Popular music, gender, and postmodernism : anger is an energy / Neil Nehring.

Author/creator Nehring, Neil, 1957-
Format Book
Publication InfoThousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications, ©1997.
Descriptionxxxi, 203 pages ; 24 cm
Subjects
Punk rock music--History and criticism.
Feminism and music.
Anger in music.
Postmodernism.

Variant title Anger is an energy
Contents No respect for suffering: an introduction to postmodernism -- The vicious history of aesthetics: romanticism, modernism, and postmodernism on mass culture ressentiment -- Collaborating with the oppressors: postmodern academics on music -- Kurt Cobain died for your sins: postmodernism in music journalism -- Emotional rescue: feminist philosophy on anger -- The post-postmodern voice: emotion and writing about music -- The Riot Grrrls and Carnival.
Abstract This book begins by tracing the migration of cynical academic ideas about postmodernism into music journalism. The result has been a widespread fatalism over the presumed ability of the music industry to absorb any expression of defiance in hip hop and rock. Commercial "incorporation" supposedly makes a charade of musical outrage, somehow disconnecting anger in music from any meaning or significance. The author documents the considerable damage done by the journalistic employment of this tenet of postmodern theory, particularly in the case of the late Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, whose emotional intensity was repeatedly belittled for its purported incoherence. As a rebuttal to academic postmodernism and its exploitation by the mass media, this book emphasizes that emotion and reason are mutually interdependent. Though mistakes can occur in the conscious choice of an object at which to direct one's feelings, the preverbal appraisal of social situations that generates emotions is always perfectly rational. The author surveys work in literary criticism, psychology, and especially feminist philosophy that argues on this basis for the political significance of anger even prior to its full articulation. The emotional performance in popular music, he concludes, cannot be discounted on the grounds, for example, that lyrics such as Cobain's are difficult to understand. After detailing more and less progressive approaches to emotion in music criticism, the author focuses on recent punk rock by women, including the Riot Grrrls.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references (pages 180-193) and index.
LCCN 97004590
ISBN0761908358 (cloth)
ISBN0761908366 (pbk.)

Availability

Library Location Call Number Status Item Actions
Music Music Stacks ML3534 .N44 1997 ✔ Available Place Hold