"Every Home Is Wired":
4 -- Towards a Strategic Progressive Rock Community
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The Progressive Rock Community's Tactics -- and Strategies
By contrast, as de Certeau writes,
a tactic is a calculated action determined by the absence of a proper locus. No delimitation of an exteriority, then, provides it with the condition necessary for autonomy. The space of a tactic is the space of the other. Thus it must play on and with a terrain imposed on it and organised by the law of a foreign power. It does not have the means to keep to itself, at a distance, in a position of withdrawal, foresight, and self-collection: it is a manoeuvre ... within enemy territory. It does not, therefore, have the options of planning general strategy and viewing the adversary as a whole within a district, visible, and objectifiable space. It operates in isolated actions, blow by blow. It takes advantage of 'opportunities' and depends on them. (36-7)
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Thus, elements of tactical activity are also visible in the actions of the Prog community, and have already been pointed out at length: its relations to the mainstream music industry, the mainstream media, the musical mainstream itself (to the extent that it still exists) are all of a more tactical nature, since in these fields Progressive Rock and its community remain very much underdogs at a simply numerical disadvantage. The question is how the subculture can at once show aspects both of a strategic institution and of a tactical community, then. Bit 9

Section 4 -- Go on to Bite:

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© 1998 Axel Bruns