“Back in the Day”

Abstract

In this chapter, we continue with the central issues of time, the past, and narrative, revealing how engagements with the past are encoded into the rituals of the allnighter and the scene process of historicising. Individual and shared understandings of time are organised through stories told and retold by older participants. Engagements with this past by the scene’s younger generation are interpreted as cultural processes of “patching up”, with an experience of the past built from an assortment of stories and objects. The shared version of this past notably (and inevitably) distils different political and cultural experience and reference points from those that take centre stage in the official history. Finally, we explore how these are encoded into the material culture of young scene members.