Whiteness With(out) Borders: Translocal narratives of whiteness in heavy metal scenes in Norway, South Africa and Australia.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11157/medianz-vol15iss1id139Abstract
This article discusses how narratives of white masculine identity have been deployed in nation-specific ways within heavy metal scenes in Norway, South Africa and Australia. While heavy metal's global spread has allowed more diverse aesthetics to emerge, within these nations it has also constructed rigid boundaries of community tied both historically and contemporaneously to whiteness. This article interrogates how the dominant practices of three heavy metal scenes affirm an ‘originary’ whiteness that erases its migratory and/or colonial status. In this article I investigate the processes through which discourses of whiteness and white masculinity are translocated and translated from one context to another, enabling spaces of both negotiation and resistance. I address how national heavy metal scenes negotiate these intersections of musicality, whiteness and nationhood in ways that may explore new possibilities for white masculine identities, while also reproducing a rigid politics of power, privilege and exclusion.
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