Culturcide and Non-Identity across American Culture

Daniel S. Traber

It goes without saying that identity has long been a recurrent topic in studies of American culture. The struggle between group sameness and individual uniqueness is a common issue in understanding diversity in the United States on several levels—including how our differences have not always resulted in national celebration. Terms such as “hybridity,” “performativity,” “transnationalism,” and “border zones” are part of the current theoretical vocabulary and, for some, deploy a fresh language of possibility, one promising to undermine the conformist values of monocultural perspectives. To that end, Culturcide and Non-Identity across American Culture explores theories and practices of identity from a broad perspective to grasp how varied, diffuse, and distorted they can be, especially when that identity seems boringly familiar. The subjects range from hip-hop parodies to punk preppies to pachuco-ska, thus crossing the lines of genre, medium, and discipline to blur the borderline dividing the kinds of texts to which these theories can “legitimately” be applied.

Lexington Books

Pages: 274 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½

978-1-4985-5477-0 • Hardback • June 2017 • $136.00 • (£105.00)

978-1-4985-5478-7 • eBook • June 2017 • $129.00 • (£99.00)

Subjects: Social Science / Popular Culture, Social Science / World / North America, Social Science / Culture

Culturcide and Non-Identity across American Culture

Hardback

eBook

Summary

It goes without saying that identity has long been a recurrent topic in studies of American culture. The struggle between group sameness and individual uniqueness is a common issue in understanding diversity in the United States on several levels—including how our differences have not always resulted in national celebration. Terms such as “hybridity,” “performativity,” “transnationalism,” and “border zones” are part of the current theoretical vocabulary and, for some, deploy a fresh language of possibility, one promising to undermine the conformist values of monocultural perspectives. To that end, Culturcide and Non-Identity across American Culture explores theories and practices of identity from a broad perspective to grasp how varied, diffuse, and distorted they can be, especially when that identity seems boringly familiar. The subjects range from hip-hop parodies to punk preppies to pachuco-ska, thus crossing the lines of genre, medium, and discipline to blur the borderline dividing the kinds of texts to which these theories can “legitimately” be applied.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 274 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½

978-1-4985-5477-0 • Hardback • June 2017 • $136.00 • (£105.00)

978-1-4985-5478-7 • eBook • June 2017 • $129.00 • (£99.00)

Subjects: Social Science / Popular Culture, Social Science / World / North America, Social Science / Culture

Author

Daniel S. Traber is associate professor of English at Texas A&M University at Galveston.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Kill Yr. Culture
Chapter 1: Paradigm Shift: The BMW Enthusiast's Discourse
Chapter 2: The Sound That Binds: Negotiating Community in No Wave, Garage Rock and Ska
Chapter 3: Genre as Race, Race as Genre
Chapter 4: Got Hybridity?: A Mixed Reevaluation of Mumbo Jumbo and Ceremony
Chapter 5: Locating the Punk Preppy (A Speculative Theory)
Conclusion

Reviews

In this witty, wide ranging study that encompasses literature, genre film, No Wave music, BMW enthusiasts, and punk preppies, Daniel Traber seeks nothing less than to open up the unthought outer and inner boundaries of our identitarian times. By turns bracing and inviting, and deploying an arsenal of terms including culturcide, ‘cultures of one,’ non-identity, post-community, and dis-humanity, Traber recovers the self-making of cultural refuseniks as an opening toward the politics of the future.
— Scott Michaelsen, Michigan State University

Culturcide and Non-Identity across American Culture

Daniel S. Traber

Culturcide and Non-Identity across American Culture

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