Pale communion: whiteness, masculinity and nationhood in heavy metal scenes in Norway, South Africa and Australia

In response to the current dynamics of the Global Metal model, this thesis draws attention to how whiteness maintains an invisibilised instrumental hegemony within heavy metal, even as research on the genre continues to grow. I address the complex problem of how whiteness is represented in heavy metal scenes and practices, both as a site of academic inquiry and force of cultural significance. I argue that the whiteness and white heteromasculinity of heavy metal emerges in disparate locales as expressions of distinct nationalist projects. This research addresses the national specificity with which whiteness is valorised in heavy metal scenes, and how disparate national identities are tacitly and explicitly tied to white heteromasculine identity. This research maps the matrix of whiteness, masculinity and nationhood through which heavy metal scenes across Norway, South Africa and Australia have produced and defended national identity. I distinguish three key forms of white nationalism-Norway's monstrous nationalism, in which the nation is constructed as terrifying and atavistic; South Africa's resistant nationalism, which responds to post-Apartheid claims of white victimhood; and Australia's banal nationalism, which consecrates mundanity as an authentic national condition. Such constellations of whiteness, masculinity and nationhood have enabled tacit and explicit constructions of exclusionary communities formed through collective memory and territory. These scenes are demonstrative of the ways in which white inflections inform the practices of both heavy metal scenes and the specifically local whitenesses manifest within them.