking, smoking, and drugs into a cool thing, not a good thing, they exposed how rebellious ethics mixed with anger and aggressive youth culture can make a powerful and energetic mix. Their inversion of the lifestyle values of the rebel and hedonist generation just before them could in turn be folded upon itself in continuously new ways, turning anger toward many social ills into processes of awareness-raising as well as social mobilization. In the realm of fashion, could a utopia of sustainable consumerism perhaps also be folded and queered in...