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An ethnography of a post-punk subculture

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction / Lauren M. E. Goodlad and Michael Bibby 1
I. Genders
Dark Admissions: Gothic Subculture and the Ambivalence of Misogyny and Resistance / Joshua Gunn 41
Queens of the Damned: Women and Girls’ Participation in the Two Gothic Subcultures / Kristen Schilt 65
Peri Gothous: On the Art of Gothicizing Gender / Trevor M. Holmes 79
Men in Black: Androgyny and Ethics in The Crow and Fight Club / Lauren M. E. Goodlad 89
II. Performances
This Modern Goth (Explains Herself) / Rebecca Schraffenberger 121
Playing Dress Up: David Bowie and the Roots of Goth / David Shumway and Heather Arnet 129
Undead Fashion: Nineties Style and the Perennial Return of Goth / Catherine Spooner 143
“Goth Damage” and Melancholia: Reflections on Posthuman Gothic Identities / Michael du Plessis 155
III. Localities
“To commit suicide in Buffalo is redundant”: Music and Death in Zero City, 1982–84 / Mark Nowak 171
“Ah am witness to its authenticity”: Gothic Style in Postmodern Southern Writing / Jason K. Friedman 190
The (Un)Australian Goth: Notes toward a Dislocated National Subject / Ken Gelder 217
IV. Artifacts
Atrocity Exhibitions: Joy Division, Factory Records, and Goth / Michael Bibby 233
Material Distinctions: A Conversation with Valerie Steele / Jessica Burstein 257
Geek/Goth: Remediation and Nostalgia in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands / Robert Markley 277
The Authentic Dracula: Bram Stoker’s Hold on Vampiric Genres / Nancy Gagnier 293
V. Communities
“When you kiss me, I want to die”: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Gothic Family Values / Lauren Stasiak 307
The Cure, the Community, the Contempt! / Angel M. Butts 316
“We are all individuals, but we’ve all got the same boots on!”: Traces of Individualism within a Subcultural Community / Paul Hodkinson 322
VI. Practices
That Obscure Object of Desire Revisited: Poppy Z. Brite and the Goth Hero as Masochist / Carol Siegel 335
God’s Own Medicine: Religion and Parareligion in U.K. Goth Culture / Anna Powell 357
Gothic Fetishism / Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock 375
The Aesthetic Apostasy / David Lenson 398
References 405
Contributors 425
Index 429

About the Author

Lauren M. E. Goodlad is Associate Professor of English and a member of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of Victorian Literature and the Victorian State: Character and Governance in a Liberal Society.

Michael Bibby is Professor of English at Shippensburg University. He is the author of Hearts and Minds: Bodies, Poetry, and Resistance in the Vietnam Era and the editor of The Vietnam War and Postmodernity.

Reviews

"Goth: Undead Subculture is a very engaging read--a nice melange of ethnographic anecdote, cultural criticism, and historical analysis--in which a multidisciplinary crew of contributors analyzes an important and complex subculture through its fashions, music, dancing, literature, sexual practices, aesthetic ideals, theatrical displays, historical precedents, and ideologies." Robert Walser, author of Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music "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 "... [an] intelligent collection of writings ..."--Times Literary Supplement, 13 April 2007 "Highbrow analysis of the genre that credibility forgot."--QP Magazine, May 2007