“I'm Set Free…”

The Velvet Underground, 1960s Counterculture, and Michel Foucault

Bibliographic Data

ID17599256
AuthorsMatthew Bannister (0000-0001-5273-6819, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume33
Issue2
Pages163-178
Publication date2010-03-25
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePopular Music & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0300-7766 • E-ISSN: 1740-1712
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/03007760903142889
OpenAlexW2060807184
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited18

This article explores concepts of freedom, repression, and sexuality in Western society and popular music, in relation to selected aspects of Michel Foucault's writing and the work of the Velvet Underground. Both were critically responding to the “repressive hypothesis” implicit in 1960s countercultural discourses of liberation from oppression, by highlighting the role of the gaze in power relations, its role in both disciplining and constructing sexual and other identities, and how possibilities for action or resistance can be enacted only through material and pragmatic interventions within existing power relations, rather than by reference to an imagined Utopia "beyond power."

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Counterculture · Hegemony · Human sexuality · Michel foucault · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Utopia · Anthropology · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · Law · Music History and Culture