Popular Culture Review Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2005 | Page 81

Goth and Industrial Cultures
Differential Interpretations
An earlier version o f this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting
o f the California Sociological Association October 15, 2004,
Riverside, California. The authors wish to thank Tom Bernard fo r the
use o f his photographs and Evil Club Empire Promotions fo r their
cooperation in this study.
Following the Columbine High School tragedy, news media widely
reported the teenage gunmen to be adherents to the Gothic and Industrial
cultures (GIC) (Arciaga 1999; Brooke 1999; Dority 1999; Purdum 1999). The
members of these cultures are often stereotyped as prone to depression,
violence, and Satan worship (Gunn 1999; Porter 2003; Robinson 2003). More
recently, in Southern California, a teenage girl was killed by her friends who
were later described as “Goth teen killers” (KCAL 2004) and were believed to
be in a deadly “Goth love triangle” (Reitman 2004:62). Additionally, those
involved in GIC have been cast as anti-social and rebellious (Hodkinson 2002;
Tait 1999). This paper presents an ethnographic exploration of GIQ comparing
results with perceptions of said culture held by the larger society. Kantian
philosophy and symbolic interaction frames this comparison.
Transcendental Deduction and Symbolic Interaction
In exploring processes of knowledge, Kant’s Critique o f Pure Reason
suggests we make sense of our social world by categorizing the observed. Kant
refers to this process as transcendental deduction (1781/1929). We are able to
understand the world due to the presence of mental categories that exist prior to
(i.e., a priori) encountering experience (Friedrich 1949: xxix-xxx; Strawson
1966). Through the use of these mental categories, one is able to understand a
disorderly world (Jaspers 1957:33)
Addleson (1990:120) argues philosophers should adopt the tools of the
symbolic interactionists as this method is well suited to the study of meaning. As
a philosopher, Kant (1781/1929) did not explicitly address the processes of
transcendental deduction. Such processes are found in symbolic interaction
(Cooley 1962; Mead 1969). Symbolic interaction posits meanings are attached
to symbols and we develop our “self’ through interpreting and categorizing
these symbols. The processes of development of the self can be extended to
understanding the larger world. As one forms their self through the
interpretation and categorization of symbols, they also develop their a priori
worldviews via the same mechanism.