Peter Pichler – Stahl

Tag: Sonic Knowledge

  • Writing about writing about heavy metal, part three: the Mexican experience

    Over a month ago now, I had the great pleasure of attending the fifth conference of the “International Society for Metal Music Studies” in Mexico City. This central event of Metal Studies usually takes place every two years, but in this case was held this year instead of last year due to the Corona pandemic. In this blogpost, I want to reflect on how this event – possibly – changed my own writing about metal, especially about the history of the Styrian metal scene, which I have been researching intensively for two and a half years now.

    The conference in Mexico City, which was attended by about seventy of the leading researchers in Metal Studies, was dedicated to the topic of “Heavy Metal in the Global South: Multiregional Perspectives”. I gave a presentation on my research project on the Styrian metal scene. My central thesis was that the theoretical worlds of “Global South Studies” could potentially help to better explain cultural transfers between metal scenes across the “Iron Curtain” before 1989/90. My talk can be seen online here.

    With the temporal distance of about a month that exists today for me to this conference, it becomes more and more clear to me that in a certain sense it has had an influence on my thinking and writing about metal. One could speak of a “Mexican experience” that has had an impact – possibly not only on me – on personal and individual Metal Studies discourse. How can this be and what kind of change is it? What is this “Mexican experience” supposed to be?

    Basically, there are two points to be made in the reflection. The first is a sociological one of scholarship, the second a thematic one in the choice of the research object. On the first level of this conference as a collective academic experience of the participating researchers, it is hardly surprising that such a major event has an influence on the personal metal paradigm. At this conference, the latest findings in the field were presented and discussed, renegotiating the way scholarship writes and talks about metal. It is compellingly logical at this level  that paradigmatic shifts manifested here individually and collectively.

    The second point is then particularly interesting – and I think also particularly transformatively effective. In Mexico City, the “southern” perspective on metal and Metal Studies was in the foreground. For me, as a scholar from the “global north,” the themes and the values and notions of norms that were linked to the study of metal at this event made a crucial thematic aspect much clearer. It is always dangerous to speak of historical tendencies, as they invite stereotyping and essentialization of complex historical processes.

    If one nevertheless attempts such a historiographical trend survey, it can be summed up as follows: in the “global north” metal has already become much more commodified, an expression of northern affluence saturation. Here, metal is only “dangerous” or profoundly socially transformative in exceptional cases. In the “south,” on the other hand – and this was the “Mexican experience” that for me still burned itself in much more strongly than before – metal and Metal Studies are still inextricably linked to the struggle for social equality, decolonization, and protest against injustice. Here metal is even more socially transformative.

    For my own writing about metal, this Mexican experience is extremely enriching and important. For the remaining stages of my book on the Styrian metal scene since 1980, which I am currently working on, it follows that I should look in particular at those historical times and spaces where metal had a liberalizing and socially transformative effect in this sense. For example, in the confrontation with still existing catholic-conservative traditions in Graz in the early 1980s, when the scene was founded, or in the fight against right-wing extremist and neo-Nazi tendencies in the 1990s. The Mexican experience is a call to write about metal again more strongly also as scientific-cultural empowerment, enlightenment in the most original sense.

  • 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.

  • “The end complete?”: finishing the empirical phase

    The picture above shows part of the table of contents of the catalogue for the exposition “Palette” by the Austrian artists Helmut and Johanna Kandl. I contributed an article to the catalogue. ((Peter Pichler, Vom Schwermetall als Lautfarbe in der Palette, oder: Wie das Eisenerz vom Erzberg nach Gleisdorf in den Heavy Metal kam, in: Kunsthaus Graz/Landesgalerie Niederösterreich, eds., Helmut und Johanna Kandl: Material + Archive, Wien: Verlag für moderne Kunst,  2021, 114-120.)) The publication of this article and the opening of the exhibition with a section on heavy metal mark in a way the end of the empirical phase in my research project.

    I spent the last year empirically researching the local heavy metal scene in Graz and Styria. Two research methods were the focus: oral history and semiotic discourse analysis. The Covid19 pandemic did not make conducting the research any easier, but I think the “hunt for data” was successful. I have a rich body of oral history data and cultural artifacts from all four decades of the scene’s history. Those artefacts will be analyzed as historical sources. Musicological research from the first year of the project is an important component of the scholarly examination of this scene. A first article about our results can be read online.

    In these weeks of completing the empirical phase, it finally struck me the fundamental extent to which the specific values, individual rules and local music of this scene form one integral cultural fabric. In order to understand this cultural history, it is necessary to analyze it at the intersection of morals, attitudes towards law and the musical language of metal, that is, to explore what I call the local norm-related sonic knowledge. This perspective on the junctures of texts, images, practices and sounds will be the focus of the book I will begin writing in early 2022.

  • “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.

  • The Styrian metal scene in 2021: ‘Pandemism’ and localism

    Copyright of the elements of the title image: cover artwork ‘Thrashing Death Squad’ EP © MDD/Black Sunset Records 2021; branding artwork ‘Metal on the Hill 2021’ © Napalm Records 2020.

    In my project on the Styrian metal scene since 1980, I am currently conducting oral history interviews in this local metal community. I have already talked with several stakeholders, musicians, studio owners, record producers, and other community members. I am very grateful to them for beeing so cooperative and open during the interview sessions. While some of my initial assumptions about the scene have proven to be right, others have been corrected or modified. Steadily, the evaluation of the interview recordings opens up new insights. This phase of research will last about a year until early 2022.

    Of course, the Covid19 pandemic has been one of the crucial topics in most of these interviews. Scene members experience the pandemic in different ways, depending on many individual and social factors. However, some shared patterns of experiencing the pandemic seem to be recognizable. Most of the local metalheads share a very understandable frustration about the lack of concerts and scene events. Also, most of them feel an uncertainty or are worrying about the scene community’s future.

    On balance, the pandemic crisis seems to catalyze the trend of digitalization that was already transforming the scene before 2020. Digital concert streams and many other forms of digital scene life are gaining momentum. Because of the present lack of opportunities to play gigs, the scene moreover witnesses a productivity boost. Bands focus on studio recordings – as far as this is possible under the current conditions.

    Fascinatingly, in this phase of a new productitivity in the Styrian metal scene, a new localism is gaining momentum. A number of new Styrian records  – for example, the new split EP by Darkfall and Mortal Strike shown in the title image – thematize local semiotics. They rework cultural themes from Styria and Graz – for instance, the traditional Styrian blazon. Another example is the branding of the ‘Metal on the Hill’ festival scheduled for August 2021, also shown in the title image.

    Intriguingly, the new productivity in the scene promotes feelings of local Styrian beloging, identity, and history. The new music is more ‘Styrian’ than ever before. This recent phenomenon, which I am tempted to call the scene’s ‘pandemism’ (in a sense of trying to culturally cope with the pandemic crisis in form of musical self-empowerment), is crystalizing currently. Hence, from 2021 onwards, the ‘glocal’ character of the scene seems to be even more important than before. We should keep an eye on both the ‘pandemism’ and the localism.

  • What lies ahead in 2021: Empirical fieldwork

    For my project on the metal scene in Graz and Styria since 1980, I am currently finalizing the framework for the empirical research in 2021. As written in an earlier post, the overall aim is to reconstruct the history of the ‘local metallic association chain’ in Styria.

    Most of the second year of the project will be devoted to intense empirical work. The project teams employs three methodical streams – musicological analysis, oral history, and semantic discourse analysis – to grasp the multidimensional phenomenon of the Styrian scene. In the following, I give a rough sketch of what lies ahead for the ‘Norikum’ project in 2021.

    Analyzing Styrian metal music…

    As already my terminology of metal indicates (I call it ‘sonic knowledge’), I treat music and sound as the ‘heart’ of metal culture. Everything in metal depends from knowing and experiencing the music and its sonic sphere. My project colleague Charalampos Efthymiou now proceeds to analyze the musical production from the local scene. In his analysis, he will focus on the aspect of ‘law’. Together, we already have set up a corpus of relevant songs and albums. About 15 song will be analyzed formally and in the contexts of their albums – to identify ‘law patterns’ in the musical language. ((See D. Elflein, Schwermetallanalysen: Die musikalische Sprache des Heavy Metal, Bielefeld: 2010.))

    Analyzing how the scene history is narrated…

    Since at least the second half of the 20th century, oral history is one oft he most prominent research methods in contemporary history. ((See L. Abrams, Oral History Theory, London and New York: Routledge: 2010; R. Perks and A. Thomson, The Oral History Reader,  Routledge: London and New York, 2000; D. Ritchie, Doing Oral History, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.)) Oral history interviews make open forms of creating the historical source in the dialogue between the interviewee and the researcher. The first must be given the chance to construct his narrative, the latter must nourish this process. I (and another member of the project team) will lead oral history interviews with about twenty interviewees. The sample of interviewees will be constructed to represent the gender and class structure of the local scene as well as include non-scene members with their perspectives on local metal. I already have identified the key interviewees.

    Analyzing the local scene discourse…

    Though music and sound – sonic knowledge – are at the heart of Styrian metal, its history can only really be understood when interpreting its textual, visual and fashion artefacts – tshirts, album covers, texts, flyers – as integral elements of the scene discourse. Music, sounds, images, texts and fashion make a fabric of meanings that has to be decoded integrally. ((See A.-K. Höpflinger, Religiöse Codes in der Populärkultur. Kleidung der Black Metal-Szene, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2020;also, see A. Frings e.a. (eds.), Vergangenheiten auf der Spur. Indexikalische Semiotik in den historischen Kulturwissenschaften, Bielefeld: Transcript, 2012.))

    I am constructing a corpus of about twenty locally worn tshirts, about fifteen to twenty flyers (refering to crucial events in the scene history since 1980) and about twenty album covers (of well-known local metal records) as semiotic sources. A discourse analysis of the semantic relations between visuals, sound, texts and fashion should enable us to reconstruct this scene discourse for the decades since 1980.

    What lies ahead in 2021

    To sum up, in the ‘Norikum’ project 2021 will be devoted to intense empirical work. Analyzing the local metal music, leading oral history interviews and analyzing the fabric of the local scene culture will provide us with the necessary research data to start writing this history in 2022. Later this year, I will post an research report summarizing the key findings of the first year on the project website.

     

  • Politics, values, norms, and ethics in metal and metal studies: ‘Reflexive anti-reflexivity’ has a history!

    Our project on metal and law at the University of Graz is advancing. We are even a bit ahead of our planned schedule. In the past months, I have worked my way through existing metal research literatures, also paying close attention to older metal studies works’ take on questions of politics, ethics, norms, in short on the norm-related sonic knowledge of metal. ((Once more, here we have to mention the ‘usual suspects’ of classic metal studies works; among them, see H.M Berger, Metal, Rock, and Jazz: Perception and Phenomenology of Musical Experience, University of New England Press: Hanover and London, 1999; D. Elflein, Schwermetallanalysen, Die musikalische Sprache des Heavy Metal, Bielfeld: Transcript, 2010; R. Walser, Running wit the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music,Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2014; D. Weinstein, Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture, Boulder, CO: Da Capo, 2000.))

    As explained in my recent last blog post, cultural-historically, we now have a pretty solid impression of how metal culture, most of all since the early 1980s, developed its discourse centered on law and norm-related phenomena, on a European and global level. Starting from this broad framework, the next steps are to engage critically with the key results from this first phase and develop the final empirical framework (questionnaires for interviewees, selection of interviewees) for researching the norm-related sonic knowledge in the Styrian heavy metal scene.

    This is the point where we go from the macrosphere of the European and the global to the microsphere of the local in the Austrian region of Styria with its capital city Graz. In this step, it seems crucial to me to reflect upon an aspect which frequently ‘popped up’ in existing research literatures and also when talking with potential interviewees and local scene stakeholders.

    An apparent blind spot in metal studies …

    Frequently, when re-reading existing works in metal studies, I was struck (or to be more frank: hit) by the fact that actually metal studies has rather serious issues when it comes to addressing the moralities, polictics, values, and ethics of metal culture since the 1970s. So far, it is only clear that metal has its ever-varying values, moralities, and political agendas.

    But as shown brilliantly by Rosemary Lucy Hill in her excellent key note lecture in Salzburg last year, metal studies has serious issues when it comes to developing a convincing grip on phenomena in the culture that belong to the sphere of values, norms, or moralities. We know that there are ‘problematic aspects’ and partially we understand them, but we do not really know how to explain and deal with them in metal studies in a historical longue durée perspective.

    Of course, I have no full solution to this problem in a short blog post. But I want to raise two points that seem to be relevant and so far neglected. Much more than now, we should also take these discussions (and the apparent non-ability of metal studies to deal with them) as historical phenomena, that have a past, yet today still effective history of their own.

    Still, Kahn-Harris’ concept of the ‘reflexive anti-reflexivety’ in the extreme metal scene is the most convincing analysis of how a specific subgenre of metal developed its norm-related discourse. (( K. Kahn-Harris, Extreme Music: Music and Culture on the Edge, London and New York: Berg, 2007, 157-166)) Kahn-Harris showed that extreme metal scene members consciously and reflexively decided to ignore ‘problematic aspects’ like violence, racism, homophobia, or simply hatred in their culture.

    This is true. But if we approach this issue historically, two serious challenges are not solved convingly in his analysis. Reflexive-antireflexivity is a habitus the extreme metal scene seems to have encultured. However, as a first aspect, we have to intepret this habitus as a culminating point of a history of living metal since the 1970s. Reflexive anti-reflexivety did not fall from the sky in the early 1990s. It simply never was the case that extreme metal fans were historically independent from  their contexts and 100% consciously or independently decided to adopt this concept. So far, the analysis is biased towards a rather ahistorical presentism.

    Much more than currently, we have to acknowledge that this way of approaching their own culture has deep roots in metal culture and outside metal culture; it developed at the points where the moral spheres of both touched upon each other. In short: reflexive anti-reflexivety has a history. Unambiguously, it is a history we do not know much about (to formulate it cautiously). ((I hope my  upcoming book on the European cultural history of metal can be a first step into this direction; see P. Pichler, Metal Music, Sonic Knowledge, and the Cultural Ear in Europe since 1970: A Historiographic Exploration, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner, in press, 2020.)) This habitus is a historically created way of knowing metal and we have to research how exactly metalheads learnt to know metal in this way.

    The second point, perhaps, is even more critical for metal studies in its current phase of becoming an independent field of studies. Most metal scholars are metal heads themselves. This fact for itself is no problem; I even think it is a big advantage because with fandom comes a lot empirical knowledge.

    However, with the fact that many metal studies scholars are (extreme) metalheads  reflexive anti-reflexivety found its logical way into metal academia. Hence, the concept Kahn-Harris described could wander beneath the surface into the the moral sphere of metal studies. We should look sharp at this point of moral intersections. I hope a cultural-historical take on this discussion can bring in new insights – by scrutinizing the history of metal’s norm-related discourse.

     

  • Wittgenstein, Davidson and Halford: the heuristics of studying norm-related sonic knowledge

    This is the first post, which ‘officially’ discusses my research in the new project ‘Norm-related sonic knowledge in Heavy Metal culture’. We started on 1 February and are currently working on the project website, which will go online in a few days. There, blog posts from the project will be featured in a special section and appear in the newsfeed too.

    In this first post, I want to address a topic which is crucial in our research: the heuristics of what I called ‘norm-related sonic knowledge’. The main question here is how we plan to map this realm of knowledge.  This sphere is constituted by law-related phenomema in metal culture, metal practices, metal music and metal networks. We need a good heuristical strategy to map the field.

    Here, the result of a fruitful conversation I had recently with my colleague Christian Hiebaum (a legal philosopher and legal sociologist at the University of Graz) is key. In our discussion, Christian raised the point that, philosophically and analytically, all the terms involved (e.g. justice, law, legal system, crime, moral, ethics, law-breaking, rule-breaking etc.) form something like a ‘family’ or a ‘Sprachspiel’ of terms.

    Taking up the thoughts of analytical philosophers like Donald Davidson ((See D. Davidson, The Essential Davidson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2006; D. Davidson, Truth, Language, and History: Philosophical Essays, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005; D. Davidson, Truth and Predication. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 2005.)) and Ludwig Wittgenstein ((See C. Bezzel: Wittgenstein zur Einführung. Junius, Hamburg 2000, L. Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen. Frankfurt: WBG, 2001.)), it is quite easy to recognize that all the categories of norm-related sonic knowledge form a ‘pool’ or a ‘family’ of notions and meanings. Heuristically, the crucial point is how the meaning of each individual term is constituted within this family.

    Herein, each of the terms – in its individual meaning – depends on the other ones. Let us think of some examples. To be understood and fulfill its function in culture,  the notion ‘law’ relies on its links to related notions like ‘justice’, ‘ruling’, ‘order’ ‘legality’ or ‘law-breaking’. The notion ‘breaking the law’ needs a presupposed and in the metal scene shared understanding of terms like ‘law’, ‘morality’ or ‘crime’.

    If we take Judas Priest’s classic ‘Breaking The Law’ once more as a paradigmatic example, this approach makes us look at the lyrics in a new way:

    There I was completely wasted, out of work and down
    All inside it’s so frustrating as I drift from town to town
    Feel as though nobody cares if I live or die
    So I might as well begin to put some action in my life

    Breaking the law, breaking the law
    Breaking the law, breaking the law
    Breaking the law, breaking the law
    Breaking the law, breaking the law

    So much for the golden future I can’t even start
    I’ve had every promise broken, there’s anger in my heart
    You don’t know what it’s like, you don’t have a clue
    If you did you’d find yourselves doing the same thing too

    Breaking the law, breaking the law
    Breaking the law, breaking the law
    Breaking the law, breaking the law
    Breaking the law, breaking the law… ((Lyrics to Judas Priest, ‘Breaking The Law’, on British Steel, 1980.))

    In red and bold, I marked the notions that are relevant for these heuristics. Analytically and philosophically, it might be very risky, even problematic to integrate not only individual notions (e.g. ‘law’ or ‘anger’) but entire word groups or clauses (e.g. ‘breaking the law’, ‘every promise broken’, ‘out of work’) into such a family of terms. This needs more and accurate thinking.

    Yet what we gain from this is heuristically highly useful. We see very clearly that the categories of norm-related sonic knowledge in the lyrics (e.g. ‘law’, ‘breaking the law’) – in the constitution of their meanings – are closely linked to key aspects of metal culture like anger, frustration, or freedom. And further, these notions are linked to the sounds and music of heavy metal. ((R. Walser, Running with the Devil. Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2014.)) A word cloud would arrange the lyrics in this way:

    In a nutshell, these heuristics should make us able to identify the semantic and analytical links between the different categories of norm-related sonic knowledge. Moreover and equally important, they make visible the linkages to the mental, sonic, visual, and emotional ‘moods’ and dynamics of metal culture.

  • 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.))

     

  • What about tattoos as historiographic sources?

    When Bruce Dickinsion released his first solo album Tattoed Millionaire in 1990, he could not know that today every good hipster needs to have tattoos. They have become mainstream and, apparently, they are here to stay. In this post, I want to approach tattoos from another perspective. I reflect upon the question how they can serve as historiographic sources for a professional cultural history of metal music. This is a methodological question. ((M. Howell and W. Prevenier, From Reliable Sources. An Introduction to Historical Methods. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001.))

    It is quite evident to see tattoos as cultural-historiographic sources. Following Foucault’s discourse analysis, body history is an established approach to history. ((L. Kalof and William Bynum (eds.), A Cultural History of the Human Body, 6 vols., Oxford: Berg, 2010.)) Body history researches the role(s) of the human body/human bodies in history. Also, we have detailled research on the history of tattooing as a practice of body modification. ((M. DeMello, Bodies of Inscription: A Cultural History of the Modern Tattoo Community, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000; J. Caplan (ed.), Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000;  M. Mifflin, Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo, New York, NY: Powerhouse Books, 2013.))

    In our field of metal music studies, tattoos as semiotic traces are examined, too. ((S. Holland and K. Spracklen (eds.), Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization, Bingley: Emerald: 2018.)) What we do not have at this point, is detailled methodological analysis of the question how tattoos can serve as historiographic sources for a professional cultural history of metal. Of course, I cannot provide a full discussion of this in a short blog post but I attempt to discuss important points.

    Four methodological dimensions

    First, thinking of tattoos as sources, a definitional feature is their ‘materiality’. They are highly personal, intimate and often unique inscriptions on a human body. Like the human body itself, they do not last but wither, change, and when the individual dies, the original source usually disappears in history. Yet, the tattoo as a bearer of a certain meaning, constituted in the intersectional sphere between personal life and the colllective discourse, is there for a limited period. This first thought defines this kind of sources temporally. They are contingent and available only for a certain period of time, at least as originals.

    Second, tattoos are very private and individual. They belong to a person’s private life. However, usually they are thought to be seen by (some) other people. Methodologically, this implies if we want to research tattoos, each scientist doing so has to be fully aware of and act in accordance with good legal and ethical principles of personal integrity, respect and approval by the tattoo’s wearer.

    Third, tattoos are texts or pictures, or a combination of both. They require scholars in metal studies to decrypt the source’s sense by thinking either textually or figuratively, or a combination of both. In this way, tattoos are comparable to other sources of history. ((Howell and Prevenier, Introduction.)) Cultural historians have to place their interpretation of the source and the wearer’s own statement/narrative in the context of broader metal discourse.

    This brings us to our fourth aspect. Tattoos are an established code in metal culture around the globe. They constitute metalness. Combining this collective aspect with the prior three points makes us see tattoos as historic sources by which wearers express their individual metalness in the context of global metal discourse. They are a way of individualizing a person within a certain collective framework of meaning, i.e. the cultural framework of metal. Methodologically, this requires metal historians to ask for indivual identities within an established framework.

    In a nutshell, tattoos are fascinating sources of a cultural history of metal. They are contingent, transient, individual, private and hybrid (textual and/or pictorial) sources of history, which render a person distinct in metal’s collective sphere. Hence, methodologically historians have to research them as sources which tell history in these ways.