Rethinking Difference In Gender, Sexuality, And Popular Music

In studies of gender and sexuality in popular music, the concept of difference is often a crucial analytic used to detect social agency, however, the alternative analytic of ambiguity has never been systematically examined. While differencefrom heterosexual norms is taken to be the multivalent sign of resistance, oppression, and self-invention, it can lead to inflated claims of the degree and power of difference. This book offers critically-oriented case studies that examine the theory and politics of ambiguity. Ambiguity means that there are both positive and negative implications in any gender and sexuality practices, both sameness and difference from heteronormativity, and unfixed possibility in the diverse nature of discourse and practice (rather than just difference among fixed multiplicities). Contributors present a diverse array of approaches through music, sound, psyche, body, dance, performance, race, ethnicity, power, discourse, and history. A wide variety of popular...