The Skull as a Symbolic Means of Staging Youthfulness

The skull has been experiencing a renaissance as a symbol and motif in various youth cultural scenes since the 1970s/1980s at the latest, which is why it appears to be a particularly suitable object for examining youth practices of bricolage. The article examines the meanings of the skull as a historical everyday object and its charging with new constructions of meaning in a youth cultural context. Furthermore, it explores the role that skull motifs play in the staging of youthfulness in view of their mass distribution since the beginning of the twenty-first century. In addition to establish affiliations and demarcations by using death symbols, the focus is on the intergenerational struggle for the power of defining and securing youthful attributes. In particular, the potential for provocation inherent in the skull motif is examined in relation to generational self-location and the youth-typical phenomena of transgressing boundaries and breaking taboos.