Beswick, Katie. 2025. Slags on Stage: Class, Sex, Art and Desire in British Culture, A Poetics of Slaggyness. Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 9780367417123 [Book] (In Press)

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Abstract or Description

Slags on Stage weaves cultural analysis with memior, poetry and art criticism to explore the concept of the ‘slag’ and its place in contemporary British culture. Broadly, slag is an insult bound up with women’s sexual reputations. With a focus on class, the book traces the etymology of the word slag through the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, thinking through the ways the work speaks to issues of race, sex and desire. Slag is not just an insult, but what Raymond Williams calls a ‘key word’, one which shapes how we debate and understand culture. For any woman coming-of-age in the UK in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries ‘slag’ has the potential to pack an emotional punch, and has influenced how we have come to know ourselves and understand our sexual and quotidian desires. This book explores the terrain of slag from the personal through to the political, and includes analyses of artworks by artists who have invoked the slag in their practice, such as Tracey Emin, Cash Carraway and Michaela Coel.

Item Type:	Book
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Institute for Cultural and Creative Entrepreneurship (ICCE)
Date:	31 March 2025
Item ID:	37508
Date Deposited:	05 Sep 2024 14:33
Last Modified:	31 Oct 2024 14:21
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/37508

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