The Contemporary Avant-garde: Classification, Organization, Spatiality and Practices of Resistance

The intention of the thesis is to explore and make visible the sociological importance of contemporary avant-garde music by investigating the ways in which associated cultures are constituted through the interplay between technologically mediated forms of dialogue and destabilizing practices. Through the case study of hauntology, the present work explores the interrelationship between different participant groups (building on, and problematizing, aspects of Becker's Art Worlds) and how they negotiate and collaborate with one another. Methodologically-speaking, the thesis adopts multiple approaches to data collection and analysis in an effort to develop a series of conceptual research tools predicated on the partial connections and assemblages observed during field work. The research is participant-focused, dealing primarily with the ways in which these groups engage in meaning-making activities within their own interpretive frameworks.

The empirical focus of the thesis is fourfold. In the first instance, this involves detailing classificatory work on genre and boundary formation as enacted by participants through differing forms of dialogue in a variety of virtual locations. Secondly, an assessment of the organizational structures developed by artists (such as the record label) and audience members (the archive) is undertaken, in an effort to understand how information is collated and stored and how the development of a mediated 'aesthetic', or metadiscourse, is facilitated by these systems. Thirdly, co-operation between social actors is examined in relation to spatial associations and participant-led acts of destabilization (read through the work of Lefebvre). Fourthly, practices of micro and macro-level resistance - including direct political activities, techniques of composition, intertextuality and engagement with cultural theory - are considered in relation to the other empirical foci.