Home > Catalogue > Venezia Arti > 28 | 2019 > Remaking the Body Politic Anew through Mob and Gang

Venezia Arti | Vol. 28 | December 2019

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Research Article

Remaking the Body Politic Anew through Mob and Gang

King Mob Echo and Up Against the Wall Motherfucker (1968-1970)

David A.J. Murrieta Flores    University of Essex, UK    

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abstract

The aim is to analyse how the British, radical avant-garde collective King Mob (KM) and the American Up Against the Wall Motherfucker (UAWMF) developed an idea of the body rooted in the Gothic and Romantic imagery of the monster and the mob that emphasised the revolutionary potential of ugliness. The body bridged aesthetics and politics, co-extensive with organisational principles that confronted society at large. On the one hand, KM viewed the ugliness of the mob as a physical force whose imagery was strong enough to destabilise the State, while on the other, UAWMF understood the hostility of society towards the body of the hippie as the locus point of a new identity and discourse for it.

Published
Dec. 11, 2019
Accepted
Sept. 24, 2019
Submitted
July 19, 2019
Language
EN

Keywords: Gothic • Revolutionary avant-garde • 1960s radicalism • Avant-garde • Neo-avant-garde • Aesthetics and politics

permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/VA/2385-2720/2019/01/009

Copyright: © 2019 David A.J. Murrieta Flores. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.