Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig / Edition 1

by Judith Peraino

Overview

In this fresh and innovative study, Judith A. Peraino investigates how music has been used throughout history to call into question norms of gender and sexuality. Beginning with a close examination of the mythology surrounding the sirens—whose music seduced Ulysses into a state of mind in which he would gladly sacrifice everything for the illicit pleasures promised in their song—Peraino goes on to consider the musical creatures, musical gods and demigods, musical humans, and music-addled listeners who have been associated with behavior that breaches social conventions. She deftly employs a sophisticated reading of Foucault as an organizational principle as well as a philosophical focus to survey seductive and transgressive queerness in music from the Greeks through the Middle Ages and to the contemporary period. Listening to the Sirens analyzes the musical ways in which queer individuals express and discipline their desire, represent themselves, build communities, and subvert heterosexual expectations. It covers a wide range of music including medieval songs, works by Handel, Tchaikovsky and Britten, women's music and disco, performers such as Judy Garland, Melissa Etheridge, Madonna, and Marilyn Manson, and the movies The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520215870
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	10/30/2005
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	370
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Judith A. Peraino is Associate Professor of Music at Cornell University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction
1. Songs of the Sirens: desire
2. A Music of One’s Own: discipline
3. Queer Ears and Icons: sign systems
4. Homomusical Communities: production
5. Flights of Fancy: power

Notes
Works Cited
Index