Queer Tracks: Subversive Strategies in Rock and Pop Music

Queer Tracks describes motifs in popular music that deviate from heterosexual orientation, the binary gender system and fixed identities. This exciting cutting-edge work deals with the key concepts of current gender politics and queer theory in rock and pop music, including irony, parody, camp, mask/masquerade, mimesis/mimicry, cyborg, transsexuality, and dildo. Based on a constructivist concept of gender, Leibetseder asks: 'Which queer-feminist strategies are used in rock and pop music?' 'How do they function?' 'Where do they occur?' Leibetseder's methodological process is to discover subversive strategies in queer theory, which are also used in rock and pop music, without assuming that these tactics were first invented in theory. Furthermore, this book explains where exactly the subversiveness is situated in those strategies and in popular music. With the help of a new kind of knowledge transfer the author combines sociological and cultural theories with practical examples of rock and pop music. The subversive character of these queer motifs is shown in the work of contemporary popular musicians and is at the same time related to classical discourses of the humanities. Queer Tracks is a revised translation of Queere Tracks. Subversive Strategien in Rock- und Popmusik, originally published in German.

Doris Leibetseder is currently at the Centre for Women's and Gender Studies at the Alpen-Adria UniversitÃ-t Klagenfurt, Austria, and teaches courses in Gender Studies/Queer Theory. She is also external lecturer at the Karl-Franzens UniversitÃ-t Graz and the UniversitÃ-t Wien, Vienna. Previously, she was Ã-AD-Lecturer for two years in the German Department of Durham University, UK. She was awarded her doctorate in Philosophy with distinction at the UniversitÃ-t Wien in 2008.

Contents: Introduction: historical prelude; Irony - the cutting edge; Parody - gender trouble; Camp - queer revolt in style; Mask/masquerade - transforming the gaze; Mimesis/mimicry - poetic aesthetic; Cyborg - transhuman; Trans* - border wars?; Dildo - gender blender; Fade out: looking forward; Bibliography; Index.