The Englishness of English Punk: Sex Pistols, Subcultures, and Nostalgia

This article considers the Englishness of English Punk, or, more specifically, the Englishness of the Sex Pistols and the cultural productions associated with them. It will consider whether the challenge that they posed to conventional, Establishment, consensus notions of Englishness has merely been recuperated as an entertaining diversion within a broader hegemonic nationalist history or whether this challenge has had a more fundamental impact. It will argue that the Pistols facilitated a reframing and a re‐imagining of English culture and left a legacy, which has been drawn upon by a number of subsequent art and music subcultures.