The Elephant in the Room: Celebration, Commemoration and Cultural Contradiction
Posted: July 8th, 2026 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | Comments Off on The Elephant in the Room: Celebration, Commemoration and Cultural Contradiction11th and 12th December 2026
Middlesex University, London.
If the 100 Club Punk Special, the first Sex Pistols single or the now infamous Bill Grundy interview can be taken as ‘year zero’, punk is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary. Yet anniversaries often tend to present linear narratives, stories of origin, and canonical histories. However, punk’s histories are multiple and contested, not least in notions of definition, timescale, musical and subcultural style. This conference therefore raises questions over the elephant in the room: what does it mean to celebrate 50 years of punk? What does it mean to celebrate a movement grounded in refusal, immediacy and a suspicion of both tradition and futurity?