UE223 - Heavy metal, heavy issues : les musiques extrêmes comme vecteurs d'engagement social et écologique

Intervenant·e·s

• Pascale Haag [référent·e]   maîtresse de conférences, EHESS / Centre Georg-Simmel (CGS)
• Corentin Charbonnier   jeune docteur, Université de Tours

Les crises sociales, politiques et environnementales suscitent des réactions émotionnelles intenses, de l’anxiété à la colère, qui peuvent trouver leur expression dans des formes artistiques perçues comme « extrêmes ». Le metal, dans ses multiples déclinaisons (heavy metal, thrash metal, death metal, black metal, metalcore, etc.), offre à ces émotions un espace d’expression qui associe intensité sonore et engagement politique. Comment ces musiques, souvent marginalisées ou stigmatisées, donnent-elles voix aux préoccupations écologiques et aux luttes pour la justice sociale ? Que nous disent-elles des rapports contemporains entre l’art et le militantisme ? Comment certains groupes parviennent-ils à transformer la colère en critique sociale ? 

Ce séminaire propose de croiser les regards disciplinaires – sociologie, études culturelles, musicologie, psychologie, sciences de gestion, sciences de l'environnement – pour analyser les formes d'engagement portées par les scènes metal au regard des récentes recherches. Nous accueillerons aussi bien des chercheurs et chercheuses qui travaillent sur ces questions que des musiciens et musiciennes engagé·es, afin de les faire dialoguer. Nous nous interrogerons notamment sur les dimensions cathartiques de ces musiques, sur leur capacité à créer des communautés d'engagement, sur les liens entre esthétique et espoir critique, et sur les tensions qui traversent ces scènes entre recherche de radicalité et désir d'accessibilité. En explorant comment l’articulation entre affects, critique sociale et mobilisation dans la culture metal, ce séminaire entend contribuer à une meilleure compréhension des voies par lesquelles l'art peut inspirer les luttes contemporaines pour un monde plus juste et plus durable.

07/10/2026 : Corentin Charbonnier (IUT de l’Indre, Université d’Orléans) and Pascale Haag (EHESS), Introduction

This first session will offer a general introduction to the theme of social and environmental engagement in metal music. We will explore how this musical genre often perceived through the lens of transgression has also become a space for expressing social and ecological causes. This session will lay the conceptual and historical groundwork that will structure the seminar’s subsequent sessions.

04/11/2026 : Pasqualina Eckerström (University of Helsinki), « Rethinking Transgression: Metal Music, Religion, Gender, and Power in Muslim-Majority Countries »

This presentation explores what happens when metal’s aesthetic of transgression meets social, religious, and political boundaries. Across Muslim-majority contexts, metal has taken on very different meanings, from a source of moral and religious anxiety to a space for resistance, identity, and cultural change. Bringing different contexts into dialogue (Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria), the presentation considers how metal’s transgressive potential is shaped by the societies in which it exists, and how the same music can be experienced as threatening, empowering, repressive, or legitimate depending on its social and political context.

02/12/2026 : Marcelo Liam (Univ. Estadual de Campinas, Brazil; University of Huddersfield, UK; bands: Desalmado; Inherence), « Metal scene in Brazil between 2017 to 2025: Social environment on a personal view »

After an overview of the political landscape in Brazil and its impact on the extreme metal and hardcore scenes, Marcelo will speak about his activities with the bands Inherence and Desalmado, straddling the lines between musician and researcher in metal music. 

06/01/2027 : Émilie Ruiz (Univ. Savoie Mont Blanc) and Romain Gandia (Univ. Savoie Mont Blanc ; Panic Fest), « Balancing Value Creation and Value Destruction in Sustainable Business Model Innovation: The case of Hellfest Open Air Festival »

This research explores Hellfest Open Air Festival as a case of Sustainable Business Model Innovation. It investigates how organizations can create, deliver, and capture economic, social, and environmental value while managing the tensions between value creation and value destruction. With an in-depth qualitative case study), we identify Hellfest’s sustainable practices, understand their impacts across multiple levels (festival, local community, wider ecosystem) and explain the mechanisms used to balance competing stakeholder priorities. 

03/02/2027 : David Burke (Independent researcher; Abyssal Festival; band - Rackit), « Developments in metal sociality: Community organisations, normalisation and ethics »

While metal aesthetics (somewhat) remain transgressive, metalheads’ social practices are increasingly community-conscious, as seen in novel metal-oriented community organisations and charities. I argue that these demonstrate the normalisation of metal and denote ongoing issues in defining distinct and shared metal ethics.

03/03/2027 : Carlos Arenas (Valencia university), « The Monstrous Landscape: H. R. Giger, Dark Ecology and the Visual Culture of Metal »

This session will explore, from the perspective of art history and visual culture, how Giger’s work and the visual imagery associated with metal can be reconsidered through concepts related to Dark Ecology, environmental collapse, hybridity, technology and the monstrous.

05/05/2027 : Susana Gonzalez (University of Helsinki) , « Amplifying Change: From Extreme Feminist Metal to Restorative Futures in Education »

This session introduces feminist metal as a pedagogical tool for T-learning (transgressive learning) towards restorative futures in education. First, it presents feminist metal as an artistic, political, and cultural phenomenon, highlighting its aesthetic features, political tactics, and creative processes. The session then discusses practical applications of extreme feminist metal in classroom settings, particularly through a case study implemented in contexts of extreme violence against women. Ultimately, the session shows how extremity can serve as an educational resource that fosters healing, critical awareness, and social transformation towards restorative futures.

02/06/2027 : David Gange (university of Birmingham; Why Metal Matters), « Melt & Thaw: Wet Metal in the Wake of Global Heating »

This session views metal through a posthumanist lens, exploring metal’s turn to environmentalist themes, and songs’ increasing abandonment of rationalist, soverereign positionalities. It uses the hydrofeminism of post humanist phenomenologist Astrida Neimanis to analyse music, including Yellow Eyes’ Sick With Bloom, and tracks the historical contexts that have expanded metal’s climates from ice and snow (amid 1990s fears of nuclear winter) to warm and wet (amid 2020s fear of rising seas). It aims to blend musicological perspectives, literary criticism, historical framing, and critical theory to produce a multifaceted perspective on current developments in metal.