I live sweat...

“Zines and the (increasingly understood to be) free and open Internet are a way to dissolve barriers traditionally made too daunting by class structures.” - Nowah Jacobs weighs in on the topic of grass-roots media.

(Andy’s note: This piece is a response to a previous guest post on this topic which you can find here)

(photo by Naomi Nagler)

I have looked at academic papers written by my peers at university and I have been able to point out inconsistencies in their uses of APA, MLA, and Chicago citation styles. I have been encouraged by my professors to submit my own academic works to journals with the word Quarterly in the title. I regularly look up that Pictures of Sad Children comic of David Foster Wallace trapped on a desert island and laugh out loud. I, like Costa Koutsoutis, personally place value on my own literacy and, (too often), on the literacy of others, but yet I diverge quickly and harshly from the thesis of his recent I Live Sweat essay.

Academe is an institution historically at odds with a punk rock ethic. Consider the frequently massive disparities in academic literacy rates, and, indeed, overall scholastic success, across race-, gender-, and class-based lines. It seems to me as though Costa writes from a similar degree of privilege from which I do. If there was one thing I wasn’t made to struggle with, it was my right to learn. But I acknowledge, appreciate, and regret that the same cannot be said for many of my peers in punk who, for one reason or dozens, have not been afforded the same opportunity.

If I insist that I want nothing to do with his rough drafts, I’m minimizing the experiences of my roommate who wasn’t properly taught, by a failing public education system, the difference between your and you’re. If I throw away Cheap Toys #7 without reading it because academic English is not my friend’s first language, I am engaging in the symbolic annihilation of his entire culture. If someone’s print job is a little fudged because she can’t afford to spend eighteen cents a page to have it done at Staples, I owe it to her to listen to what she has to say. It’s unlikely that many people do, and frankly I find it unlikely that she’s taking herself any less seriously than the “big boys” clinging to a crumbling infrastructure of boarded up Boarders’ and blog-of-the-week book deals.

Zines and the (increasingly understood to be) free and open Internet are a way to dissolve barriers traditionally made too daunting by class structures. They have emerged as an invaluable lesson in each individual’s entitlement to an opinion. And it is baffling, to me, the notion that we as punks should do anything but nurture that creativity in each other. Jen Twigg says of sexism in the punk scene that we “owe it to ourselves to grow and learn together.” I think that her outlook extends to this discussion as well. We must direct our rage toward the institutions that have failed us, rather than faulting each other for being failed by them. We owe it to ourselves to grow and learn and teach together, and we deserve to be supported by our community.

And if my advisor, Dr. Jody Waters, had refused to look at my drafts, I wouldn’t have graduated college with the capacity to reject my privilege in this way.

Nowah Jacobs is a writer, bassist, and radio producer living vicariously through Bloomington, Indiana. He has an intense love for roadside America, and would love to read everything that you have ever written in your whole entire life. He can be contacted at yummyache.tumblr.com.