ABSTRACT
This paper critically examines the gendering of electric guitar technique in its limited scholarly reception. Focus is given to the work of Steve Waksman, specifically the “technophallus,” a coinage through which he engages feminist scholarship to interrogate the electric guitar's masculine performative identity. This paper offers a counter-archive of punk guitarists whose work, when approached with a queer analytic, problematize the pairing of virtuosity with heteromasculinity. Synthesizing the work of José Esteban Muñoz and Jack Halberstam on queer failure and virtuosity, I offer disorienting guitar practice as a critical lens which can materialize efforts at refusing the linearity of guitar technique as well as guitar hero worship. Consideration is given to St. Vincent's pairing of a disorienting virtuosity with her extension of the guitar's sonic possibilities through effect pedals.
