Conclusion Summary and Analysis

Hebdige considers the many authors whose works he has cited throughout Subculture, examining how each has expressed the very truth that Hebdige himself has been trying to articulate. He begins with Genet, whose love for the imprisoned writer George Jackson has helped him to transcended mere selfhood into a type of brotherhood. In his move from criminal to writer, Genet has, in Hebdige's opinion, moved beyond the individual into the realm of revolution. George Jackson, meanwhile, a militant black who used his lengthy incarceration to educate himself, also demonstrates this same sort of cultural self-awareness. Both men regard themselves as an instrument of the black culture to which they belong.

George Jackson complains that he and other blacks, are forced to speak in the Master's tongue, and thus every word they write or utter is undermined by its association with the...