When Things Don't Get Better, No Things Don't Get Better, Just Different: Emo and Affect Under Neoliberalism

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Speakers/Lectures Academic Activism/Politics Cultural/Arts Music

Fri, Feb 27, 2026

12:30 PM – 2 PM EST (GMT-5)

The HUB, Meeting Room 1

Fairfax, Virginia, United States

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While many previous analyses of emo argue the genre is best understood through a critical analysis of its politics of gender, this article instead contends that we are better served by highlighting emo’s implicit and explicit commentary on the material conditions of neoliberal capitalism. Through engaging with thinkers such as Lauren Berlant, David Grabear, and Asa Seresin, I show how various emo artists, through both their lyrical and performative particularities, take contradictory approaches to neoliberalism. At times emo artists seem utterly depressed by the neoliberal condition. At others, they seem to fully embrace its desires. I explore how these contradictions become emblematic of the genre’s often confused politics. Building upon the confused nature of emo, I offer close readings of Hot Mulligan's "How Do You Know It's Not Armadillo Shells" and Spanish Love Song's "Routine Pain" to show how emo song's seemingly contradict their own understandings of society and how these contradictions become emblematic of neoliberalism itself. I conclude by pondering how radical the genre can ever be if it is defined by such confusion towards the material and political realities of the present.

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Speakers

Varun Chandrasekhar

Ph.D. Candidate in Music Theory

Washington University in St. Louis

Varun's research reframes discussions of "freedom" in jazz cultures through a lens of Sartrean existentialism. Building upon Sartre's claim that freedom is the anxious reality of being forced to take action in an objectively meaningless world, Varun argues that jazz represents the freedom of enduring the absurdities of the racialized existence of its musicians. Varun then applies these insights to explicate the life and music of the jazz bassist and composer Charles Mingus, arguing that Mingus's eccentric, exaggerated, and enigmatic actions demonstrate the anxious existence of the jazz musician.

In addition to his work on jazz, Varun also studies pop-punk and emo music, highlighting the ways the genres respond to the depressing state of neoliberal decay. In the Spring of 2026, Varun will host "A Conference...But It's Midwestern Emo," the first conference dedicated to the study of emo music.

Varun has had articles published in the journals Jazz and Culture, The Journal of Popular Music Studies, and Musicology Now, and reviews published in The Journal for the Society of American Music, The Journal of Jazz Studies, and The Journal of Musicological Research. Varun has presented his research at a litany of national and international conferences, including all three major music conferences (AMS, SMT, SEM), Cultural Studies Conferences, Jazz Studies Conferences, and Popular Music Studies Conferences. Varun's research has been supported by WashU's Center for the Humanities Graduate Student Fellowship and WashU's American Cultural Studies Department's Lynne Cooper Harvey Fellow. He is also an affiliate of WashU's Center for the Study of Race, Equity, and Ethnicity.

In his free time, Varun can be found playing guitar, watching sports, or blundering pieces in online chess!

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