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The rhetoric of recovery in Social Distortion’s White Light, White Heat, White Trash

Bibliographic Data

ID21873159
AuthorsAdam J Goldwyn (0000-0001-6175-8593, Dakota State University, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume11
Issue3
Pages353-370
Publication date2022-10-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePunk & Post Punk (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2044-1983 • E-ISSN: 2044-3706
PublisherIntellect (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1386/punk_00129_1
OpenAlexW4226416339
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited2

Social Distortion’s 1996 album White Light, White Heat, White Trash is a concept album reflecting the recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) of lead singer and songwriter Mike Ness: twelve songs, with each of the songs describing Ness’s experience of the corresponding step in AA’s twelve-step programme. The rhetoric of recovery in the song lyrics has an intertextual relationship to Alcoholics Anonymous (the ‘Big Book’), with Ness’s lyrics quoting directly from the programme of recovery outlined in the basic text of AA. Though the rhetoric of recovery in the album reflects Ness’s own experience, it also demonstrates how individual authentic experience is constructed interdiscursively through broader cultural trends, both within the Lou Reed-inflected rockist history of guitars, drugs and confessional authenticity and, more broadly, how the rhetoric of recovery has permeated other genres of American popular music and culture

Aesthetics · Art · Confessional · Linguistics · Literature · Lyrics · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Sociology · Law · Music History and Culture · Philosophy · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · Theater, Performance, and Music History

  • The rhetoric of recovery in Social Distortion’s White Light, White Heat, White Trash

    Adam J Goldwyn•Punk & Post Punk•2022

  • The rhetoric of recovery in Social Distortion’s White Light, White Heat, White Trash

    Adam J Goldwyn•Punk & Post Punk•2022

Citations per year0.25
Citation span2022 - 2022 (1)
Highly citedNo

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