Music in Youth Culture

Book excerpt: Music in Youth Culture examines the fantasies of post-Oedipal youth cultures as displayed on the landscape of popular music from a post-Lacanian perspective. Jan Jagodzinski, an expert on Lacan, psychoanalysis, and education's relationship to media, maintains that a new set of signifiers is required to grasp the sliding signification of contemporary 'youth'. He discusses topics such as the figurality of noise, the perversions of the music scene by boyz/bois/boys and the hysterization of it by gurlz/girls/grrrls. Music in Youth Culture also examines the postmodern 'fan (addict)', techno music, and pop music icons. Jagodzinski raises the Lacanian question of 'an ethics of the Real' and asks educators to re-examine 'youth' culture.