Grinding California

»Grinding California« provides the first academic analysis of the subculture of skate punk at book-length. It establishes highly critical evaluations of the discourses that influenced early skateboarding and punk cultures. Based on an examination of songs, flyers, magazines, and videos, Konstantin Butz revisits American popular cultures of the 1980s and approaches them from a variety of theoretical and methodological angles. He introduces contemplations of the rebellious potential that can be located within skate punk's material and corporeal contestations of the site-specific locale of suburban Southern California. Theoretical recourses to thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Jean Baudrillard and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht are topped off with excerpts from interviews with some of the most influential protagonists of the 1980s skate punk scene.

Konstantin Butz (Dr. phil.) has studied American Studies and Cultural Studies at the University of Bremen and at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He completed his dissertation as a scholarship holder of the a.r.t.e.s. Research School at the University of Cologne in 2011. His research interests include (Un-)popular Music and Literature.