Peter Pichler – Stahl

Tag: Discourse Analysis

  • Writing about writing about heavy metal

    The past year in my project on the history of the law myth in the Styrian metal scene was dedicated to empirical research. Discourse-analytical, oral-history and musicological data on the history of this scene was collected.This phase is now over and the third and last year of the project, which just started, is dedicated to writing up the results in a book.

    I have just started writing this book. This also changes the function of the posts in my blog. Whereas previously they had the function of documenting the project, its genesis, and then the empirical research, now they are about reflexively accompanying the writing process. It is about writing about writing; more precisely, it is about writing about writing about heavy metal.

    Such a reflection of one’s own academic writing activity on the meta-level is nothing new. Pierre Bourdieu already held a famous leçon sur la leçon, and history as an academic discipline in particular is increasingly engaged in research on such writing. ((See Pierre Bourdieu, Leçon sur la leçon, Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1982; Wolfgang Schmale, Schreib-Guide Geschichte, Vienna et al.: Böhlau, 2006.)) The new book series Meta/Metal: Exploring the Complexities of Metal Cultures will also make a contribution in this regard of the meta-level of Metal Studies.

    I don’t yet know exactly where this writing journey will lead. But it’s clear to me that I don’t think much of the famous quote “writing about music is like dancing to architecture”. I am much more interested in looking for discursive points of contact for reflecting on the radiations of this subculture – also the radiations into the universities of Austria and the world.

  • “Aren’t you the guy doing this metal studies interview stuff?”: On distance and self-reflection

    In my recent post, I wrote about oral history as a the method of choice to decode the Styrian metal scene’s emerging collective memory. This scene memory depends on the the scene’s shared attitude towards law. Since then, my research has progressed. Another series of interviews was conducted, the discourse analysis has been continued.

    Still, I have the feeling the empirical research is progressing well. The last third of the field research period has begun. In this post, I do not want to go into details about the data collected (this will happen in later posts). Rather, I want to focus on one issue, which – once more – has proven to be crucial: the question of closeness and distance in metal studies.

    Prior to my research, I was a member of this local heavy metal community. I knew scene members and attended concerts. It was – more or less – a silent leisure pleasure. After 21 months of local scene research and consequently many intense contacts with the scene members, I am the ‘metal studies dude’ now. “Aren’t you the guy doing this metal studies interview stuff?”, is a question I am approached with regurlarly at scene events.

    This means that my position in the community seems to have changed. The knowledge about the project circulating, there comes even more support from the scene. I am eternally to the scene members for their neverending patience with my questions. This patience is metal.

    However, with the growing visibility the key issue of the position of the researcher in the community investigated has become vital once more. As now my position has turned from a silent academic watcher to a more visible role, I have to re-reflect upon the question of distance and closeness.

    I would suggest that, in metal studies, each step of data collection in the scene should be reflected upon by the researcher carefully and thoroughly right after having taken the step. Hence, I do not want to be only the guy doing the metal studies interviews stuff but as well the guy thinking about the interview stuff.

  • Covid19, metal studies, and oral history research: A methodological rant

    In my last blog post, I attempted to describe the thoroughly digitalized research environment I discovered in our project on the history of the Styrian metal scene. Our research is progressing very well. My colleague Charris Efthimiou already provided no less less than thirteen very detailled analyses of law-themed metal songs and albums. Besides the crucial referential frame of globally famous classics (such as Judas Priest’s ‘Breaking the Law’) Charris focused on Styrian music. Hence, we now have a good data set on the musical production in the Styrian scene.

    As  the project leader, I spent the last few weeks gathering data on the cultural production in the scene since the early 1980s. I am constructing a permanently growing corpus of cultural artefacts from the scene. I am collecting T-shirts (as crucial pieces of clothing), album covers (as pictorial historical sources that ‘cover’ the music on records), concert flyers, posters, and other forms of sources. This body of sources currently comprises dozens of artefacts, images, and texts. It will grow steadily. Still, I am very thankful to receive information on further source materials.

    Thus, at this point, the project team is in midst of the process of researching our empirical data. Thanks to Charris’ brilliant work the musicological stream is advancing very well. The same holds true for the semiotic discourse analysis of the scene. Most texts and images, in many cases also of T-shirts, are available from the web. As well, many pieces of clothes can be ordererd to really hold them in hands. In this respect, digitalization makes things possible that would not have been possible five or ten years ago.

    Yet, I do face a highly ambivalent situation in respect of the oral history stream of my project. For almost a year now, face-to-face interviews have been difficult, often even impossible to conduct. Currently, we are experiencing (again) a quite strict form of a ‘lockdown’ here in Austria – with an open ending point. Of course, in many other places around the globe the situation is the same or – sadly – even worse. Of course, this is frustrating. Yet, I also think this is a very good occasion to globally rethink using oral history methodologies in metal studies. From my point of view, two aspects are crucial to reflect upon.

    First, there already is a rather dense discourse on experiences and practical information on how to conduct interviews online. For instance, the British Oral History Society gives good advice on this. Also, metal studies scholars have started to discuss this problem in their field. Hence, perhaps relieving the frustration a bit, no oral history researcher is alone with this problem! Nonetheless, we need a broader discussion on this issue in metal studies!

    Second, as a historian it is fascinating to think of the fact that, now in 2020/21, digitalization as the crucial historical ‘mega trend’ of the last two decades has not only transformed the scene I am researching but also the ways I am researching it. Doubtless, both aspects depend on each other. Yet, in the pandemic period, digitalization is more relevant than ever before. Metal studies is almost fully digital – at least for the moment.

    Hence, we should not only see this as a frustrating attack on our used ways of research. Much more it is the historically logical catalysis of a development which already was transforming metal studies before the pandemic. The pandemic did not start the process, it only catalysed it. Hence, for my project, I try to see it as a valuable opportunity to experiment with new forms of conducting interviews remotely. I would expect that after the pandemic we will have gained a big deal of important experiences in this changed world of research.

  • A short conceptual note on ‘Foucauldian’ and ‘Neo-Foucauldian’ thought in Metal Music Studies

    Today, Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984), as a theorist of post-structuralism, is one of the most well-known sources of conceptual reflection in cultural history. In current cultural-historical debates, his notions of ‘discourse’, ‘archeology’, ‘genealogy’ or ‘governmentality’ are amongst the most freuently used ones. ((For an introduction to Foucault, cf. Leonard Lawlor/John Nale (eds.), The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon, Cambridge: University Press, 2014; Clare O’Farell, Michel Foucault,  London: Sage, 2005; Sara Mills, Michel Foucault, London: Routledge, 2003; Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, Minnesota: Minnesota University Press, 1988; for a broad introduction to Foucauldian thought in history, cf. Paul Veyne, Foucault. Sa pensée, sa personne, Paris: Albin Michel, 2008.)) They are used to tell the ‘histories’ of very different subjects and topics, from a broad variety of  perspectives.

    All those  seemingly Foucauldian macro-, meso- and microstories of historical reality share, despite their different narratological subjects and objects, the ontological background of post-structuralist theory. However, we have to be aware that today’s common understanding of a ‘Foucaldian’ methodology in cultural history,  is not exactly and ‘originary’ Foucauldian, strictly clinging to the philosopher’s intentions. Foucault claimed himself to be a ‘positivist’ ((Cf. ibid.)) who examined discourses as positive and empirical formations of performative ‘speech acts’ in history.

    In the context of current historical theorizing this seems to be an ironic or even awkward claim. We construct Foucault to be the main ‘hero’ of constructivist and deconstructivist cultural history. This, frequently projects an ontology of constructivism onto the discursive ‘screen’ of Foucauldian thought and concepts; yet, the French theorist himself , especially during the development of his core-framework of ‘discourse analysis’ int the late 1960s, saw his work as one of an empirical positivist. ((Cf. ibid.))

    Thus, when telling cultural history by using Foucauldian concepts and methods, such as ‘discourse analysis’, ‘archeology’ or ‘genealogy’, we have to be aware – and honest to ourselves – that we use and re-use, hence modificate these notions, depending on our own specific interests of research. So, maybe it is unfortunate to speak and write of ‘Foucauldian’ thought in cultural history. Probably, to define current theorizing in cultural research as an ‘Neo-Foucauldian‘ framework would maybe be more accurate: we overworked Foucault’s theories by projecting our own historiographical demands upon his work.

    Supposedly, Foucault himself, a strongly pragmatic and non-systemic thinker, would not mind. He wanted his theoretical notions and concepts to be seen as a ‘toolbox’, from which everyone should take the tools and notions she or he needed; adapting them to her or his needs in analysis. ((Cf. ibid.)) Exactly, this is the actual and strictly Foucauldian approach: it is not an approach that glorifies (de-)construcitivism but an endless play and re-play of rethinking theoretical terminologies.

    The actual ‘constant’ (Foucault would strictly avoid this notion) in Foucauldian thought is a pragmatic and ontological one,  a specific ‘flexible’ perspectivism. All through his professional life, his work was an examination and cyclic re-examination of the theorectial notions he had used before. So, actual Foucauldian cultural theorism is one which puts terminoligical self-reflection into his main focus. It is a perspective which, again and again, returns to its core notions, re-works and over-works them, making them better suitable for its relevant empirical needs.

    Hence, we could define actual Foucauldian thought in cultural-historical theorizing as one which has the endless modification, the constant critique of its own terminology as its conceptual core. To think in Foucauldian ways, therefore, means to lead a discourse of terminological critique. In Metal Music Studies, as a specific research field in cultural studies, Foucault is a frequent point of reference, too. ((Cf. Jeremy Wallach e.a. (eds.), Metal Rules the Globe. Heavy Metal Music Around the World, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011;Deena Weinstein, Rock’n America: A Social and Cultural History, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015.))

    Taking up my differentiation between ‘Foucauldian’ and ‘Neo-Foucauldian’ thought, could be a way of making theorizing in Metal Music Studies more accessible and clearer – by being more exact and self-reflexive, taking the self-critique of terminology as a more important point. When speaking of ‘discourse’, ‘archeology’, ‘genealogy’ or ‘governmentality’, we should exactly define how we use these notions; maybe giving an exact point of reference in Foucauld’s own texts, clarifying which phase of Foucauld’s own self-critique of theory we intend to operationalize.