Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Von der hinteren Coverseite

"Goth creates its distinctive way of life by appropriating materials from a vast array of cultural phenomena--post-punk music, gothic literary tradition, pre-Christian mythology, sexual nonconformity, aesthetic avant-gardes--all of which it adopts primarily as style. Goth style is thus both dizzyingly heterogeneous and instantly recognizable. It is hard to imagine a single book that could do this subculture justice; yet by assembling contributors from a range of disciplines and judiciously including many voices of subcultural participants themselves, "Goth: Undead Subculture" manages to depict, while also reflecting critically on, this subculture's enduring appeal. This collection will be the definitive work on its topic."--Tim Dean, author of "Beyond Sexuality"

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

GOTH

Duke University Press

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS............................................................................................................................................1I. Genders.................................................................................................................................................41Dark Admissions: Gothic Subculture and the Ambivalence of Misogyny and Resistance Joshua Gunn.............................................................65Queens of the Damned: Women and Girls' Participation in Two Gothic Subcultures Kristen Schilt.............................................................79Peri Gothous: On the Art of Gothicizing Gender Trevor M. Holmes...........................................................................................89II. Performances...........................................................................................................................................121This Modern Goth (Explains Herself) Rebecca Schraffenberger...............................................................................................129Playing Dress Up: David Bowie and the Roots of Goth David Shumway and Heather Arnet.......................................................................143Undead Fashion: Nineties Style and the Perennial Return of Goth Catherine Spooner.........................................................................155III. Localities............................................................................................................................................171"To commit suicide in Buffalo is redundant": Music and Death in Zero City, 1982-1984 Mark Nowak...........................................................190"Ah am witness to its authenticity": Gothic Style in Postmodern Southern Writing Jason K. Friedman........................................................217IV. Artifacts..............................................................................................................................................233Atrocity Exhibitions: Joy Division, Factory Records, and Goth Michael Bibby...............................................................................257Material Distinctions: A Conversation with Valerie Steele Jessica Burstein................................................................................277Geek/Goth: Remediation and Nostalgia in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands Robert Markley...................................................................293V. Communities.............................................................................................................................................307"When you kiss me, I want to die": Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Gothic Family Values Lauren Stasiak.......................................................316The Cure, the Community, the Contempt! Angel M. Butts.....................................................................................................322VI. Practices..............................................................................................................................................335That Obscure Object of Desire Revisited: Poppy Z. Brite and the Goth Hero as Masochist Carol Siegel.......................................................357God's Own Medicine: Religion and Parareligion in U.K. Goth Culture Anna Powell............................................................................375Gothic Fetishism Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock.................................................................................................................398The Aesthetic Apostasy David Lenson.......................................................................................................................405REFERENCES.................................................................................................................................................425CONTRIBUTORS...............................................................................................................................................429

Chapter One

DARK ADMISSIONS

Gothic Subculture and the Ambivalence of Misogyny and Resistance

You took delight in taking down All my shielded pride Until exposed becomes my darker side Puckering up and down some avenue of sin Too chapped to ride, they're worth a try If only for the old times, cold times Don't go waving your pretentious love -"Dark Entries," Bauhaus

The lyrics of the opening track on Bauhaus's debut album, In the Flat Field, are a fitting opening, because they signal the characteristic ambivalence of the gothic "underground." As someone who has frequented the gothic scene for almost fifteen years, and as someone who has worked to provide a more sympathetic portrayal of the subculture elsewhere, I can easily say that the "shielding pride" of gothic performativity makes it difficult for those on the outside to understand the complexity of being goth, including a recognition of a real dark side (Gunn 1999a and 1999b). Although the subculture is resistant stylistically, sexually, and sometimes politically, because goth's resistant gestures are premised on a kind of lifestyle irony, they often unwittingly succumb to other social ills. In this chapter, I argue that gothic performativity demonstrates the dynamic ways in which people resist the cultural mainstream in spaces of ambivalence.

In order to capture the ambivalence of resistance, I first suggest that one must pursue subcultural research as an attempt to strike a balance between ethnographic portrayal and cultural critique. I then offer a description of gothic subculture constructed from interviews with self-identified goths. Next, I redescribe goth using recent theories of the gaze, which help to describe how gothic style is simultaneously a force of resistance and hetero-normative recapitulation. I conclude by discussing the necessity of critical or dialectical ethnography.

Two Approaches to Subculture

As many subculture scholars are aware, there are two general approaches to the qualitative study of subcultural groups. What I will call the "anthropological" approach tends to emphasize ethnology and participant observation, often with an eye toward producing empathetic accounts of subcultural resistance from the bottom up. These accounts are usually highly descriptive and tend to venerate subcultural subjects as exhibiting behaviors typical and expected of them given the norms of their culture. The often criticized celebratory tincture of ethnography is in part a result of the reflexive and self-critical modes that began to emerge with the works of Clifford Geertz, James Clifford, and others in the mid- to late 1980s (see Geertz 1988; Clifford and Marcus 1986). Central to these new modes of ethnography is an emphasis on the inevitable rhetoricity of ethnographic descriptions, the inseparability of the "poetic and political," the interpenetration of "academic and literary genres" of reportage, and the necessarily subjective, socially constructive nature of all descriptive writing (Clifford 1986, 2). Such...