Queering modernism: Social, sartorial and spatial intersections between mod and gay (sub)culture, 1957–67

Cole, Shaun and Sweetman, Paul (2023) Queering modernism: Social, sartorial and spatial intersections between mod and gay (sub)culture, 1957–67. In, Network, Subcultures (ed.) Let’s spend the night together: Sex, pop music and British youth culture, 1950s–80s. Manchester. Manchester University Press, pp. 113-131.

Abstract

Popular histories of mod acknowledge the overlaps and intersections between mod and gay culture in the late 1950s and 1960s, with mods buying clothes aimed initially at a gay clientele from Carnaby Street retailers such as Bill Green’s Vince and John Stephen, and mixing with gay men at clubs in Soho and elsewhere. Academic accounts of subculture, including of mod, have tended to overlook such connections, however, focusing instead on issues of race and class. This chapter looks at the development of Mod from the late 1950s, and at its partial associations with homosexuality and effeminacy, before examining why subcultural studies has failed to acknowledge such interconnections. It then looks in detail at the social, sartorial and spatial intersections between mod and gay culture, before considering how we might best conceptualise such interconnections, discussing both the idea of ‘discourse communities’ and the potential application of Actor Network Theory (ANT), to address and describe the overlapping networks of constituents involved. We conclude by suggesting that mod and gay culture can be thought of as overlapping and partially co-constitutive networks of marginality, and that in this context mod subculture might be considered as offering a relatively safe context for the exploration of marginal or subversive forms of gender or sexuality, while gay style and space offered an existing underground milieu through which such identities could be articulated.

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