Since it first emerged from Britain’s punk-rock scene within the overdue Nineteen Seventies, goth culture has haunted postmodern tradition and society, reinventing itself within and opposed to the mainstream.
Goth: Undead Subculture is the 1st selection of scholarly essays dedicated to this enduring but little tested cultural phenomenon. Twenty-three essays from a variety of disciplines discover the tune, cinema, tv, style, literature, aesthetics, and fandoms linked to the lifestyle. They research goth’s many dimensions—including its depression, androgyny, spirituality, and perversity—and take readers inside of destinations in l. a., Austin, Leeds, London, Buffalo, ny urban, and Sydney. many of the participants are or were members within the culture, and several other draw all alone experiences.
The volume’s editors offer a wealthy historical past of goth, describing its play of resistance and consumerism; its influence on category, race, and gender; and its distinct positive factors as an “undead” tradition in mild of post-subculture reviews and different severe techniques. The essays comprise an interview with the celebrated model historian Valerie Steele; analyses of novels by way of Anne Rice, Poppy Z. Brite, and Nick Cave; discussions of goths on the net; and readings of iconic goth texts from Bram Stoker’s Dracula to James O’Barr’s photo novel The Crow. different essays specialize in gothic track, together with seminal precursors reminiscent of pleasure department and David Bowie, and goth-influenced performers comparable to the healing, 9 Inch Nails, and Marilyn Manson. Gothic sexuality is explored in a number of methods, the topics starting from the San Francisco queercore scene of the Eighties to the expanding impact of fetishism and fetish play. jointly those essays display that whereas its contributors are frequently middle-class suburbanites, goth blurs normalizing limitations whilst apparently as a permanent shadow of overdue capitalism.
Contributors: Heather Arnet, Michael Bibby, Jessica Burstein, Angel M. Butts, Michael du Plessis, Jason Friedman, Nancy Gagnier, Ken Gelder, Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Joshua Gunn, Trevor Holmes, Paul Hodkinson, David Lenson, Robert Markley, Mark Nowak, Anna Powell, Kristen Schilt, Rebecca Schraffenberger, David Shumway, Carol Siegel, Catherine Spooner, Lauren Stasiak, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock