Popular Music, Gender and Postmodernism: Anger Is an Energy [Paperback]

Neil Nehring (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 20, 1997

The migration of cynical academic ideas about postmodernism into music journalism are traced in this book. The result of this migration is a widespread fatalism over the ability of the music industry to absorb any expression of defiance in popular music.

The book synthesizes a number of fields: American and British academic and journalistic music criticism; aesthetic and literary history and theory from romanticism through postmodernism; alternative music such as feminist punk and grunge; political economy, which has fueled the obsession with commercial incorporation; and subcultural sociology.

Product Details

• Paperback: 235 pages
• Publisher: Sage Publications, Inc (March 20, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0761908366
• ISBN-13: 978-0761908364
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,727,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Anger at postmodernism: fully justified, January 14, 2012

By 

Philip Tagg - See all my reviews

This review is from: Popular Music, Gender and Postmodernism: Anger Is an Energy (Paperback)

This is really a reply to those who dissed this book. I enjoyed it because, like Neil Nehring (the author), I'm an academic sickened by all those postmodernist poseurs we had as colleagues and who apparently saw nothing of the real justified anger out there. We both have students (as well as adult children) who capitalism is treating like dirt and we are both appalled by it. Nehring chose to attack postmodernism and its effects on our understanding of what is really happening. With its anti-authoritarian authoritarianism it stifles our understanding of the raw contradictions lying under the surface everywhere, if you just care to look. To critique all of that, Nehring had to come up with theoretical and philosophical arguments, all of which he did quite well in my opinion. Neil Nehring is in literature and cultural theory, so that's what he does best. I'm in musicology, so I wrote a piece called "Anti-depressants and musical anguish management" which is full of 'awful' 'poo-poo' expressions like "half diminished" and "chromatic dissonance". That's part of my way of critiquing some of the musical symptoms of cynical and unjustified "anger management". You don't have to read it (it's at [...]). If you want someone else to express justified anger out loud and to feel it strongly at the drop of a hat rather than a critique of schools of thought that deny such justified anger, put on "Lithium" by Nirvana or watch a Bill Hicks video; don't read Nehring or the sort of thing I write!

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars aaaaaaaaaaargh!, February 27, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Popular Music, Gender and Postmodernism: Anger Is an Energy (Hardcover)

Amazing. A riot-grrl fan, postmodern-sceptic and feminism enthusiast has actually managed to write the dullest, most fatuous piece of study (although it hardly merits the title) I've read in a long time. The author wastes practically half of the book trying to impress us all with his vast knowledge of philosophical theories through the ages, to finally astound us with the revelation that...postmodernism is derivative of modernist theories. yaaaaaaaawn. Any discussion of the actual music on which the arguments are ostensibly based is sparse and pretty shaky, as there's barely any attempt at musical analysis. Still, he can have a star for good intentions...

7 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Anger is an energy that achieves what?, December 9, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Popular Music, Gender and Postmodernism: Anger Is an Energy (Paperback)

Nehring takes to task the postmodernists who dismiss anger and strong emotion in rock music.These critics see rock as being simply a packaged consumer product, whereas Nehring would like to think angry rock has some sort of significance.He never explains exactly what are the positive things this anger can achieve.He shows a lack of knowledge of psychology and true initiation when he criticises Michael Ventura, and Robert Bly (author of The Sibling Society), who have written with insight about the predicament of modern youth.This book has hardly anything to say about actual music.It is mostly negative, being a shallow critique of "postmodernist" views on rock music.