Nostalgia, authenticity and writing Goth histories: ‘Would you carry the torch...?’1
2024; Intellect; Volume: 13; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1386/punk_00245_1
ISSN2044-3706
Autores Tópico(s)Cultural History and Identity Formation
ResumoIn 2023, three books were published that professed to be histories of Goth: John Robb’s The Art of Darkness: The History of Goth , Cathi Unsworth’s Season of the Witch: The Book of Goth and Lol Tolhurst’s Goth: A History . Together, the books and the discussion surrounding them indicate a struggle for meaning around a shared past, occasioning what Svetlana Boym has called ‘reflective nostalgia’, a nostalgia that ‘dwells on the ambivalences of longing and belonging’. This article reflects on the tendency of Goth histories to locate nostalgia in the 1980s, asking what it means to write subcultural history and what histories are sidelined or left untold in such popular revivals. It interrogates the relationship between history-writing and Sarah Thornton’s concept of subcultural capital, identifying the conflicted subject-position of the subcultural historian, who must establish both objectivity and authenticity. It suggests that historical narratives tend to represent Goth as a subculture that is in decline, privileging a masculinized music scene over a feminized adoption of Goth style. Contrasting the works of Robb et al. with Leila Taylor’s memoir Darkly (2019) and Andi Harriman and Marloes Bontje’s visual and oral account of the subculture, Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace (2014), the article finds that self-proclaimed Goth ‘histories’ often consolidate subcultural capital in the familiar figures of white male musicians, while marginalizing women, people of colour and a younger generation of subcultural participants.
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