Culture Wars as a War on the Young: Understanding the UK Culture Wars Through the Lens of Young People’s Political and Civic Resistance

Abstract This article puts forward an analysis of contemporary ‘culture wars’ in the UK, engaging with these ‘wars’ as fundamentally political and material power struggles which are largely enacted on the bodies and lives of young people (among others). Refusing to be drawn in by a widespread scholarly inclination to treat culture wars as simply ideological disagreements, or as tactical froth and distraction, or as rhetoric to be endlessly debated, this article takes its cue from acts of resistance by children who find themselves at the sharp end of the punitive discipline, disempowerment and erasure which is a fundamental outcome of the culture war’s performative struggles. By engaging with three specific case studies of youth-led resistance, we identify and apply the analysis implicit in these acts. Tethering this to the theoretical resources of cultural studies and a historical perspective on the disciplining functions of educational institutions, we suggest that understanding the current culture wars as an actual war—on young people and the futurity they represent and on ‘others’—is a useful analytic for understanding their cultural and political significance and for developing a political, cultural and analytical response. We conclude by recognising the coalitional politics that young people manifest, and sometimes literally articulate, to resist the embodied control and erasure enacted on them. We set this alongside a recognition of the ongoing trauma that the culture wars impose on them and society at large.