Careful Where You Point that Thing - Thoughts on the Thug Dialectic

The term “droog” was discussed in class as a synonym for, or at least a term related to, gangster or ‘gangsta’. The functions of both a gang and its members were discussed, and the fictional and real life versions were compared. The violence and rebellion aside, what struck me most was how gangs replace family and authoritative structures which are not available or which are not fit to serve. In essence, new relationships are invented to fill these voids.
Terms like droog, yob, hooligan – they denote not just characteristics, but are relationship designations. This dialectic of terms is absent here because what most media outlets and the institutions in reciprocal relationship with them – governments, corporations and the like – would use these words as designations of type. They preach reform and failure of the school system, they blame television etc. and ad nauseum, but in the end these designations of type and dialects of essential character enforce class and type boundaries – the us and them boundaries.
To see these terms as designations of relationships intimately implicates those institutions in that definition. “They” (a useful term in this case, arousing all our demons) would acknowledge this relationship only in terms of the “bad apple” scenario: for example, once the “bad apples” in the education system or the police system are plucked, then the system can flourish. By wholeheartedly accepting these terms as designations of reciprocal relationships, we are indicting the whole damnable tree: we are claiming systemic breakdown.
Now, this is not to usurp the place of personal responsibility. Nor is it to say that in perfect, or even good, systems there would be no dissent or even intense masculine performance – no force could stop these, nor should they. But, it is to say that when we discuss these terms we cannot simply discuss what they define in and of the individual, but what they signify in terms of their relationships with power structures within which they are active. These entities - thug, hooligan, droog etc. - these relationships with the state and its institutions, are not just defined by these authorities, but may indeed demand them.