ABSTRACT
The imprecision of the term "alternative" is exacerbated by its intersections with other inexact, in-flux terms, including "youth," "masculinity," "resistance," and "authenticity." Alternative boys are increasingly understandable as being in process, as masculinity are made specific, local, and multiple. If postmodernism-according-to-Jameson is the current "cultural dominant," it is also the most immediately available, accessible, and useful metaphor for the shakiness of alternative's ideological stakes. Alternative's express investment in affective cynicism, irony, and self-consciousness compromises any singular notion of authenticity. The most effective resistance seems to be a selfconsciously low-affect dismissal, a pose of indifference that appropriates and turns back the charges of disengagement and distrust often leveled at alternative. As queerness and gender-bending, and even gender-panicking, narratives are becoming increasingly pervasive in alternative rock, the possibilities for "masculinities" are also expanding. The speaker's gender is coded as "stereotypically female," but the part is "performed" by a male voice.
