Maintenance, Violence and Renewal at The 7th Circle Music Collective

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/articles/5712m729j

Abstract

The 7th Circle Music Collective represents a paradox. As an explicitly anarchist space with openly anti government and anti capitalist views, how does it maintain its social coherence? Using a model proposed by Brenda Romero (2015) and armed with insights from Michelle Kisliuk (2008) I explore the contradictions and rituals of the Collective, and how it identifies and expresses its human spirit in an inhuman world. I conclude that by engaging with its contradictions, best exemplified in the musical genre of “powerviolence,” the Collective reconstructs the devastating institutional violence of our society into direct, but harmless, violence of aggressive music. In doing so it provides sustenance and renewal to its members, to combat the alienation and isolation of the capitalist world in which it is couched.

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