Black Metal as Dissensus (guest entry)

Words by Jason Kiss Jacques Rancière’s notion of the “distribution of the sensible” offers a productive theory for probing the black metal phenomenon. Rancière defines the distribution of the sensible as “the system of self-evident facts of sense perception that simultaneously discloses the existence of something in common and the delimitations that define the respective parts and positions within it.”[1] Put more simply, it refers to the overarching cultural partition that structures what is perceptible and thereby shapes shared knowledge and participation in a society. Within our contemporary aesthetic regime of extreme metal, this partition is enacted through common threads of circulation and visibility: record labels, PR apparatuses, extramusical narratives, and a disseminated network of media outlets configure what counts as worthy of attention. Works that fail to inscribe themselves within these distributions of visibility risk falling outside the field of perceptibility…