Vulgar discourses of power : the discursive construction of ideal heavy metal subjectivity and the erasure of black, indigenous, and women of colour in heavy metal music culture

Abstract

Heavy metal music culture has been a bastion of working-class white masculinity since its beginnings in the early 1970s. Through canonization and Historical documentation, white male dominance has been ensured, obscuring contributions made by white female performers and erasing black, Indigenous, and women of colour (BIWoC) from the genre. Utilizing feminist critical discourse analysis (feminist CDA) to examine texts by canonized male bands reveals the discursive parameters of ideal heavy metal subjectivity (IHMS). Exploration of texts created by white female performers, including a case study of Arch Enemy vocalist Alissa White-Gluz, isolates the necessity for white female performers to reproduce the discourses of IHMS in order to secure their participation in the culture, further contributing to the erasure of BIWoC performers. However, feminist CDA also reveals transformative potential within these texts to de-centre IHMS as the default subject position and shows white women's agency and resiliency as performers.