Tereza Kuldova

The Sublime Splendor of Intimidation: Outlaw Biker Aesthetics of Power

Terror, Edmund Burke argued, is the “common stock of everything that is sublime,” capable of producing delight when held at a certain distance. What puzzled Burke was the question of “how any species of delight can be derived from a cause so apparently contrary to it.” I suggest that we may look for an ethnographic answer to this question among the supporters, hangers-on and diverse admirers of outlaw bikers, who take pleasure in being exposed, albeit at a safe distance, to the sublime splendor of the biker’s power of intimidation. Grounded in ethnographic research among outlaw bikers in central Europe, analysis of popular visual culture and biker literature, this article argues that “sublime experience” is one of the indispensable ingredients of the aesthetics of power of the outlaw bikers.

Outlaw Bikers Between Identity Politics and Civil Rights

Today, club logos and important insignia of international outlaw motorcycle clubs are trademarked, following the early example of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club that first patented their ‘death head’ logo in 1972. Club logos, worn exclusively by full-patched members, are considered sacred and protected as such, both legally and extra-legally. The symbolically central, albeit economically marginal, legal actions against infringers point us toward the uncanny overlaps between a ‘counterculture’ and a ‘brand,’ a phenomenon common in Western culture at large. Departing from this overlap between the ‘sacred culture’ and the ‘brand’ and moving toward the outlaw bikers’ fight for civil rights, the chapter analyzes these attempts at scheming legality and resisting criminalization, reading them through the lens of the tension between identity politics and politics of universalism, showing that even the outlaw bikers shoot themselves in the foot if they try to capitalize on the currently popular rhetoric of identity and recognition.

Fatalist Luxuries: Of Inequality, Wasting, and the Antiwork Ethic in India

This article, grounded in long-term ethnographic research among producers of contemporary luxurious embroideries and fashions in Lucknow, a North Indian city famous for its golden age as a powerful cultural center of opulence and excess, shows how anthropological knowledge can enrich current critical discussions of luxury and inequality. Since the 1990s, anthropology has seen a boom in consumption and material culture studies coterminous with the rise of identity politics and its celebration of diversity. In anthropological theory, as well, linking consumption to identity has stolen the limelight. In the process, questions of production, inequality, and reproduction of social structures have been overshadowed. Critical reappraisal of luxury in anthropological theory can paradoxically show us a way out of this identity trap, since luxury, unlike other consumer goods, demands that we think about inequality. Luxury also forces us to think beyond luxury brands, goods, and commodified experiences, pushing us toward more fundamental questions about what constitutes a good life, morality, and social order. The ethnographic case presented here, which reveals how structural violence can go hand-in-hand with paradoxical luxuries facilitated by fatalist attitudes, points to what such an anthropology of luxury might look like. In a village near Lucknow, women embroider luxury pieces for fashion ramps and celebrities, while being fed meritocratic dreams of individual progress and success by fashion designers and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) who try to convince them to work ever harder in the name of empowerment. But the women laugh at luxury goods, designers, and middle-class activists and, instead, insist on an antiwork ethic and a valorization of leisure—on wasting time over working; they prefer to “luxuriate” rather than indulge in luxury goods. However, this perception of luxury is connected to hierarchical inequality and a sense of social fatalism that has been reinvigorated through new experiences with competitive inequality, neoliberal pollution, and the false promises of meritocracy.

Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs and Struggles over Legitimation

Legitimation of the informal power of transnational outlaw motorcycle clubs worldwide vis-a-vis the public is becoming an increasing concern for the clubs. Using our research material from the US and Europe, we ask if the use of these strategies of legitimation can be seen in terms of increasing integration of this counterculture into society and the progressive consolidation and entrepreneurialism of the clubs. Specifically, the chapter engages with the increased (1) public relations work of the leading clubs worldwide, activities that could be labeled as (2) ‘corporate social responsibility’ and charity work, and finally (3) the biker lobby that addresses the mainstream political structures and defends libertarian positions with the help of legal professionals.

Introduction: Scheming Legality and Resisting Criminalization

How do outlaw motorcycle clubs and street gangs integrate into society? Often labelled as ‘deviant,’ this volume challenges this notion and argues that these groups are far better integrated into mainstream society than generally assumed. Nor are they mere passive victims of labelling, as some theories would suggest. The introduction investigates two crucial notions, those of ‘scheming legality’ and ‘resisting criminalization,’ which we suggest are necessary to take into consideration when thinking through ‘outlaw’ groups at large and which have so far remained understudied. It does so by tying together all the contributions in the volume, something that allows the reader to see not only how the chapters speak to each other, but also how complex these phenomena are. In the process, it encourages the reader to consider how these groups create strategies of self-representation that resist the dominant narratives of media, police and governments.

Guarded Luxotopias and Expulsions in New Delhi: Aesthetics and Ideology of Outer and Inner Spaces of an Urban Utopia

This chapter draws us in the world of carefully guarded and gated spaces where spectacular fashion shows present themselves as compressed urban utopias, or rather luxotopias, with all the elements crafted to set apart the worlds of the rich and powerful. Theatrical stage sets of the Delhi fashion ramps evoke a semi-futuristic luxurious ideal nowhere (often Hindu and hyper-modern), condensing the gated elite world onto a few square meters. Juxtaposing the aesthetics and mythologies of the gated fashion shows with the utopias of neoliberal urban planning, the chapter shows how neoliberal luxotopias become both expressions of desire and fears pertaining of the Indian elite clientele and how the elitist vision of a desirable social order is materialized, while multiplying material and aesthetic internal boundaries within a society and expelling those unwanted and undesirable.

Introduction: Urban Utopias—Excess and Expulsion in Neoliberal India and Sri Lanka

In the introduction, the editors present briefly all the chapters collected within the volume, as well as the main rationale behind this book. Particular focus is placed on how the chapters relate to each other and talk to each other, in order to enable the readers to follow the connections and parallels across different sites and cases. As such the introduction encourages the readers to read the chapters together and in relation to each other, through each other, and in juxtaposition to each other. Focus is placed on introducing the multiple materializations of utopias in India and Sri Lanka and the ways in which they relate to real-life exclusions, expulsions, and excesses.

Traversing Trade Fairs and Fashion Weeks: On Dependence and Disavowal in the Indian Fashion Industry

At first sight the Indian fashion industry appears to be split into two distinct and independent social fields with their own rules and status hierarchies. The first centred around the spectacular fashion shows with star designers, celebrities and industrialists filling the glossy magazines, and the second around the textile, apparel and garment trade fairs that barely make it into the news. While we could be seduced by this appearance into believing that these two worlds really do not meet, in reality, the fields and the actors within them are profoundly dependent on each other and fully integrated into one value chain. However, this dependence is systematically disavowed by actors within both social fields for different reasons and the split is thus continually re-produced.

Directing passions in New Delhi’s world of fashion: On the power of ritual and ‘illusions without owners’

Grounded in long-term ethnographic fieldwork in New Delhi’s fashion industry, this article explores the pressing question on the designer’s mind, namely: how do I align the desires of others with my (master)-desire? This question points us towards an investigation of how people’s affects are mobilized and directed through commercial rituals such as fashion shows set within hyper-designed theatrical play-spheres. Translating the invisible or covert mobilization of affects into profit has been on the mind of advertisers for the last decade. However, analysing such deliberately covert strategies of capture employed in two cases – JJ Valaya’s haute couture shows and Nitin Bal Chauhan’s youth brand – we realize that it is precisely their failure at being covert that makes them effective; clients know full well about them. Robert Pfaller’s theory of ‘illusions without owners’ can throw some light here on why clients passionately embrace the desire of capital precisely against their better knowledge.

Directing Passions in New Delhi’s Fashion World: On the Power of Ritual and Illusions without Owners

Grounded in long-term ethnographic fieldwork in New Delhi’s fashion industry, this article explores the pressing question on the designer’s mind, namely: how do I align the desires of others with my (master)-desire? This question points us towards an investigation of how people’s affects are mobilized and directed through commercial rituals such as fashion shows set within hyper-designed theatrical play-spheres. Translating the invisible or covert mobilization of affects into profit has been on the mind of advertisers for the last decade. However, analysing such deliberately covert strategies of capture employed in two cases – JJ Valaya’s haute couture shows and Nitin Bal Chauhan’s youth brand – we realize that it is precisely their failure at being covert that makes them effective; clients know full well about them. Robert Pfaller’s theory of ‘illusions without owners’ can throw some light here on why clients passionately embrace the desire of capital precisely against their better knowledge.