We are the Sons of the Southern Cross
Gendered Nationalisms and Imagined Community in Australian Extreme Metal
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jwpm.v3i1.31133Keywords:
Australia, extreme metal, scenes, masculinity, imagined communityAbstract
Australia's extreme metal scenes have developed largely in isolation from not only the rest of the world, but also one another. Nonetheless, extreme metal scenes throughout the Australian continent share common sentiments of national identity that allow for the formation of an imagined community across disparate locales. Such nationalistic sentiment, realized through the reiteration of the masculinist master symbols of Australian identity, enables an imagined community to be sustained across extreme metal scenes. This article explores how music functions as a medium through which communities can be imagined and boundaries between them drawn. Australian extreme metal scenes construct and maintain a sense of nationhood and community in exclusionary, rather than conciliatory ways. The particular experience of belonging offered by Australian extreme metal scenes is hence marked by rigid parameters of what, or who, may constitute "Australianness" in the image of such communion.
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