Title: Punk positif: DIY production and the politics of value in

the Indonesian hardcore punk scene

Author: Sean Martin-Iverson

Affiliation: Anthropology and Sociology, The University of Western Australia

Paper presented to the ‘Keep it Simple, Make it Fast! Underground Music Scenes and
DIY Cultures’ International Conference, 8 - 11 July 2014, Porto, Portugal

Correspondence to: Sean Martin-Iverson, School of Social Sciences M257, The University
of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley WA 6009 Australia. Email:
smartiniverson@graduate.uwa.edu.au

Acknowledgments: This paper is based on research funded in part by a Hackett

Postgraduate Research Scholarship from The University of Western Australia. Fieldwork in
Indonesia was made possible by the sponsorship of Professor Kusnaka Adimihardja from the
Indonesian Resource Centre for Indigenous Knowledge, Universitas Padjadjaran. I would
also like to thank my friends from the Kolektif Balai Kota and all the other anak DIY in
Bandung for offering me their cooperation, insight, and tolerance.

1
Abstract:
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with the Kolektif Balai Kota, a DIY hardcore organising
collective in Bandung, West Java, this paper explores the value politics of DIY production,
both in the specific context of Indonesian hardcore punk and as a more general strategy for
creative autonomy and social transformation. These DIY activists position DIY hardcore as a
form of “positive punk”, putting into practice the values of community and autonomy which
constitute the DIY ethic. Through their non-profit hardcore performances and other practices
of DIY production and exchange, they are attempting to sustain an autonomous community
outside of capitalist circuits of value. However, while they have been quite successful in
establishing a cultural commons of shared value and evading many forms of alienated labour,
the autonomy of the DIY hardcore community remains partial, precarious and contested.
Furthermore, I argue that this form of “positive punk” remains within a dialectical value
struggle connected to an anti-capitalist politics of antagonism and negation.

Keywords: hardcore punk; Indonesia; DIY production; politics of value; political punk

Introduction
Indonesia is home to a thriving, diverse, and contested punk scene, with a legacy of
combative street politics alongside a distinctly entrepreneurial approach to production (see
Martin-Iverson, 2012). This scene also includes a smaller Do It Yourself hardcore current,
striving to realise a form of autonomous community based on non-commercial DIY
production. These anak DIY (DIY kids) position their activities as a positive punk alternative
to the aestheticised rebellion and spectacular protest politics which have characterised
Indonesian punk. In this paper, I examine the value politics of this DIY hardcore current in
the Indonesian scene, describing their attempts to realise the DIY punk values of autonomy
and community through the social organisation of DIY production, while critically assessing
the political significance of DIY hardcore as an attempt to construct a positive alternative to
the capitalist value system.
I focus especially on the Kolektif Balai Kota (BalKot), a DIY hardcore organising
collective in the city of Bandung, West Java, where I conducted fieldwork in 2004 and 2005.
Emerging in the early 2000s from a group promoting the straight edge lifestyle of abstinence
and self-control, this collective soon set aside its straight edge exclusivity to develop a focus
on DIY production. This shift was encouraged in part by their developing links to global DIY
hardcore networks and anti-capitalist movements, but also by their own critical reaction to the
commercialisation of the Indonesian punk scene, associated with wider processes of
neoliberalisation in the context of post-authoritarian Indonesia (Heryanto & Hadiz, 2005).
Following the overthrow of Suharto’s New Order dictatorship in 1998, the subsequent
Reformasi period was characterised by a degree of liberalisation, democratisation, and

2
decentralisation of Indonesian political and cultural life – but also by privatisation,
commodification, and fragmentation.
With the decline of the confrontational street politics of the anti-dictatorship struggle,
and the rise of a more entrepreneurial approach to scene development, the anak DIY have
turned towards a prefigurative value politics of community-building and autonomous
production. Rather than confronting the state, they seek to evade capitalist commodification
and alienation through constructing an autonomous community organised around a creative
commons of DIY hardcore. They also seek to both articulate and put into practice the
alternative DIY values of kemandirian (autonomy) and komunitas (community). The anak
DIY describe their activities as a form of “punk positif” (positive punk), emphasising the
creative production of new forms of value and social organisation as against a purely negative
critique or protest.
DIY hardcore constitutes an emergent value system, or set of value practices,
organised around qualitative values of autonomy and community which are consciously
mobilised through the common practices and social relations of DIY production. DIY
production can thus be considered a form of self-valorisation, the autonomous production of
values outside the circuits of capital (Cleaver, 1989, 1992; Holtzman, Hughes & Van Meter,
2007; Shukaitis, 2010; Ovetz, 1993). For some of the anak DIY, their DIY value practices are
consciously positioned as part of an anarchist or autonomist political strategy of refusal or
exodus, a militant and strategic withdrawal from capitalist relations of production (Hardt &
Negri, 2005; Papadopoulos, Stephenson & Tsianos, 2008; Tronti, 1980).
However, their DIY activities are marked by a tension between the use of DIY
hardcore to express a utopian vision of an ideal society and their focus on the everyday
experience of autonomous cultural production. This tension contributes to the dynamic
atmosphere of the community, but also to its ultimately unstable existence as a temporary
conjunction of particular political, economic, and aesthetic practices. Through their DIY
value practices, the anak DIY are seeking to realise a degree of autonomy from capital, but in
doing so they are also bound up in an antagonistic relationship with its ongoing processes of
expansion, enclosure, and exploitation. I thus consider DIY hardcore to be a form of value
struggle, located neither entirely outside nor entirely within capitalist circuits of value (De
Angelis, 2007).

The Kolektif Balai Kota

3
 While the organisational structure of Indonesian DIY hardcore is quite fluid, for much
of the 2000s the DIY community in Bandung has been based around the Kolektif Balai Kota
(BalKot), an organising collective named after their regular meeting place on a flight of steps
in front of Bandung’s City Hall (Balai Kota). Most BalKot participants are members of one
or more of the DIY hardcore bands from the Bandung area, although there are various other
ways to participate in the community. It is a fairly small group without formal membership;
meetings usually attract between 15 and 30 people, who gather to organise hardcore punk
shows, hold discussions, trade cassettes, CDs, and other merchandise, and also to nongkrong
(hang out) and socialise. BalKot serves as a central meeting place and networking hub for the
anak DIY, helping to bring together various DIY activities, projects and enterprises into a
coherent community. The collective is rather marginal in relation to the broader scene, but
also stands out as a bastion of hardcore authenticity and commitment to DIY principles.
The meetings at BalKot were initially organised in 2002 as a successor to the defunct
Sadar181 straight edge collective, and although the group has since developed beyond its
straight edge origins, the straight edge lifestyle and the associated youth crew style of
hardcore remain prominent in the group. More broadly, a degree of subcultural identification
with hardcore punk continues to inform the cultural production and community-organising
work of BalKot. Although many BalKot activists define DIY as a broadly applicable ethic of
self-organisation and independent production, the collective’s major activity is to organise
DIY hardcore punk shows.
Participants in BalKot – collectively known as anak BalKot or anak DIY – are mainly
young men in their late teens and twenties, who are actively involved in hardcore bands, DIY
record labels, zines, and similar projects associated with DIY hardcore and related styles of
musical and cultural production. The anak DIY are drawn from various neighbourhoods in
Bandung and surrounding towns, and are typically well-educated urban youth with a
‘modern’ and globalised cultural outlook yet relatively low or inconsistent income. Most are
students and/or precariously employed in the service and cultural industries. The anak DIY
are also involved in various forms of anti-capitalist, anarchist, or related social movement
activities; for example, there is significant overlap with the local branch of Food Not Bombs,
and BalKot activists were also involved in the Apokalips anti-capitalist collective and the
Jaringan Anti-Otoritarian (Anti-Authoritarian Network).
The organisational meetings at BalKot are held quite consistently every Wednesday
night, while some of the anak DIY also gather at BalKot to socialise on Saturday nights. The
major collective activity of BalKot is to organise non-profit, non-sponsored shows for local

4
and touring DIY hardcore bands, though the group also plays a role in coordinating other
activities of the DIY community. Skill-sharing workshops are occasionally organised through
BalKot, on topics such as screen-printing and badge-making. The meetings are also used for
discussions on DIY principles, the role of straight edge, the state of the scene, and broader
social, political, and philosophical issues. BalKot is also a place to hang out, chat and gossip
with friends, swap music, zines, merchandise, and books, keep in touch with scene and
activist news and events, and meet up before going to shows.
BalKot is part organising collective and part social gathering; the organisational and
political work of the BalKot collective is embedded in a context of personalised DIY
hardcore activities and exchanges. There is usually some degree of separation between the
more ‘serious’ discussions and organisational work at the BalKot meetings and the
surrounding social activities, but they are not always clearly demarcated. The demand for
practical organisation asserts itself most strongly in the immediate lead-up to a show, with
venues to book, publicity to produce, and funds to raise. At the same time, BalKot activists
value the open, informal, and non-hierarchical nature of the group.
As they have focused on their own DIY activities, BalKot and the anak DIY have
increasingly become detached from the more commercial punk scene. This growing
separation is in part a contest over subcultural identity, but it is also a conflict over economic
and political principles. Despite their commitment to hardcore punk, the anak DIY have
developed an increasing suspicion of subcultural identities and lifestyle politics, as expressed
through their increasing self-distancing from the straight edge hardcore origins of their
community and a growing emphasis on DIY as a more general ethic of autonomous
production.

Positive Punk: From Straight Edge to DIY

BalKot emerged from the earlier Sadar181 straight edge collective, and straight edge
practices and discourses continue to have a significant influence on the positioning and
understanding of DIY hardcore in Bandung. Straight edge is a lifestyle practice of strict
abstinence from alcohol, nicotine, other drugs, and often from casual sex and meat-eating as
well, with its origins in the American DIY hardcore scene (Haenfler, 2006; Wood, 2006).
Straight edge is itself often positioned as a positive punk alternative to the hedonistic and
consumerist excesses of the punk lifestyle, and the straight edgers at BalKot tend to regard it
as a form of anti-capitalist practice rather than in terms of individual morality, influenced by
wider convergence between straight edge and anarcho-punk (see Kuhn, 2010). However, as

5
the collective has moved away from an exclusive straight edge youth crew identity and
incorporated other styles of DIY hardcore, they have begun to define positive punk primarily
in terms of DIY production, while viewing straight edge as a valid but not necessary personal
choice for those striving to live DIY.
Straight edge has a historical association with DIY hardcore, having been pioneered
by Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat and Dischord Records, and developing as a distinct
subcultural identity within largely American DIY hardcore scenes in the 1980s and 1990s.
Straight edge travelled to the Bandung scene through such associations, being adopted
especially as part of the youth crew hardcore style. The relationship between straight edge
and DIY is thus in part a contingent historical association, though there is also a degree of
elective affinity between straight edge and DIY as “positive punk” alternatives to the
symbolic negativity often associated with punk. Indeed, the anak DIY often describe both
straight edge and DIY hardcore as “the counter-culture within the counter-culture”, opposing
what they view as self-defeating and readily co-opted forms of subcultural transgression.
The popularity of straight edge among the anak DIY may also be explained in part by
its appeal to Muslim punks, who are seeking a way to reconcile their subcultural identity with
their adherence religious practices. A majority of the anak DIY come from Muslim
backgrounds, and a significant minority are pious practitioners, albeit often critical of the
dominant religious institutions in Indonesia. However, the anak DIY disavow any necessary
or deterministic connection between straight edge and Islam, and the correspondence is
imperfect. In any event, there are several non-Muslim straight edgers among the anak DIY,
while the majority of “drunk punks” in Bandung are at least notionally Muslim.
When discussing the role or significance of straight edge to their personal lives, DIY
activities, or the wider scene, the anak DIY tend to describe it as a way of enacting and
embodying their DIY values of autonomy and community. As Haenfler (2006) argues,
straight edge is not only a personal commitment to “clean-living” but also constitutes a social
movement for positive social change. Some straight edgers go further to position it as a form
of radical anti-capitalist action (Kuhn 2010). Certainly, anti-consumerism, anti-capitalism,
feminism, environmentalism, and animal liberation all form points of convergence between
straight edge and anarcho-punk among the anak DIY. During the height of the anarcho-punk
movement in Bandung in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was an attempt to establish a
militant straight edge current, as advocated for by the Sadar181 collective.
However, while straight edge lifestyle practices continue to be important to many of
the anak DIY, there has been a marked decline in strident displays of straight edge identity or

6
explicitly straight edge activities among them. The DIY community organised around BalKot
is not an exclusively straight edge community, and those who are straight edge make a point
of stressing their tolerant approach. While aggressive “drunk punk” behaviour is strongly
deprecated among the anak DIY, adherence to specific straight edge practices or the adoption
of a straight edge identity is viewed as a personal choice (see Martin-Iverson 2006). This
shift reflects a repositioning of the Bandung community within global hardcore, and in
particular its alignment with progressive or radical DIY hardcore currents as against the
ossifying and increasingly politically reactionary “hardline” straight edge scenes. At a local
level, this also enables them to distance their own commitments to clean-living from the often
coercive morality campaigns launched by conservative religious and political organisations.
Finally, the decline of straight edge campaigning among the anak DIY has resulted
from their development of a self-critique of straight edge as a commodified subculture.
Within the wider Bandung hardcore scene, the symbols and styles of straight edge have
become rather disconnected from any association with personal transformation and social
change. The anak DIY are also critical of their own tendencies towards deploying straight
edge as a style, or as a means to pass judgment on the personal lives of others, rather than as a
movement towards a positive social alternative. Thus, even while many continue to practice
elements of a straight edge lifestyle, the anak DIY have been withdrawing from straight edge
as a distinct subculture or movement, and instead reconstituting their community on the basis
of a shared commitment to DIY production. Still, the legacy of their straight edge origins
remains in their emphasis on DIY hardcore as a positive punk movement for change, and
their critique of the wider punk scene as a reduction of punk to aestheticized and
commodified form of symbolic negation. BalKot activist and practicing straight edger
Youth666Crew distinguishes between the negative surface of punk and a positive inner
essence:
Like some people just misinterpret the appearance, and sometimes they even label
punks as being criminals. But sometimes the appearance isn’t the same as what’s
inside, right? Sometimes good people don’t – it’s like Minor Threat says,
“Sometimes good guys don’t wear white”, youknow? (Interview with Youth666Crew,
2005; my translation)

The Ethic of DIY Production

For the anak DIY, the essence of positive punk is a commitment to building an
autonomous community of creative production. The etika DIY (DIY ethic) is an ethic of
practice – a conviction that punk is not primarily a style or even an identity, but rather a set of

7
practices of production and social organisation that enact the DIY values of autonomy
(kemandirian) and community (komunitas). Rather than a contradiction between
individualism and collectivism, these values are united in the autonomous community of DIY
hardcore.
O’Hara (1999) describes DIY punk as an anti-authoritarian philosophy of
independence and self-expression, and this corresponds closely with the DIY value of
autonomy as understood by the anak DIY in Bandung. An aspect of this is the assertion of
aesthetic independence from the market, establishing DIY punk as a distinct field of cultural
production (Moore, 2007, O’Connor, 2008, Thompson, 2004). Yet this approach to DIY –
emphasising aesthetic rather than political autonomy – can also lead to an entrepreneurial
ethic of individual enterprise and neoliberal precariousness, as it has done in the wider
independent music scene in Bandung (Luvaas, 2012; Martin-Iverson, 2012). The anak DIY
reject the reduction of the DIY ethic to a form of “guerrilla capitalism” (Silverstein, 2006).
Instead, they position DIY production as a form of radical self-organisation, autonomous
from the logic of the market as well as its dominant institutions. In contrasting DIY hardcore
with the more commercial Bandung scene, Ari Ernesto describes DIY production as:
a collection of activities where independence – independency – is seen as a political
stance. There is more of a promotion of community power, rather than dependence on
a more dominant side or entity, like major labels for example. DIY is more
philosophical, but also tactical, because people who have faith in DIY, see DIY as a
weapon for, like, striking against the music industry, for example. Or the popular
culture industry, or the culture industry. By doing things by themselves, without
dependence or help from corporations, from enterprise and all that. So in my opinion,
this independency makes DIY a form of militancy. DIY is more militant, right? While
on the other side, maybe they’ve lost some of this independent attitude, they just want
to replicate the capitalist model or system, right? (Interview with Ari Ernesto, 2004;
my translation)

While “Do It Yourself” suggests a rather individualistic approach to production, for

the anak DIY it is fundamentally a collective practice; the etika DIY incorporates a strong
value of community, and indeed some prefer the more accurate if awkward label “DIWYF”
(Do It With Your Friends) to better capture this collective dimension. Like autonomy,
‘community’ (or komunitas) is an ambivalent concept – it can stand for the commonality of
struggle, but it can also represent its recuperation and enclosure (Caffentzis, 2010; Vishmidt,
2006). However, the DIY community is conceived as a realisation of unity in diversity, an
elective community of affinity based on shared interests, experiences, commitments and
values. The anak DIY embrace a punk cosmopolitanism against the essentialised ethnic,

8
religious, and national identities which exert such a powerful influence on Indonesian social
and political life. Day (2005) and Dupuis-Déri (2010) describe the anarchist principles of
affinity organising as a militant expression of trust, friendship, and intimacy, and at its best
DIY komunitas approaches this. However, although the anak DIY have sought to reposition
BalKot as an open collective founded on a commitment to DIY principles rather than an
exclusive subcultural community, it remains shaped by de facto exclusions; there are few
women or older people involved, and despite some gestures towards opening up BalKot, it
remains closely tied to its origins in the hardcore punk scene.
Nevertheless, the anak DIY place more value on the DIY ethic as a particular set of
relations of production than on hardcore punk as a particular set of aesthetic forms. Thus
Tedy from xManusia Buatanx describes his band as being “just for fun”, but also a significant
vector for self-expression and a way to contribute to the community and establish new social
relationships:
Actually, when we first started xManusia Buatanx in 2001, it was just a way to
reduce stress, refreshing with friends. And that’s still the case, but when we played
our first gigs, at first it was just for fun, just for fun, but now we can also make a
contribution for others, here, through our records. Like, I can see from the music,
and especially our lyrics, with xManusia Buatanx, I guess we want to convey our
personal experiences or even our personal opinions. And we want to provide a point
of view so that, yeah, who knows? Maybe someone could see, and maybe agree, and
we can correspond, and we can do a tour or travel around to new places and that –
that’s pretty good, y’know? So, it’s not only – maybe at first it was only just for fun
but eventually it developed more and more into something that provides more and
more – it’s making more of a contribution that I feel is quite good, y’know, for our
friends. (Interview with Tedy, 2004; my translation)

As Moore (2007) and O’Connor (2008) argue, DIY production is embedded in social
relationships and driven by a social rather than an economic logic. For the anak DIY this is
rendered as a conscious ethical stance – DIY production is seen as primarily about the
production and reproduction of the social relationships it relies on, over and above
constituting a means of producing hardcore punk music and associated cultural artefacts.
While the anak DIY are divided over whether they regard DIY hardcore as an explicitly
political anti-capitalist movement, they share a value system with the construction of an
autonomous community of cultural production as a self-conscious social project.
This autonomous community takes the form of a cultural commons of shared means,
resisting capital’s ongoing drive to enclosure and dispossession (De Angelis, 2007; Hardt &
Negri, 2009; Linebaugh, 2014). BalKot contributes to this cultural commons through the
collective organisation of DIY hardcore shows through BalKot, and also through skill-sharing

9
workshops that aim to generalise the ability to participate in DIY production. It is also found
in the active encouragement to copy and share cassettes, CDs, zines, and other DIY media
products. This commons is based on the DIY ethic of cooperation, participation, and a
minimisation of the role of alienated wage labour within the production process.
In this sense DIY production can be considered a form of self-valorisation, producing
cultural and social value outside the circuits of capital (Cleaver, 1989; Holtzman, Hughes &
Van Meter, 2007; Ovetz, 1993). Of course, the autonomy of DIY production remains partial
and contested, as value in various forms flows between the DIY commons and the wider
market economy in which it remains embedded. As Thompson (2004) argues, DIY
production challenges but does not fully escape from the commodity form. Thus DIY self-
organisation can easily slip into forms of self-exploitation (Shukaitis, 2010; Wright, 2000).
Still, the etika DIY remains a powerful demonstration of the desire to escape from the
dominance of the market and construct a better way of life, and thus a potentially significant
part of a wider value struggle.

DIY as Prefigurative Politics

The central shared project of the anak DIY is their attempt to construct a self-
organised autonomous community of DIY production, as a positive alternative to capitalist
production. While not all of the anak DIY self-identify as anarchists, or consciously position
DIY production as a form of anarchist political action, this project connects DIY hardcore to
the anarchist politics of direct action and prefiguration (Franks, 2003; Graeber, 2009). It can
also be understood in terms of the autonomist concept of exodus as a militant withdrawal
from capitalist structures of power and a refusal of alienated work (Hardt & Negri, 2005;
Papadopoulos, Stephenson & Tsianos, 2008; Tronti, 1980). This is a politics of practice,
enacting DIY values an attempt to establish alternative forms of social organisation which,
for at least some of the anak DIY, are also intended to prefigure and contribute to a wider
process of social transformation. As BalKot, Food Not Bombs, and Apokalips activist
Tremor puts it:
It’s a struggle, like we’re resisting the world, we resist – OK, we live in a world that’s
shitty, right? We live in a shitty world. And so we leave that world to make our own
world, together with our friends who agree with us, or who have similar ideas. We
leave this world and make our own, in accordance with our ideals. (Interview with
Tremor, 2004; my translation)

The idea of DIY as a form of “punk positif” emphasises the etika DIY as an ethic of
practice, rather than an abstract political ideology. Indeed, many of the anak DIY – even

10
among those strongly influenced by anarchism and other anti-capitalist political movements –
deny that DIY hardcore as such is political. While Ari Ernesto, quoted above, describes DIY
hardcore as a “weapon” in the anti-capitalist struggle, some other DIY activists disclaim any
specific political intent, while still attempting to enact the etika DIY as a non-capitalist mode
of production. DIY hardcore can thus be considered an example of “anti-political politics”, in
that it rejects participation in the state or the struggle for state power while still striving for
social transformation (Day, 2005; Holloway, 2005; Katsiaficas, 2006).
DIY hardcore is often criticised as a form of “lifestyle anarchism”, an individualised
and commodified approach to anarchist identity which Bookchin (1996) compares
unfavourably to “social anarchism” based on collective action for transformative social
change. In a more general sense, Giddens (1991) distinguishes between “life politics” as the
politics of personal expression and identity, and “emancipatory politics” of social
mobilisation and collective transformation. Yet the prefigurative politics of DIY production
challenges this overly rigid dichotomy (Davis, 2010; Portwood-Stacer, 2013). The positive
punk politics of DIY proposes that social emancipation is bound up with the politics of self-
transformation; influenced by diverse movements such as anarchism, feminism, straight edge,
and the Situationists, and of course hardcore punk, the anak DIY argue that, “there will never
be a social revolution if we don’t first change ourselves” (slogan from a self-published
Bahasa Bayi/Bones Brigade split CD, 2004). DIY hardcore can thus be positioned as part of a
wider movement towards the revolution of everyday life (Shukaitis, 2009; Vaneigem, 2006).
I thus argue that DIY production should be understood as a form of political action
and even as a form of class struggle. Specifically, it can be identified with the autonomist
strategy of refusal – the struggle for working class self-emancipation through a collective
refusal of alienated labour and an assertion of the autonomy of social production (Holloway,
2005; Shukaitis, 2009; Tronti, 1980; Weeks, 2011). This contrasts with the politics of mass
protest and national liberation characteristic of the Indonesian Left (see Lane, 2008), but also
with the commodified lifestyle politics of the wider Indonesian punk scene.
The refinement and consolidation of DIY principles among the anak DIY serves as a
commentary and a response to the growing schism between the cultural politics of the
Indonesian punk scene and the ideological politics of Indonesian activist organisations,
associated with the decline of the anti-authoritarian protest movements of the Reformasi era.
Through DIY hardcore, the anak DIY articulate a harsh critique of commercialisation in the
punk scene and the political failures of the political Left. They argue that DIY production
offers an authentic and practical form of resistance, in contrast to the symbolic performances

11
of subcultural rebellion or the increasingly abstract political demands of marginal Leftist
organisations. While DIY hardcore could be interpreted as a retreat into lifestylism, it is also
an attempt to enact a prefigurative politics through producing an alternative value system.
Some of the anak DIY see this alternative as an end in itself, either as a refuge from
capitalist alienation or simply as a sustainable and enjoyable hobby activity. Others position
DIY production as part of a broader counter-hegemonic and anti-capitalist movement. These
conflicting tendencies are brought together – at least temporarily – by their common
community-building project. While there is a strain of utopianism in some of the more
extravagant claims for the emancipatory potential of DIY hardcore, it is also positioned as a
more modest yet viable alternative to alienating and exploitative forms of capitalist
production and consumption. However, the positivity of DIY hardcore as an alternative value
system remains inextricably connected to its critical, negative relationship of antagonism to
alienated labour and capital accumulation.

Positive Punk? The Dialectics of DIY

The anak DIY position their activities as a form of “positive punk”, producing an
immanent social alternative rather than simply expressing their opposition to the status quo.
As a prefigurative politics of practice, DIY hardcore enacts alternative social values,
reconfiguring the social relationships of production in order to construct an autonomous
community. This positive punk approach contrasts with the negative punk of spectacular
disruption and symbolic protest. However, while this positive punk approach is a useful
counter to the kind of static aesthetic negation which often characterises underground culture,
I remain somewhat sceptical of the ability of DIY production to fully escape from the
dialectical antagonism of capital and labour. Indeed, DIY value practices remain tied to an
anti-capitalist politics of critique and antagonism; at the heart of “positive punk” is the
negation of capitalist alienation. I thus find it useful to conceptualise DIY as a value struggle,
following De Angelis (2007), characterised by an inside/outside dialectic of incorporation and
excorporation. That is, it is not a matter of distinctly separate value systems so much as
antagonistic value practices, with autonomy as the “process of becoming other than capital”
(De Angelis, 2007, p. 229).
The positive side of this struggle lies in self-valorisation as insurgent social
productivity – the production of autonomous social values, relations, and subjectivities
(Cleaver, 1992; Hardt & Negri, 2005, 2009; Papadopoulos, Stephenson & Tsianos, 2008).
Against the value practices of alienated labour and capital accumulation are mobilised “the

12
value practices that constitute the social flows of doing, understood as a network of affects
and reproduction, hence not simply as the means to an end, but as life processes” (De
Angelis, 2007, p. 183). Hardt & Negri (2009, p. 142) argue that such “biopolitical labor-
power is becoming more and more autonomous, with capital simply hovering over it
parasitically”. Yet it would be a mistake to conflate the existence of struggles for autonomy
with the final achievement of autonomy itself. The struggle for DIY autonomy involves a
continuing and antagonistic interdependence of the etika DIY and capitalist value. Self-
valorisation is also a struggle for the self-negation of labour as labour; in this sense DIY
hardcore is not so much positive punk as a rearticulation of punk’s “scream of refusal”, a
“rejection of a world that we feel to be wrong, negation of a world we feel to be negative”
(Holloway, 2005, p. 2). This relation of antagonism is also an internal antagonism, with
labour alienated from and against itself in the form of capital (Bonefeld, 2010; Holloway,
2005).
The etika DIY is an expression of the insurgent imagination, prefiguring a better
world while struggling against the current one; as such it combines constituent power – the
power to imagine and create our own social world – with imaginative counter-power, the
negation of the established social order (Graeber, 2009; Shukaitis, 2009). Of course, DIY
hardcore itself remains a partial and contested alternative, largely contained within a limited
subcultural sphere of activity. Indeed, in the case of the Bandung DIY community, it’s social
and political impact is mainly as an internal critique of the wider Indonesian punk and anti-
capitalist activist scenes, though it also gives its participants a taste of non-alienated creative
production and thus gives hope for a non-alienated way of life. As Shukaitis (2009, 2010)
argues, while we should not ignore capital’s power to enclose and recuperate struggles for
autonomy, we should also not fixate on such processes to the extent of ignoring the very real
emancipatory power of these struggles. This power emerges through the ongoing, incomplete,
and thus open attempts to resist and evade recuperation; self-organisation and refusal are part
of the same process of struggle. “It is through the continual recomposition of self-
organization through which a potential form of autonomy is possible, within and despite
capitalism” (Shukaitis, 2009, p. 221).
DIY hardcore has helped a small community of young people in Bandung to establish
a degree of independence, to share skills, knowledge and resources, and to establish relatively
non-alienated social relationships. It has also provided them with a practical education in self-
organisation and the politics of cultural production within, without, and against capital.
Ultimately, the Bandung DIY hardcore community may play a small but not insignificant role

13
in the recomposition of anti-capitalist struggles in Indonesia at a historical moment
characterised by their fragmentation and decline. Although DIY hardcore remains
substantially within a politics of antagonism and negation, it does help to push forward the
ongoing dialectic of anti-capitalist value struggle through its prefiguration of alternative value
practices, and in this sense it can be considered a form of “positive punk”.

References
Bahasa Bayi & Bones Brigade. (2004). Bahas Bayi / Bones Brigade split [CD-R]. Bandung:
Self-published.

Bonefeld, W. (2010). Abstract labour: Against its nature and on its time. Capital & Class, 34,
257-276.

Bookchin, M. (1996). Social anarchism or lifestyle anarchism: An unbridgeable chasm. San

Francisco: AK.

Caffentzis, G. (2010). The future of “The Commons”: Neolberalism’s “Plan B” or the

original disaccumulation of capital? New Formations, 69, 23-41.

Cleaver, H. (1989). Marginality and self-valorization. Common Sense, 8, 22-27.

Cleaver, H. (1992). The inversion of class perspective in Marxian theory: From valorisation
to self-valorisation. In W. Bonefeld, R. Gunn & K. Psychopedis (eds), Open Marxism II:
Theory and practice (pp. 106-144). London: Pluto.

Davis, L. (2010). Social anarchism or lifestyle anarchism: An unhelpful dichotomy. Anarchist

Studies, 18, 62-82.

Day, R. F. (2005). Gramsci is dead: Anarchist currents in the newest social movements.
London: Pluto.

De Angelis, M. (2007). The beginning of history: Value struggles and global capital. London:
Pluto.

14
Dupuis-Déri, F. (2010). Anarchism and the politics of affinity groups. Anarchist Studies, 18,
40-61.

Franks, B. (2003). The direct action ethic: From 59 upwards. Anarchist Studies, 11, 16-41.

Graeber, D. (2009). Direct action: An ethnography. Oakland: AK.

Haenfler, R. (2006). Straight edge: Clean-living youth, hardcore punk, and social change.
New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2005). Multitude. London: Penguin.

Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2009). Commonwealth. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap.

Heryanto, A. & Vedi R. H. (2005). Post-authoritarian Indonesia. Critical Asian

Studies, 37, 251-275.

Holloway, J. (2005). Change the world without taking power. London: Pluto.

Holtzman, B., Hughes, C. & Van Meter, K. (2007). Do It Yourself... and the movement
beyond capitalism. In S. Shukaitis & D. Graeber (eds), Constituent imagination: Militant
investigations // collective theorization (pp. 44-61). Oakland: AK.

Katsiaficas, G. (2006). The subversion of politics: European autonomous social movements

and the decolonization of everyday life. Oakland: AK.

Kuhn, G. (2010). Sober living for the revolution: Hardcore punk, straight edge, and radical
politics. Oakland: PM.

Lane, M. (2008). Unfinished nation: Indonesia before and after Suharto. London: Verso.

Linebaugh, P. (2014). Stop thief!: The commons, enclosures, and resistance. Oakland: PM.

Luvaas, B. (2012). DIY style: Fashion, music and global digital cultures. London: Berg.

15
Martin-Iverson, S. (2006). “Revolusi diri” (self-revolution): Personal choice, collective
identity and subcultural change in the Bandung straight edge scene. In V. Colic-Peisker, F.
Tilbury & B. McNamara (eds), TASA 2006 conference proceedings: Sociology for a mobile
world. Perth, WA: TASA.

Martin-Iverson, S. (2012). Autonomous youth? Independence and precariousness in the

Indonesian underground music scene. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 13, 382-
397.

Moore, R. (2007). Friends don’t let friends listen to corporate rock: Punk as a field of cultural
production. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 36, 438-474.

O’Connor, A. (2008). Punk record labels and the struggle for autonomy: The emergence of
DIY. Lanham, MD: Lexington.

O’Hara, C. (1999). The philosophy of punk: More than noise! Oakland: AK.

Ovetz, R. (1993). Noize music: The hypostatic insurgency. Common Sense 13, 5-23.

Papadopoulos, D., Stephenson, N. & Tsianos, V. (2008). Escape routes: Control and
subversion in the 21st Century. London: Pluto.

Portwood-Stacer, L. (2013). Lifestyle politics and radical activism. New York: Bloomsbury.

Shukaitis, S. (2009). Imaginal machines: Autonomy & self-organization in the revolutions of

everyday life. London: Minor Compositions.

Shukaitis, S. (2010). Sisyphus and the labour of imagination: Autonomy, cultural production,
and the antinomies of worker self-management. Affinities 4, 57-82.

Silverstein, P. A.( 2006). Guerrilla capitalism and ghetto-centric cosmopolitanism on the

French urban periphery. In M. Fisher & G. Downey (eds), Frontiers of capital: Ethnographic
reflections on the new economy, (pp. 282-304). Durham: Duke University Press.

16
Thompson, S. (2004). Punk productions: Unfinished business. Albany, NY: State University
of New York Press.

Tronti, M. (1980). The strategy of refusal. In S. Lotringer & C. Marazzi (eds), Autonomia:
Post-political politics, (pp. 28-35). Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).

Vaneigem, R. (2006). The revolution of everyday life. London: Rebel.

Vishmidt, M. (2006). The auto-destructive community: The torsion of the common in local
sites of antagonism. Ephemera, 6, 454-465.

Weeks, K. (2011). The problem with work: Feminism, Marxism, antiwork politics, and
postwork imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press.

Wood, R. T. (2006). Straightedge youth: Complexity and contradictions of a subculture.

Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

Wright, S. (2000). “A love born of hate”: Autonomist rap in Italy. Theory, Culture, & Society
17, 117-135.

17