[O]bjects are made to mean and mean again as “style"in subculture.... [T]his process begins with a crime against the natural order—the cultivation of a quiff, the acquisition of a scooter or a record or a certain type of suit. But it ends in the construction of a style, in a gesture of defiance or contempt, in a smile or a sneer. It signals a Refusal.4
Affinity groups, Hebdige says, collectively act upon everyday commodities, such as scooters or records or suits, and infuse those objects with a certain sensibility that is reflectiveof the group's values and interests; the commodities come to "mean and mean again" as the affinity groups reconfigure and redefine their meanings. A safety pininthe hand of a housewife is not the same as a safety pin in the cheek of apunk rocker. "[T]he most mundane objects—a safety pin, a pointed shoe, a motor cycle—... take on a symbolio dimension.... [T]hese objects become signs of forbidden identity, sources of value." Without affinity groups'specialized uses and recontextualizations of these “"most mundane objects," which are commodities readily available in the marketplace, the objects would never acquire their symbolic dimension and would not be“sources of value;that is, they would not possessmultiple values, they would not be valuable to different groups in different ways—they would not be special objects.6
Hebdige's work is thus an early articulation of the type of labor that this chapter calls fan labor. Fans act upon commodities and imbue them with worth via their performances, which consist of displays of certain expressions and specific actions, which can all be summed up in the concept of attitude. Fans start to regard certain physical objects, manners of dress and hairstyles, and behaviors as integral components of the attitude that marks their difference from other groups and from what they consider to be the mainstream. In Hebdige's study, the work performed by subcultures on commodities, the work of meaning-making, the work of recontextualizing commodities as crucial components of their performances ofattitude and style, is undertaken in self-interest, for subcultures wish more than anything to be visibly distinctive and apart fromthe restof society. An affinity group invests time, effort, and imagination in everyday objects in order to make those objects serve their needs, which include helping to consolidate and represent the group's collective identity, which often stands in clear opposition to societal norms.
An irony that does not surface in subcultural and fan studies until decades after Hebdige's work is that affinity groups, by endowing ordinary things with special meanings, actually increase those things' market value; in other words, subcultures work on objects in order to make them markers of their nonconformist attitudes and values, but their work confers on objects new value and appeal, and so is effectively a type of advertising. The work of even the most rebellious subcultures therefore conforms to one of the most significant social norms of all, the norm of capitalist labor: all who live under capital's regime must labor to promote, sell, and consume commodities
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Interrogating Modes of Digital Labor