I was happy to see Tom grab the bull by the horns with his post on “free” theology and music and the need for theologians to imagine new economies of knowledge production and dissemination. This is an area I’ve been thinking about, especially since I have been trying to bring together punk rock ethics and theology or, in another key, anarchist cultural production and theological production. It’s certainly one more area in which it is clear that rock music and theology can be brought together in creative ways, not only for theologizing on rock music but by letting the knowledge (and the dreaming) generated in our music activity inform our work as theologians — how we think, how we produce, and how we share.

It has been said that one of the great powers of music is its ability to prefigure the “not yet existent.” This can be true of the music itself, but it can also be true in the way music is made and shared. Movements within rock music — and specifically punk rock music and culture — can be a helpful source in reflecting on imagining other theo-economic possibilities because we can identify specific, successful examples of the creation of whole other economies within the notoriously capitalistic rock world. The examples are countless. Some have become more visible than others (I’m thinking here of the enduring witness of Fugazi and Dischord Records as well as the more high-profile [and thus, more ambivalent] example of Radiohead’s In Rainbows album). Other punk rock economies remain more solidly under the radar, intentionally isolated from any channels of capitalist exchange. What might it mean to apply punk rock’s anti-/non-capitalist (to the extent possible) mode of production to what we do as ((punk?) rock) theologians?

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