1989: Bob Dylan Didn't Have This to Sing About

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell,
marking the end of the Cold War—as well as the end of history itself,
according to the writer and philosopher Francis Fukuyama. In his new
book 1989, pop culture critic Joshua Clover argues that although
Fukuyama’s declaration of the death of history was premature, the
popular music of 1989 embodied the same anti-historical zeitgeist captured
by the influential academic’s famous assertion. Clover—an award-winning
poet, a professor at the University of California-Davis, and the author
of a book about The Matrix—analyzes the popular and historical
discourses of 1989 in depth, and finds that the two were essentially
indistinguishable. “History is now pop,” he contends, “and pop,
history.”

Clover
knows the music of 1989 well, and succeeds in positioning artists as
diverse as Nirvana, Jesus Jones, the KLF, and NWA within the context
of the political and aesthetic upheavals of their era. He offers an
astute take on the evolution of the European acid house genre and its
associated rave culture, noting the commonalities between rave’s psychedelic
communitarian impulse and the youth culture of the 1960s. Although he
stumbles when attempting to cram the complex ideological history of
punk rock into the space of only few pages, Clover makes a convincing
argument that grunge represented a retreat from the political engagement
of punk into the angst-filled interiority of bands like Nirvana. He
observes a similar pattern in hip-hop fandom’s abandonment of politically-conscious
acts like Public Enemy in favor of the nihilism, violence, and materialism
of gangsta rap. According to Clover, ravers, gangsters, and grunge bands
alike all saw themselves as “outside of history,” insofar as they
were uninterested in using their art to position their personal experiences
within a broader historical or sociopolitical context.

Clover’s
approach throughout is thoroughly academic—readers with a low tolerance
for jargon or for extended discussions of the theories of Frederic Jameson
and Theodor Adorno may want to avoid this book altogether. But those
who share Clover’s intellectual love of popular music will find much
of interest in 1989, and will appreciate his vivid snapshot of
a tumultuous moment in pop and history. (November) Ryan Michael Williams

Reviewed by: Ryan Michael Williams

ISBN:

PRICE:
$21.95

PUBLISHER:
University of California Press

PUBLISH DATE:
2009-11-06

No. Of Pages:
198