Abstract
Chez Narcisse is a bar located on the threshold of the southern Vosges, in the east of France, that has been run by the same family for over 120 years. Its particularity lies in the fact that since the mid 1980s, it has included a concert hall in the garden behind the bar, which punk bands use to play. This place brings together a bar that is anchored in the daily life of the village and these festive events, which always take place on Sunday evenings. Chez Narcisse thus appears as a ‘double’ space that emphasizes the search for independence and culture in a rural environment. An ethnographic research carried out in this place since January 2017 highlights how the DIY ethos is as much a way of doing things as a purpose. The punk ethos of DIY is claimed by the owners, volunteers, musicians and stakeholders of Chez Narcisse in order to build its identity as an ‘alternative’ place well known in the contemporary French punk scene.
By taking up James C. Scott’s work, the aim is to understand how Chez Narcisse is a social site of resistance and the role that DIY plays in it. To do this, I will first present the construction of this alternative place which articulates both a local and rural level and a global one (the concerts and the venue attract punks from all over France). A performance upstage testifies to a veiled but very present resistance, based on a family imaginary. The second part aims at highlighting the daily forms of resistance at Chez Narcisse expressed through the use of DIY. Thus, this place would be less ‘punk’ through programmed music than through the use of DIY as a value to defend and a project to share.
Keywords
On 25 February 1990, a band with national reach in France, Les Sherrif, played at Chez Narcisse, a bar and concert venue that is located at the heart of a small village in the French Vosges (Le Val d’Ajol). That event was followed by many others, with Chez Narcisse becoming a hotspot for punk culture in France. This is a double space, characterized both by its punk culture and its rural village environs. In order to understand how this space operates and the ways in which it sets up various forms of resistance, one has to go through the history of the place and the family that has been managing it for five generations.
Everything started in 1892 with the blacksmith workshop opened by Alfred in the heart of the village. As an entrepreneurial trader, he soon added a bar to it, to provide for his waiting clients while he shod their horses. He also added a funeral parlour to it. In the 1930s, Narcisse, Alfred’s son, took over the business and opened a movie theatre in the back garden. The village priest, who also owned his own movie theatre, did not appreciate this new competition, and their relationship went from bad to worse during the Second World War when Narcisse programmed a movie entitled Lucrèce Borgia. The priest declared it indecent as it contained pornography. Moreover, as Vincent 1 – the current owner and manager, and Narcisse’s great grandson – told me, the latter ‘was known in the village for being a communist. Narcisse was a communist member of the Resistance against the German army, and he was denounced to the Kommandantur by the priest, this very priest’. Narcisse was saved from deportation at the last moment, but thereafter was seen as the ‘drop out’ of the village: he lived at the margins of the Catholic society of the 1940s, but was also a communist member of the Resistance and business owner. A few years later, Norbert, his son, went to the hairdresser’s to celebrate his diploma and asked for a ‘Mohawk’ haircut. His father was mad at him, but before he changed his haircut, Norbert took a photograph of himself. This photograph has now become Chez Narcisse’s logo, thus combining the Mohawk haircut of the 1950s (from the American GIs during the Second World War) and the punk Mohawk of the 1980s. This logo reminds the viewers of the family’s history while also playing on the ambiguity of the haircut’s symbolism. In the mid-1980s, Stéphanie represented the fourth generation of owners at Chez Narcisse. With a group of friends who had become bored with disco clubs, she decided to use the former, now abandoned, movie theatre to organize concerts and gigs. The inaugural events in the movie theatre featured local punk bands. The subsequent arrival of musicians of a national calibre was thought provoking for the villagers and Chez Narcisse gradually became a counter-cultural place within a rural territory. Martin, one of the very first volunteers, now in his late 50s, remembers: ‘At the time, there were guys who came here with their 30cm punk Mohawks, well all the villagers who walked on the sidewalk [. . .] They came to take a look at them, thinking: “What the hell is that?” “What’s the matter in there?”’ Today, the concert hall is managed by Vincent who represents the fifth generation, and this place is well known in the contemporary French punk scene as ‘the hottest scene in France’ with the ‘best audience’, according to several bands. While the programme has become more eclectic with a view to discovering new cultures, the regulars still claim its ‘punk soul’.
As a consequence, the current owners 2 as well as the volunteers of the association that organizes the concerts consider themselves punks not so much through the music they program, but more in the way the whole thing operates on a daily basis. Besides its musical dimension, the punk spirit perhaps expresses itself more through the do-it-yourself (DIY) ethos of the place. This is a sort of resourcefulness and practical intelligence (Hein, 2012a: 47) that aims at providing the users the means to their independence, but DIY proposes alternatives to established order (2012a: 45), both at the material and ideological levels.
The premises of DIY emerged in the 1950s in the USA, initially reaffirming a male hegemonic order through domestic DIY home improvements and repairs (Gelber, 1997: 68). In the mid-1970s, the punk culture elevated DIY to an ethical and aesthetic status. It came to be about creating and tinkering without being an expert or a professional (Bennett, 2018). Even more, in the context of the 21st century, ‘DIY practices give independent musicians and bands leeway to avoid the “industrial” model of music production and distribution’ (Jian, 2018: 2). Thereafter, DIY has spread widely outside the punk movement, especially as a capacity for action – as an empowerment. Concerning Chez Narcisse, DIY can be seen as a tool of resistance, mobilized within a subcultural framework, whether musically, materially or institutionally. It is linked to a will to remain economically, culturally and institutionally independent. More precisely, on a daily basis, DIY contributes to the construction of Chez Narcisse as an alternative space. The desire to ‘do-it-yourself’ and the refusal to be trapped in a mercantile logic imply both a financial independence from the capitalist system and an independence in its way of functioning (and thinking). Furthermore, the study conducted at Chez Narcisse allows us to understand the transition from DIY to do-it-together (DIT), a collective way of practising DIY. The DIY culture at Chez Narcisse taps into a global culture and ethos, in relation to punk culture. The concerts (which take place a few nights a year) attract an audience far in excess of just the village regulars. Indeed, visitors come from all over France. Regulars and volunteers do something together (a gig, a festive evening) in order to temporarily resist the hegemonic cultural order. In this sense, the collective expression of DIY – that is to say, DIT – can be understood as an element of a ‘Temporary Autonomous Zone’ (Bey, 1997), a festive time of resistance. Chez Narcisse appears as a place that allows the expression of a form of resistance. As a reaction to dominant power (in this case cultural, political and financial power), this resistance is shown through its punk programming and ‘Narcissian’ DIY. In line with the work initiated by James C. Scott (1990), it seems that the regulars (the ‘Narcissians’) of this village bar participate in the creation of ‘resistance arts’. Indeed, if Scott’s approach does not directly address the question of counter-cultures or subcultures in leisure activities, it seems however interesting to consider an extension to his thoughts so as to apply it to the festive and musical areas of Narcissian punk culture.
The aim is to analyse the Narcissian subculture and the modes of resistance that its actors summon, especially through DIY. This case study questions the formation of a collective – a social world – that positions itself on the margins of the system, as defined by the institutions (musical, political, etc.) (Becker, 1984). Indeed, in France, music venues are largely institutionalized and subsidized (the ‘Scènes de musiques actuelles’, known as SMAC). In the field of leisure activities, Chez Narcisse appears as an exception because it has no subsidies and is independent. Alternatives to institutionalized spaces are rare, especially in a rural area where the cultural offering is much less than in the city. The Val d’Ajol is a commune that can be identified as a rural suburban town because, while the population is not very dense, it is nevertheless under the influence of an employment area. But, the nearest SMAC is located in the city of Epinal, more than 35 minutes away by car. The musicians who perform at Chez Narcisse emphasize the fact that it is the ‘hottest venue in France’ and that the welcome is incomparable. This is in contradiction to the ‘soulless’ structures, such as SMACs, and points to the significance of taking a sociological approach to rural environments, which are usually neglected, especially in relation to studies on subcultures (Farrugia, 2013). As such, this article questions how forms of daily resistance are implemented in order to build an ‘alternative’ place in the field of leisure time activities.
Contrary to the theories that present the reappropriation of counter-cultural movements by a market logic and the loss of their subversive political dimension (Heath and Potter, 2020), it is interesting to show that resistance to cultural hegemony does indeed exist at Chez Narcisse, but is more ‘low-profile’, in the ‘infrapolitical’ domain (Scott, 1990: 19). More precisely, it is worth understanding how a ‘social space’ such as Chez Narcisse allows the construction and expression of a ‘dissident subculture’ (1990: 217). In other words, in what way is Chez Narcisse a social place of resistance and what part does DIY play in this construction? The infrapolitical dimension of resistance is evident here in many strategic forms of discreet resistance. Applying Scott’s infrapolitical theorizing to leisure activities, resistance at Chez Narcisse appears as a situated response to a mainstream order. The objective is to study the processes and mechanisms of resistance from the interactions at play. These are expressed through the use of DIY, framed within underground culture (especially punk culture). More widely, the aim is to question the modalities of everyday life resistance within the framework of a leisure activity.
Methods
Methodologically speaking, these arts of resistance can be understood by studying the discourses and daily actions at the level of the bar/public house 3 and more broadly in the context of concerts. Initiated in 2017, the study started at Chez Narcisse relies on an ethnographic approach with the aim of constituting an ethnographic case study. To that end, 25 semi-structured interviews were carried out with key figures (owners, volunteers, musicians, regulars) and with other participants in the regional or national punk scene. These interviews have been analysed thematically (the DIY ethos, the audience and its changes, the gigs, the fun, subversion and/or resistance, death and melancholia, projects for the future, the past and the generations, etc.). Additionally, 31 participant observations were made at Chez Narcisse during gigs, during the local fair in February, and on occasions without gigs or events. I sometimes took part as a spectator and other times as a volunteer (in the kitchen or at the merchandising stand). Furthermore, an analysis of second-hand data (press articles, concert notes, etc.) was carried out along with work on the archives of the place (concert posters in particular), which corresponds to six days spent on site.
The approach taken here is not musicological. The choice was made to propose a wider reading of the place so as to reveal the forms of resistance initiated both by the musicians and the audience or the volunteers who bring Chez Narcisse to life. This research is based on the symbolic interactionist reading grid, from a micro perspective, and according to an ethnographic approach. Moreover, the construction of a ‘social world’ (Becker, 1984: 371) at Chez Narcisse is also based on the establishment of situated forms of resistance. Based on empirical work, the objective of this article is to show how a particular subculture responds to the mainstream order. The question of power is at the heart of these analyses, through the articulation between hegemony and resistance, thus addressing themes central to cultural studies (Hall, 2003) with a socio-anthropological approach. To show how the Narcissians mobilize DIY to create a social place of resistance, the first part will analyse the social construction of the place, between village sociability and punk culture, while refining the theoretical framework. The second part will scrutinize the different forms of daily resistances that manifest DIY principles, from materiality to utopian construction.
The Construction of an Alternative Place
From a Family Resistance Model to a Culture of the Margins
Throughout its existence and over time, Chez Narcisse has implicitly shown a family history of resistance, whether it be linked to the Second World War context or to punk as a music counter-culture. In any case, this venue is a place of resistance which provides culture of the margins. Generally, mainstream culture is associated with capitalist values (rationalization, control), professionalization and commodification (Beal, 1995). Conversely, so-called underground practices mobilize a lifestyle at the margins of the mainstream and their practitioners seek empowerment (Donnelly, 2008). For their part, underground practices are those that do not fall within traditional, legitimate or dominant frameworks. Punk culture, for example, has been part of the underground since its emergence because it seeks to subvert the established cultural and social order. The cultures that are inscribed in the field of the underground are struggles (Letson, 2022) – sometimes ephemeral – against the mainstream order.
In this perspective, resistance is a response to a dominant and mainstream power. With a collective dimension, it leads to ‘putting into practice a form of opposition to the power in place’ (Meudec, 2017) – that is to say, a hegemonic power. More precisely, resistance is a process that differs from usual speech and has a political aim (Fournier et al., 2016: 9) and expresses itself in different domains between poaching (De Certeau, 1990: 239) and infrapolitics (Scott, 1990). In this vein, Narcissian resistance can be understood as a collective reaction to established order, whether it be political, cultural or economic. At Chez Narcisse, contemporary resistance in relation to punk culture was built on Narcisse’s Resistance activities during WWII. Indeed, what was initially a family resistance against the German occupation or the dominant Catholic order then rooted itself in punk culture against liberalism and capitalism during the 1980s.
Punk culture, ‘an original artistic scene’ (Robène and Serre, 2016a: 84) is shifting and hard to grasp. A musical practice, culture and movement (Raboud, 2019a: 28), punk culture is an ‘expression of opposition’ (O’Hara, 2004: 59) and a movement of resistance against established order and the capitalist system. One of its characteristics is rebellion. In 1976–1977, punk culture focused on the refusal of ‘academic forms of culture’ as well as on the rejection of social conventions, embodied by an ‘energetic and provoking attitude’ (Robène and Serre, 2016b: 8). Refusing the music system, punk culture resorted to the culture of participation and established do-it-yourself as a ‘modus operandi’ (Hein, 2012a: 10). Indeed, ‘The DIY culture in the Anglo-American context began in earnest with the punk scene in the mid-1970s. The DIY subculture of punk, which gave rise to post-punk and later indie music, was pitched against the market ethos of professional music companies. Punk’s unique creativity and low-budget practices were conceived as an act of opposition to those in ‘corporate capitalism’, (Jian, 2018: 3). Furthermore, DIY is not limited to a youth culture – punks may also mobilize it as adults, in career choices, for example. In fact, DIY is not necessarily an opposition to the mainstream but rather a ‘sensibility’ (Haenfler, 2018) that allows for the pooling of diverse experiences and skills, with a view to independence.
As a part of ‘wider political, financial and cultural dynamics it agrees with and opposes’ (Raboud, 2019a: 28), the punk movement has different scenes that ‘oppose the establishment, dominant social classes and more generally power’ (2019a: 81). As a consequence, it shows an ‘idealistic’ or ‘utilitarian’ (Hein, 2012b: 118) ‘counter-cultural dynamic’, according to its context. In keeping with this, the French alternative rock current that emerged in the 1980s enhanced provocation through fun (Raboud, 2019a: 137), a strong festive dimension, while proposing politically committed texts (Robène and Serre, 2016b: 8). Sometimes called ‘second wave’ punk, alternative rock in France falls within the scope of the global punk movement. 4
At Chez Narcisse, punk culture arrived through this second wave, in the mid-1980s, with French bands such as Parabellum, Molodoï, les Garçons Bouchers, and others. With time, the old movie theatre became a punk music venue that is now widely acknowledged within the contemporary alternative music scene. While punk music is more an urban phenomenon (Raboud, 2019a: 35), it has managed to find a territory to express itself at the heart of the Vosges mountains. While youth cultures and subcultures, understood from the symbolic perspective of ‘economies of cool’, are essentially urban phenomena (Farrugia, 2015), at Chez Narcisse, young people from the village come to the concerts while other members of the audience sometimes travel from Paris and nearby urban centres. But the majority of visitors come from the adjacent, rural department and the regulars are those who live in the village or nearby. The ‘social world’ that took shape around Chez Narcisse aims less at overthrowing an established order than at proposing alternatives and ‘small scale solutions’ (Bennett, 2012: 28) to resist it. That is why Narcissian punk culture looks more like a subculture today than a counter-culture. While the latter identifies with larger scale resistance and sees itself as a worldwide movement (Bennett, 2012: 28), subculture seeks to deploy style, invested with new meaning, and resistance then becomes symbolic (Hebdige, 1996: 148). Beyond this opposition, the punk movement and its local variations can be thought of in terms of alternative culture (Tuaillon Demésy, 2018), margins (Robène and Serre, 2016b: 11) and resistance (Donaghey, 2019: 445). In other words, instead of having a binary reading that opposes rejection of the dominant order and inclusion of punk culture in the capitalist system, on the contrary, it is about highlighting the workarounds that aim at expressing a discreet or outspoken opposition to a dominant order (Bennett, 2012: 29). So it not the case that they have simply failed to integrate into mainstream culture (Chaney, 2004: 38), and these marginalized cultures should thus be seen as forms of resistance.
Chez Narcisse is a liminal and interstitial site: both a place linked to life (a bar) and to death (funeral parlour), a village space of intimacy as well as a territory of alterity through punk concerts. As a consequence, subcultural resistance does not take an organized or instituted form. On the contrary, the theoretical frame that Scott proposed allows us to see it as pertaining to the infrapolitical domain – that is ‘a wide variety of low-profile forms of resistance that dare not speak in their own name’ (Scott, 1990: 19). This ‘low-profile resistance’ contributes to constructing the basis of a social site of resistance, an intergenerational place and a place of expression of an underground music culture.
A Local Place of Resistance
In his analysis, Scott shows the appearance of a ‘hidden transcript’ that ‘characterizes discourse that takes place “offstage”, beyond direct observation by power holders. The hidden transcript is thus derivative in the sense that it consists of those offstage speeches, gestures, and practices that confirm, contradict or inflect what appears in the public transcript’ 5 (Scott, 1990: 4). Hence, this hidden transcript is ‘the privileged site for non-hegemonic, contrapuntal, dissident, subversive discourse’ (1990: 25). In short, the hidden transcript is a response to a dominant order, and infrapolitics become ‘a strategic form’ of resistance (1990: 199). More precisely, some spaces favour collective expression of the hidden transcript and contribute ‘to the socialization of resistant practices and discourses’ (1990: 118). Among them, some bars have a privileged place (1990: 121) because they make a ‘specific sociability’ possible and lead to the creation of local resistance (Gajewski, 2004). Chez Narcisse is one such bar because of its longevity of more than 130 years and its independence. Historically a place of criticism and subversion (Scott, 1990: 121), the bar can be a ‘haven’ (Gajewski, 2004) and a liminary space. Thus, it contributes to the creation of a ‘counterfactual social order’ (Scott, 1990: 81) by making the expression of a hidden transcript possible.
In this logic, this bar was from its origin a place that favoured the production of a resistance discourse, that spread through the decades. Narcisse’s arrest during the war and his conflict with the village priest have become founding tales of Narcissian identity. Told, written and illustrated (the poster of the movie Lucrèce Borgia 6 was painted in the dressing rooms), this moment of family history evoking the Resistance has become the subject of inter-generational transmission. What was first hidden (Narcisse’s actions in the 1940s) has become an identity marker that reminds us that Chez Narcisse has been a place of resistance for over 70 years. In other words, the hidden transcript contributes to the creation of a memory (Scott, 1990: 216) of resistance in this place. Today, punk culture takes over this daily expression of resistance. However, if the concerts are public and officially declared, the initial wartime Resistance hidden transcript nonetheless contributes to organizing the link between family history and the punk movement. Vincent, 30 years old, during an interview on a Saturday morning at the bar, explained to me: ‘[The first band that came over] Les Sheriff [. . .] Well from the start, the spirit [. . .] Well it met with what the local group of friends here wanted to do but unconsciously’. What is meant here in terms of subconsciousness finds its origins in the transmission of a hidden transcript from generation to generation.
As a social site of resistance, Chez Narcisse makes possible the expression of an alternative music culture that relies on the spread of a discourse that highlights resistance (family, political and cultural) and the wish to keep the ‘punk soul’ of the place alive. However, today resistance is no longer expressed ‘backstage’: within western societies, punk as a marginal culture has entered a process of globalization and the subversive discourse is now being played ‘on stage’. As a consequence, the hidden transcript is not enough to explain these subcultural leisure practices. Indeed, this Narcissian place leads us to propose complementary elements to Scott’s theory.
An ‘Upstage’ Performance
In the consideration proposed by Scott, the hidden transcript is limited to particular contexts in which open forms of resistance cannot be expressed. The majority of the examples he retained do not take place in a democratic environment (Chantraine and Ruchet, 2008: 8), even if Scott reminds his readers that the hidden transcript also exists in liberal societies. To go further and enrich this approach, it is worth focusing on the infrapolitics that are expressed at a micro sociological level in today’s democratic societies, particularly as far as leisure activities are concerned.
Music subcultures (like punk) or sport subcultures (like sliding sports or roller derby (Jarvie, 2006: 268; Beaver, 2012: 28)) propose ‘alternatives’ in response to a dominant order named the ‘mainstream’. However, these cultures of resistance are not expressed ‘backstage’ as they are neither hidden from the power holders nor isolated from the capitalist world in which they take place (Donaghey, 2019: 441). From then on, if mainstream practices are located ‘on stage’, to reproduce Scott’s theatre metaphor, then the example of Chez Narcisse allows us to conceive, more widely, that alternative practices are set ‘upstage’. Following this, it is no longer a hidden transcript, but it is not a public transcript carried by a dominant order that holds (cultural, political or financial) power either. It thus seems to be in-between, something that Scott did not mention but that can be highlighted here: a kind of transcript that can be expressed openly but that remains limited to specific places and times (a concert, for example), and that belongs to particular subcultures. This transcript, that can be called intrinsic, translates visible forms of resistance that are circumscribed to a space-time and that participate in the creation and perpetuation of an alternative dimension, at the margins of the dominant order. If domination creates the hidden transcript (Scott, 1990: 27), it also creates an intrinsic transcript, notably through mainstream economic and cultural valorization toward alternative culture and through normative distribution of what appears legitimate or not (Hall, 2007: 119–126). It is moreover possible to guess that this intrinsic transcript is tolerated by the dominant order as it is not officially repressed but rarely taken seriously by the power in place: because it is local and evanescent, it is not felt as an open force of resistance. Yet, as a hidden transcript, it contains an infrapolitical dimension.
To identify the resistance at stake at Chez Narcisse, it is necessary to have access to the intrinsic transcript. The latter is expressed though the discourses of musicians and regulars. It can take the form of lyrics that are sung during concerts or be given during an interview or in informal daily discussions. It relies on the model of resistance established by Narcisse, between family story and marginal culture. Following this, the collective imaginations 7 associated with Narcissian history contribute to the creation and continuity of the intrinsic transcript. If they can be understood as ‘systems of coherent thought that create values and play the role of justification to social action and reach collective memory’ (Charaudeau, 2007: 54), they can also be understood according to two dimensions: a structuring/instituting one and a dynamic/creative one (Haissat and Tuaillon Demésy, 2021). At Chez Narcisse, the collective imaginations associated with resistance restructured with time fall into the form of a dynamic dimension that articulates the hidden transcript (Narcisse’s opposition to the Catholic moral order of the 1940s, and political resistance to the Nazi Kommandantur), and an intrinsic transcript linked to punk culture and DIY. From the hidden transcript, these locally and temporally located acts of resistance have become dynamic forms of a collective imagination that are transmitted from generation to generation which, with the arrival of punk culture in that place, were shared beyond the family with the regulars. Today, this fertile ground for collective imaginations linked to resistance facilitates the expression of an intrinsic transcript and the creation of norms and values linked to punk culture. Scott briefly evokes the importance of collective imagination in the creation of a hidden transcript (Scott, 1990: 226). It thus seems legitimate to follow this lead in connection with the expression of an intrinsic transcript in subcultural leisure practices.
The intrinsic transcript is shown ‘on stage’ – it borrows codes and logics from the hidden transcript but it is not ‘hidden’. It performs publicly, while circumscribed to a particular subculture. In this perspective, the second part of this article analyses the forms of resistance that are located upstage and expressed through the intrinsic transcript of the collective imaginations associated with resistance at Chez Narcisse.
Daily Resistances and DIY
In his thesis, Scott establishes three forms of domination: ‘material’, ‘status’ and ‘ideological’, and evokes public and hidden responses to each of these dominations. As with the hidden transcript, the intrinsic transcript leads to the expression of subcultural infrapolitics and presents itself as a reaction to these three forms of domination (see Appendix). The particularity of this intrinsic Narcissian transcript is that it systematically uses DIY and is available through three forms: DIY in action, the inverted world, and utopian response.
DIY in Action
First of all, the intrinsic transcript must be understood as an answer to the material domination at stake at Chez Narcisse. It is part of the cultural and economic field, particularly through the public subsidies granted to music venues. In France, SMACs are contemporary music venues that satisfy criteria imposed by the Ministry of Culture (mainly in terms of artistic creations and spread) so as to receive subsidies. Chez Narcisse tends to distinguish itself from conventional venues not only in its programming, but above all through its way of doing things and the way in which it welcomes the wider public. Conviviality, trust and autonomy are the three pillars on which the specificity of the place is based. Furthermore, Vincent has no obligation to support ‘mainstream’ culture, nor does he have to satisfy any state-mandated criteria, and he can program what he wants. If the forms of public resistance are about music programmes that claim to be ‘punk’, and as a consequence ‘at the margin’, the hidden transcript might be ‘wild’ concerts. But, for Chez Narcisse, the response to this material and economic domination of mainstream music is in fact the mobilization of DIY as a tool to remain independent. The aim is to allow the setting up of gigs outside institutionalized and state-funded places. Gigs at Chez Narcisse are thus ‘upstage’ because they receive no financial support.
The terms of use of DIY at Chez Narcisse have changed over time, but DIY is always used ‘to make things’ (Ward, 1996: 91). In the 1980s, with the first concerts, DIY was a necessity: it was thus more ‘suffered’ than chosen (Le Roulley, 2016: 158). Everything had to be created and the events’ organization depended on actions of ‘bodging’. The volunteers I met told of the ‘home-made’ dimension that dictated their actions then. For example, Martin, one of the very first volunteers, tells: ‘There were 30 people, we made lights with the halogens’. It was the same for sticking up the posters that promoted the concerts: ‘We had a lot of hassle. We stuck up posters, we had a great time. We lived it up and partied a lot [. . .] When the concerts were packed, it was exceptional [. . .] We made the leaflets by hand, using felt-tip markers, we photocopied them all [. . .] We handed them out’ (Martin). This need to make do with what was available came from the family legacy of ‘resourcefulness’ and from local entrepreneurship. As an illustration, when Narcisse’s wife wanted to work professionally outside the bar, her husband proposed to use the garden to erect a movie theatre. These examples taken from Narcissian history show that DIY was then seen as a tool that was necessary to the implementation of cultural projects (cinemas, then concerts).
Today, the people who manage the place (owners, manager and volunteers) still use a DIY approach. Even if it is rarely phrased as such in the discourse, the wish to be materially independent still guides their actions. DIY is now ‘chosen’ – it is a resource used by the volunteers (Fine, 1989) to keep the place running. As Le Roulley reminds us (2016), DIY can be used as a political breach in the face of the cultural industries’ instituted order and it can go beyond the organization of events to favour collective productions. At Chez Narcisse, this phenomenon appears through a wish to experiment daily, without any pre-established project and contrary to what is usually requested for SMAC certification. In this sense, DIY has a political meaning. Vincent reminds that he has no ambition as to what this place should be: ‘We never wanted to claim to be Narcisse as a concert venue like this, or like that, or we are looking for this or that sort of audience [. . .] No, we remained quite open. The audience comes as they want, and we just follow’. Vincent is guided in its choices by a wish to test and discover (new bands, new party formulas, etc.), while having the regulars participate. There is a wish to co-construct the place with the Narcissians. Thus, DIY can become DIT (do-it-together). It is then about going from an individual approach to a collective experience (Donaghey, 2019: 445).
Overall, the search for economic and cultural independence is at the heart of the intrinsic transcript expressed by the actors at Chez Narcisse through DIY. This transcript shows a ‘relation of dissatisfaction toward the dominating music industry’ (Hein, 2016: 191) and relies on the resistant collective imaginations and family autonomy as regards the management of the business. It results in a refusal to resort to bank loans, security services during concerts, fences between the stage and the pit and so on. Historically a necessity, it has become a chosen and acted principle within a few decades. Following this, resistance is expressed daily through ways of doing that highlight what is local, authentic and proximal. In this vein, at Chez Narcisse, an eponymous beer was invented and brewed by Vincent with the collaboration of local partners. Authenticity is constitutive of Chez Narcisse resistance. It is a set of norms and values associated with a sometimes reinvented cultural and musical past (DIY in punk culture, tolerance, open-mindedness, etc.) (Raboud, 2019b). But it is also an action aimed at producing a distinction between insiders (those who belong to the group) and outsiders. In this case, one can evoke a situational authenticity: ‘Authenticity is situational – what is considered authentic under one set of conditions is not considered authentic under others’ (Harkness, 2012: 296). At Chez Narcisse, the authenticity mobilized by the actors hinges on independence and DIY. It is situational because it serves as a reminder of the identity of the venue, in contradistinction to other spaces.
An Upside Down World
In addition to this material dimension, domination is also expressed within a statutory or ‘institutional’ frame, concerning music experiences. Confronting the music business, the commodification and institutionalization of culture (for example, the disappearance of DIY in punk creation or the signing of contracts with non-independent labels), open resistance can valorize the development of alternative networks (tour promoters, producers, etc.), but can also be about style (Hebdige, 1996: 17). Indeed, the Mohawks, the tattoos, the piercings, the T-shirts of bands worn at Chez Narcisse remind us of a subversive collective imagination linked to punk culture.
At the infrapolitical level, resistance can first be expressed in a hidden transcript concerning alternative ways of life, such as squats. They are evoked in the discourses of the Narcissians about other places, mainly urban ones. After the concerts, it can also be about exchanging information on the presence of police and alcohol controls: alternative roads are then shared between regulars, to avoid detection for drunk driving. For example, after a concert during the winter of 2019, some regulars entered the bar and shouted that the gendarmes were stopping cars for alcohol checks ‘on the road to F’. The message was transmitted: some said that they would wait (until their blood-alcohol level goes down) and others that they would travel via ‘the road of the 4 grams’ (in reference to the limit for alcohol concentration in the blood), a road less known by the gendarmes. Beyond the need to avoid police controls, this infrapolitical resistance reflects a desire for freedom during festive concert evenings. The established order of the legitimacy of police enforcement is thus questioned at an infrapolitical level.
Concerning the intrinsic transcript, a wish to transform the existing order for a time is set up. DIY is ‘essentially radical and transformative’ (Donaghey, 2019: 445) and encourages collective experimentation (Hein, 2012b: 108), mainly at concerts. Thus, when DIY is shared and becomes collective, it is a creative mould and the expressed intrinsic transcript reveals the construction of a ‘world of meaning’, that answers to its own ‘rules of irrelevance’ (Goffman, 1961: 19). As new ‘worlds’, the concerts can be at times fun and festive, circumscribed within the space-time of the party. They can be associated with ‘Temporary Autonomous Zones’ (TAZ) within which a ‘party culture’ (Bey, 1997: 22) develops. ‘Liminary and evanescent’ (1997: 39), the TAZ is ‘like an insurrection but with no direct commitment against the State, a guerrilla operation that liberates a zone (field, time, imagination), then dissolves’ (1997: 14). As a result, the Narcissian festive parties are akin to many TAZ that express infrapolitical forms of resistance that are temporarily and geographically located, destined to disappear. More than that, each party is the reflection of a common construction based on do-it-together and a new social order is constructed. René, a singer in his 50s with a famous French punk-rock band, explains during an interview that the life in the pit is a world built ‘together’: ‘Most of the time, in a mosh, when someone falls on the ground, there are four other people to put him back on his feet in a second. The other day, everyone stepped aside [. . .] It was because a guy had lost his glasses. And so, there were those ten guys who were forming a circle, just like that, so that they could find the guy’s glasses’.
Moreover, concerts are times of carnival. ‘As a ‘ritual of reversal’, this carnival is a ‘realm of release’ that allows infrapolitical expression (Scott, 1990: 167, 175). At Chez Narcisse, the musicians and the audience are sometimes disguised; but beyond this visual aspect, the mobilization of ‘imaginative function’ (1990: 168) of the carnival, and more widely the rituals of inversion, express the eminently political dimension of these music festivals. René alludes to this inverted world during a concert: ‘Turn this room upside down, dammit!’. By saying this, he is alluding to the disorder in force in the pit during moshes and slams. 8 The subversive dimension of concerts is given through the reversal of the established norms aiming at contesting what is established, particularly the distance between the stage and the audience. Indeed, reminiscent of the legacy of punk culture, the Narcissians get onstage, thus abolishing the statutory hierarchy that exists between the artists and the audience by introducing disorder. The mode of public functioning of the pit contributes to the reversal of values through the use of DIT. The aim is to create something collectively (a mosh-pit, a festive time), not just to consume the gig as spectators. Through DIT, the Narcissians become actors. In addition to the pleasure of the moment, that is made possible thanks to the creation of an ephemeral group, the physical expression of fun during a concert reveals a desire for independence: ‘Opposition to power is thus collectively performed during concerts [. . .] Fun fully contributes to this denunciation through dance and shouts’ (Raboud, 2019a: 159). As shown by Scott in the case of the hidden transcript, the intrinsic transcript sometimes presents itself as an open preparation to resistance on the front stage, and not merely as a ‘safety-valve’ (Scott, 1990: 186) that makes it possible to supervise any desire for revolt. This conception can be found in the discourse of the musicians, both on and off stage. Yann, 45 years old, is a singer in a punk-rock band. He explains how he combines music, punk and open resistance: ‘You know, I won’t vote for a prick to make room for another prick. I am a punk, I don’t give a damn! If we have to take up arms, we will’. The intrinsic transcript formed by the creation of an inverted world during concerts at Chez Narcisse here meets the possible enunciation of a hidden transcript ‘on stage’, with the difference that the intrinsic transcript remains limited to the Narcissian subculture, upstage.
As a result, the concerts at Chez Narcisse represent moments that are beyond daily life, and allow the establishment of a zone of festive disorder. These parties constitute as multiple TAZ, collectively forged through DIT, which put forward a hedonistic dimension and are carnivalistic. Through DIY – or rather DIT – a culture of resistance is being built that extols subversion through partying, as an answer to the ‘institutional’ domination of mainstream culture.
Narcissian Utopia
Ideological domination is the third axis in Scott’s formulation. At Chez Narcisse, in view of ‘academic’ culture as embodied by the SMAC, open resistance is made through a particular attention to local authenticity faced with the globalization of communication: the bar wants to appear as a place of village sociability. Behind the scenes, resistance is expressed in the discourses of the regulars about anarchist theories and direct action. In this way, Scott addresses utopias in reference to the hidden transcript (Scott, 1990: 102). However, these utopias also exist in the intrinsic transcript. In this regard, the Narcissians resort to DIY as a system of thought that allows the creation of a utopia.
Utopia is a thought experiment aiming towards emancipation (Wright, 2020) and with an objective of contestation (Ricœur, 1984: 63). Yet, it is also a ‘reaction’ (Cossette-Trudel, 2010) that can become real and concrete. At Chez Narcisse, utopia is both a thought held in the long term, the collective imagination of family and inter-generational resistance, and a concrete but ephemeral realization during concerts (Tuaillon Démesy, 2021). Utopia is closely linked to DIY as a philosophy: indeed, beyond its material implementation, DIY is also a way of understanding the world and of trying to transform it (Hein, 2012a: 53).
First of all, the DIY model contains a ‘rupturist’ utopian dimension, a wished-for rupture or breach from what exists so as to produce a new ‘vision of the world’ (Le Roulley, 2016: 167). This utopian conception, however, remains limited because of the material constraints that re-establish DIY within a market economy. At Chez Narcisse, it is, for example, the case when the manufacturing of T-shirts uses the textile industry for their printing. In Hein’s typology of punk action, the author notes that ‘anarchist punks and free-thinkers are guided by a unitary dream that aims, for the former, at breaking with capitalism, and for the latter at the coming of a rationalist utopia’ (Hein, 2012b: 117). Here can be found the idea of the breach and of a concrete utopia. At Chez Narcisse, activity chimes with one or other of these two tendencies: the breach from economy is clear in their refusal to take out a loan by using DIY, while this same DIY logic can also allow the experimentation and construction of a ‘warm’ place. Vincent emphasizes this aspect of DIY: ‘It is part of [. . .] the warmth we want to share. It is simply about welcoming people with a smile, it is part of the atmosphere [. . .] We may well post for the concert, greeting with a smile is still the most important thing’. In this sense, as Guerra reminds us, DIY is linked to empowerment: it allows people to be ‘proactive’, so as to create alternative lifestyles (Guerra, 2018). Whether it be for concerts or for life at the bar, the watchword is the same: Chez Narcisse is made to be a collective lively place of discussion.
Utopia is also expressed through the celebration of concerts. The TAZ, via their festive dimension, often use the codes of utopia as the concerts contribute to the ‘reinforcement of daily life’ (Bey, 1997: 32). The latter become local places of ephemeral utopias. Indeed, music and its bodily expression are reminders of the wish to ‘live life intensely’ (1997: 60) and to share a collective moment. Rémi, around 60 years old, is the singer and guitarist of a Celtic-punk band:
We need to live conviviality. For me, each concert is a sort of ceremony [. . .] Everyone speaks together, sweats together, lives very intense moments [. . .] It illustrates manners, still with our differences. For me, that’s all it is about. And by the way, togetherness is prohibited in our society, because it disturbs the system.
Finally, utopia depends on the creation of an out-of-time environment or ‘achrony’. It is expressed during concerts through the making of a ‘timelessness’ that opposes the one-dimensional and linear time of today’s western societies. More precisely, during a concert, the Narcissians express three different times. The first is the time of the youthful past. It is about becoming teenagers again in the pit or on stage: punk culture makes it possible to be a child at heart and to remain young. Ludo, 50 years old, a guitar player, says: ‘Many bands keep on playing [on stage]. Guys who are 70 years old! Saying that, it proves that it is not a question of age!’ Past time is also the time of punk collective imagination that is expressed through symbols of the 1970s–1980s: Mohawk hairdo, safety pin, but also carnival outfit (make-up, whistle, etc.) that recall the stage performances of the famous 1980s alternative rock band: Bérurier Noir. The second time is that of the future, thought through the No Future slogan (concerning the capitalist system). The rejection of an economic and political model is associated with a wish to transmit punk cultural norms to the young generations. The regulars who are in their 40s for example, now attend concerts with their children. The third time is that of the present time and of fun. The ‘achrony’ of music parties at Chez Narcisse is located outside daily life, in a festive time (Fournier, 2021), and contributes to the collective production of a utopia. The regulars create new rules (the rules of the pit) and a new time so as to experiment a utopian, though ephemeral, social order. The fun of the moment is valorized, as is the pleasure of common creation (do-it-together). The utopia that is allowed by ‘achrony’ reveals the intrinsic transcript peculiar to Narcissian culture: utopian concrete realization is a criticism of capitalistic and progressive ideology. By substituting ‘timelessness’ in place of one-dimensional time, the concerts become confined forms of resistance.
This utopian formalization contributes to making this form of resistance visible at the level of the Narcissian group. The concerts are outlets facing the ideological domination of mainstream culture and they are so many ‘havens’ (Pessin, 2001: 101) within which a new world is being built. The use of DIY/DIT as a system of thought allowing the collective creation of an ephemeral and anachronistic social world is fulfilled upstage, in a delimited frame of Narcissian punk culture. The occasional utopian reactions that the concerts represent at Chez Narcisse appear as ‘cracks’ in the daily time of the ‘dominating social structure’ (Wright, 2020: 439) and reveal the subcultural infrapolitical dimension that takes place at the heart of a small village.
Conclusion
As a conclusion, Chez Narcisse is a place of social resistance as it offers a space-time that is propitious for the emergence of resistance upstage. Today expressed within an underground music experience, among a group of peers at a determined time (the time of concerts or around a beer at the bar), the Narcissian intrinsic transcript is a response to the different forms of domination (mainly cultural and economic) suffered in a rural place. Contrary to the hidden transcript, the intrinsic transcript finds a possible expression publicly, but upstage. If it can be expressed, it is nonetheless not declared as an open resistance to established order. Based on the ‘small scale solutions’ (Bennett, 2012: 28) that are specific to subcultures, it demonstrates a collective social construction aiming at expressing other ways of doing on a daily basis.
Moreover, this intrinsic transcript relies on the use of DIY, as a tool (even a necessity) to find solutions to the material and concrete domination of mainstream culture. It is then DIY ‘in action’. Furthermore, DIY can also become DIT when it is a creating mould whose aim is to produce a response to the standardized frame set by the cultural institutions, notably the distinction between the audience and artists. In this case, DIY logic, collectively shared, acts as a possibility that is offered to the Narcissian group (the regulars, the volunteers and musicians) to establish a festive disorder and to turn the world upside down for the time of a concert. It is thus possible to draw a parallel with what Ward writes about ‘Anarchy in action’: DIY is also a way to understand ‘how people organise themselves’ (Ward, 1996: 8). DIY is a system of thought that triggers the creation of a concrete utopia, an ephemeral collective world, in opposition to the dominating ideology of linear time in force in today’s western societies.
Under its different aspects, DIY contributes to the construction of a social place of infrapolitical resistance. It allows the concrete expression of utopian thought at a local level (the concert hall in the village) while articulating it within globalized collective imaginations of resistance (the wartime Resistance, punk culture rebellion, carnival characteristics) that constitute the breeding ground of the intrinsic transcript. More precisely, the dynamic Narcissian collective imagination of resistance, from the 1940s to today’s ephemeral utopia and the arrival of alternative rock in the mid-1980s, contributes to the creation of daily resistance. Above all, Chez Narcisse is a place of exchanges and sociability in a rural environment. This ‘social space’ is still today a place of ‘dreams [and] [. . .] anger shared’ (Scott, 1990: 223) that transmits a taste for ‘blasphemy, and disorder [. . .] usually at odds with official culture’ (1990: 121), no longer ‘backstage’ but ‘onstage’, ’upstage’, thus proposing a localized and temporarily delimited resistance.
That being said, Chez Narcisse’s resistance exists on different levels. On the side of the owners, it occurs daily and aims to respect the situational authenticity of the place. On the side of the regulars, because it is part of a leisure activity, it is ephemeral. In all cases, it is only partial. The independence is not total and DIY is sometimes not implemented or evident. Moreover, production (of music, of an upside-down world, etc.) is not independent of consumption: the regulars of Chez Narcisse live in the contemporary capitalist system. In this sense, they deal with it. If they are against a certain number of values conveyed by economic liberalism, they rather evoke the desire to do ‘differently’, ‘alongside’ rather than ‘against’. Resistance is experienced as a one-time alternative to a hegemonic order that cannot be broken. Finally, this case study highlights situated forms of resistance upstage. These alternatives invite us to think, more globally, of acts of resistance in the field of leisure activities, notably musical. Indeed, whereas counter-cultures are at the margins of a dominant order and are in open conflict with it (Crosset and Beal, 1997), subcultures do not position themselves as a rejection of the normative model but rather exist with, beside, and during the everyday. Chez Narcisse illustrates this process of resistance at the margins, upstage, and invites us to question other subcultures from this perspective.
Footnotes
Appendix
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
Author biography
Audrey Tuaillon Demésy is assistant professor at the University of Franche-Comté (laboratory C3S). She is currently managing the program Aiôn: Socio-anthropology of the imaginary of time. More particularly, her research aims to understand, from a socio-ethnographic point of view, the making of alternative leisure activities and cultures of resistance.