Peter Pichler – Stahl

Month: October 2019

  • ‘Fandom’ and ‘scholarship’: Comparing two cultural-historical institutions

    I ended my last post on the paradox at the heart of metal studies with the suggestion that cultural history, as one individual discipline in the transdisciplinary field of metal studies, could become an exciting enrichment. It gives us the promise of a structurally exploration of the the intertwined histories of fandom, scholarship and ‘fan scholarship’ in the field. In this (admittedly rather short) blog post, I take up this thought and attempt a first comparative analysis of ‘fandom’ and ‘scholarship’ as historically constructed cultural institutions. Once more, I take and stress the point of view of a historian.

    There seems to be a consensus in metal research that the nexus between metal fandom and metal scholarship is a crucial one. In Salzburg, Keith Kahn-Harris and Rosemary Lucy Hill encouraged us to proactively embrace the arising tension between both by self-reflexively asking diffictult questions on racism, sexism, bigotry, misogyny, nazism and other critical phenomena in the scenes. In this, history with its focus on developments over periods of decades (for metal studies this means to study the whole period since the inception of metal culture around 1970) can provide a helpfully orientating narrative. ((Peter Pichler, Metal Music and Sonic Knowledge in Europe: A Cultural History Since 1970, Bingley: Emerald, forthcoming.))

    Seen historically, both fandom and scholarship are not essentialist roles or identities but social formations, that both have long histories. The habitus, rituals and practices of that structure them can be traced back deep in history. If we view them as such complexes of historically constituted roles, the hybrid zone formed by them together in metal studies receives sharper contours. I start with fandom.

    Fandom

    Usually, metalheads are stereotyped as male, long-haired (semi-)adults wearing band t-shirts and battle vests. ((Once more, refer to Weinstein’s classic work: Deena Weinstein, Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture, Boulder, CO: Da Capo Press, 2000; also, see Bettina Roccor, Heavy Metal. Die Bands, die Fans, die Gegner, Munich: Beck: 1998.)) Practices such as the formation of moshpits or showing the ‘metal horns’ at concerts complete the stereotypical imagery. They are expressions of scene members’ feelings of belonging to their communities, performed in public and addressing audiences within the scence as well as outside the scene.

    If we take the point of view of cultural history things appear in another light. Popular culture – and fandom as a crucial functional position of people in it – have a history that in some of its forms can be traced back to early modern periods; at least to the 19th century, when mass media established new forms of public spheres for mass audiences. The masses became literate. ((For introductory texts, see LeRoy Ashby, With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture since 1830, Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2009;  John Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction, Harlow: Person, 2009; Kaspar Maase, Populärkulturforschung: Eine Einführung, Bielefeld, 2019.)) Thus, fandom is a cultural construction that, today, takes varying forms in different pop cultures (e.g. literature, music, film, gaming, sports etc.) but all of them stem from one root of comparable processes over decades, sometimes even centuries (as in the case of soccer culture or the passion for classical music).

    Taking this view very much relativizes the allegedly absolute newness of metal fan culture since the 1970s. Yes, the practices installed over almost five decades in the global metal scene produced some innovative patterns; however, only being constructed after 1970, the new rituals, practices and scene rules built there heavily relied on what has been learnt, experienced and practiced in other fan cultures before Black Sabbath took the stage. So, metal fandom is a cultural institution that can best be studied in comparison to other forms of fandom in history. And even more crucial, it has to be compared to other cultural institutions.

    Scholarship

    Let us come to scholarship. At first glance, scholarship seems to be something completely different. Scholars usually are seen as rational, well-educated and distinguished personalities. Once more, the stereotype is a male one. Scholars wear glasses, speak of almost non-understandable things and live in the ivory towers of their universities. Yet, also scholarship – and the modern intellectual as a role in it – are historically constructed phenomena. The role of both cannot be separated from the history of the university in Europe and the world since the Middle Ages. ((For introductory texts, see Hilde de Ridder-Symoens et al., eds., A History of the University in Europe, 3 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992-2004; Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, New York, NY: Basic Books, 2010; Dietz Bering, Die Epoche der Intellektuellen 1898–2001. Geburt – Begriff – Grabmal, Berlin: Berlin University Press.)) Since the Middle Ages, philosophers, scientists, theologians and intellectuals – scholars in a most broad sense – tell us how to make sense of the world.

    As said before, this role appears to be very different from fandom. Nonetheless its realities work – basically and structurally – in ways comparable to any other spheres of community-building. Academia knows rituals, do’s and dont’s, forms of identity-building and othering. ((See Anthony Becher and Paul R. Trowler, Academic Tribes and Territories, 2nd edn., Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001.)) The essential question here is what sets this cultural institution, grown out of the tree of a history of almost thousand years, apart from other cultural institutions such as fandom.

    Seen from this angle, what separates them and what makes them comparable at once belongs to the same sphere: their historical backgrounds. How, on the one hand, scholars use the centuries-old narratives of scientific wisdom in their lives and how, on the other hand, metal fans use their  decades-old narratives of metalness can be compared, but only historically so. Both have come together in the history of the field of metal studies.

    Metal studies as a transgressive laboratory of cultural institutions

    What can we learn from this? If we take the point of view of history, metal music studies is they structural point where both histories come together. Seen this way, metal studies is nothing else than a cultural discourse, in which the insitutions of metal fandom and scholarship – with all their heritage – build a ‘match’. Thus, we should see the field as a transgressive laboratory, in which we work on these cultural institutions in the long term and, arguably, shape the new ‘sub-institution’ of the ‘metal scholar’. It is not about playing off one against each other but much more about thinking this new institution in visionary yet critical ways.

  • The paradox at the heart of metal studies

    Over the last two days, I had the wonderful opportunity of taking part in the inspiring Hardwired VII conference at the University of Salzburg. Already the seventh conference in this series, it was an event of intense discussions on topics of transdisciplinarity and transgression in metal studies. As such a stimulating event, it was an oportunity of further developing the scientific community in the field.

    In this post, I want to reflect upon what – probably – can be called the ‘heart of metal studies’. Intentionally, I use this notion of the ‘heart’, because as a metaphor it evokes associations of vitality, life, energy and of the identity of the metal studies community. Worth remembering, German metal veterans Accept released a classic album called Metal Heart in 1985. ((Accept, Metal Heart, Portrait Records, 1985.))

    Now what is at the heart of our field? From my point of view, taken together the two keynote lectures of the conference, by Rosemary Lucy Hill and Keith Kahn-Harris, summed up the crucial challenges scholars have to master in the coming years. Of course, I cannot deliver a full solution to the central problems of metal research in this blog post. From the perspective of a cultural historian, I want to comment upon the paradox at the heart of metal research.

    In her lecture ‘”You’re asking the Wrong Question!” Methodology, Standpoint and Fandon in Metal Research’, Hill delivered an excellent analysis of the main problem of the field in its ‘teenage years’. Metal research is dominantly conducted by scholars, who also take part in the culture as metalheads. With this comes an obvious, structural conflict between the obligation of the scholars in us to keep a distant and critical view on metal and the metal fans in us, who love the music. Hill encouraged scholars to keep asking hard questions on the difficult aspects of metal, e.g. sexual violence, fascim, racism and misogyny.

    In his keynote ‘Too much Transgression – Metal in an Age of Explicit Knowledge’, Kahn-Harris took up his work on metal culture and the concept of ‘reflexive anti-reflexivety’. For Kahn-Harris, today’s metal culture is to be seen as a culture in an age of abundant knowledge. Transgression takes new forms. He called these forms ‘transgressive literalism’, ‘transgressive unintellegibility’ and ‘transgressive inversion’. Also in his view, conflicts between stances to problematic aspects of metal have to be reconsidered.

    For a cultural historian, both lectures thematize a paradox, which seems to form something like the heart, perhaps the dark heart of the field. This heart pumps into the field (and its community) its vitality and is its key problem at the same time. The core issue  seems to be to develop theories, strategies and a communal habitus or ‘thought style’, which enable us of coping with the tensions between our identities as scholars and identites as fans in a productive way.

    Logically, this is a classic paradox. The point here is, cultural-historical experience teaches us that usually paradoxes cannot be solved. ((For instance, for the paradoxical structure of the identity of the European Union between nation-state and ‘super-state’, see Peter Pichler, ‘European Union cultural history: introducing the theory of ‘paradoxical coherence’ to start mapping a field of research’, Journal of European Integration 1 (2018), pp. 1-16.)) In the long term, the identitary tensions that arise from such conflicts are solved only contigently by creating new spaces of knowledge, in that scholarship goes as far as possible in both directions: in the direction of critique and the direction of keeping a positive attitude to the culture. In a perfect metal studies world, which never will become reality, this could look a bit like this figure:

    Thus, metal studies should not aim at defining a methodology or theory of metal that resolves the paradox. It should aim at constituting a new sphere of knowledge, in that we can go as far as possible into both directions. What Kahn-Harris called ‘engaged scholarship’ comes pretty close to this. With Hill, we should keep asking difficult questions. In this, history with its focus on longue durée developments over decades since 1970 could become an exciting enrichment. ((Peter Pichler, Metal Music and Sonic Knowledge in Europe: A Cultural History Since 1970, Bingley: Emerald, forthcoming.))