Reviews Fight Back: Punk, Politics and Resistance. Edited by the Subcultures Network. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015. 319 pp. ISBN 978-0-7190-9029-5 doi:10.1017/S0261143016000258 ‘What is punk?’ In Fight Back: Punk, Politics and Resistance, an edited collection from the Subcultures Network, Penny Rimbaud of Crass provides a brilliant answer to this question. ‘It isn’t’, he says, ‘Period’ (p. 81). Rimbaud’s statement can be found in Ivan Gololbov’s chapter on ‘Immigrant Punk’. It is, as Gololbov explains, a reflection of punk’s ‘moment of nihilism and denial of its own identity’ (p. 80). Elsewhere in this book, we find Steve Ignorant, Rimbaud’s partner in Crass, suggesting that there can be no ‘definitive article on punk’, as the movement is ‘too myriad and di- verse’ (p. xiii). This book nevertheless warns against personal interpretations of the movement. Its afterword features an interview with Jon Savage, conducted by Matthew Worley, a member of the subcultures network. Worley complains, ‘subject- ive experience presented as universalism – it’s the bane of my life whenever I talk about researching punk and youth cultures’ (p. 311), while Savage disparages the ‘overwhelming trend in music writing over the last fifteen years to elevate ... auto- biography above everything else’ (p. 311). So how, then, to explore this ‘contested cultural form’ (p. 4)? Fight Back takes on the challenge of searching for ‘punk’s continuities and divergences’ (p. 4). Moreover, it aims to do so in a temporal, cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary manner. Declared objectives are to ‘explore some of the different ways in which punk has been under- stood, adopted and utilised since it first established itself in the cultural conscious- ness from the mid-1970s’ (p. 2); to ‘begin a debate as to the ways and means by which punk’s protest, aesthetic and style found expression in different national, cul- tural, socio-economic and political contexts’ (p. 3); and to ‘open up a dialogue across designated research areas and provide a conduit for interdisciplinary study into both punk and youth cultures more generally’ (p. 4). Given the scale of these tasks, Fight Back is a remarkably effective book. At the individual level many of its chapters provide useful additions to punk’s vast litera- ture. In accordance with the editors’ brief, there are valuable historic investigations (Worley’s nuanced reading of ‘Oi!’; John Parham’s outlining of the impact of Manchester’s ecosystem on the poetry of John Cooper Clarke; Herbert Pimlott’s ac- count of the punk ‘structure of feeling’ that emerged in Britain between 1976 and 1983); there are fascinating descriptions of punk in a number of different countries (Britain, Russia, France, Italy, East Germany, West Germany and Czechoslovakia/ the Czech Republic are all covered); there are insightful contributions to debates about punk and gender and sexuality (Hilary Pilkington on masculinity; Laura Way on older women punks); and there are knowledgeable accounts of different forms of punk media (Bill Osgerby on punk films; Michelle Liptrot, Matt Grimes and Tim Wall on fanzines). 429 Popular Music (2016) Volume 35/3. © Cambridge University Press 2016, pp. 429–478 ''$***!%#%#%'%!& ''$+##% #*"# %#! ''$***!%#%#% &+ ")%&', #"  '  '  &(' '# ' !% #% '%!& # (& ) '