Borrowed Forms: The Music and Ethics of Transnational Fiction
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Borrowed Forms examines the use of music by contemporary novelists and critics from across the Francophone, Anglophone, and Hispanophone worlds. Through readings of Nancy Huston, Maryse Conde, J. M. Coetzee, Assia Djebar, Julio Cortazar, and other late twentieth-century novelists, the book shows how writers deploy musical strategies to expand the possibilities of the novel in response to the demands of transnational citizenship. The book transcends disciplinary boundaries, to reveal the entanglement of musical and narrative forms in ethical, historical, and political questions.Critics from Mikhail Bakhtin to Edward Said established musical forms as an indispensable framework for understanding the novel. This study argues that the turn to music in late twentieth century fiction is linked to new questions of authority and representation, as writers seek to democratize the novel, to bring marginalized voices into fiction, to articulate increasingly hybrid subjectivities, and to negotiate the conflicting histories of the diverse groups that make up today's multicultural societies. The book traces the influence of four musical concepts on theory and the contemporary novel: polyphony, or the art of combining multiple, equal voices; counterpoint, the carefully regulated setting of one voice against another; variations, the virtuosic exploration of a given theme; and opera, the dramatic setting of a story to a musical score. Borrowed Forms is both a vital reference for all those seeking to understand the influence of music on 20th-century literary theory, and a rigorous and interdisciplinary framework for considering the transnational novel.Keywords:
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Polyphony
Theme (computing)
Representation
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The book offers an analysis of carnivalesque or popular festive laughter in O'Casey's drama. Drawing upon the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, Malik argues that a fuller understanding of the artistic and ideological significance of O'Casey's drama can be arrived at by situating it in the “low” or popular cultural traditions of his society. A detailed discussion of O'Casey's plays is attempted to show how the forms of laughter function to interrogate contemporary hegemonic political, economic, and cultural discourses. The Dublin trilogy counters the nationalist ideology and its constructions of history, while the later comedies focus on the issues of cultural domination and religious authoritarianism. This negative critique of the dominant order is accompanied, in these plays, by a celebration of the rich energy of popular collective life, and its capacity to resist domination and to create an alternative society. The study extends this perspective to include a consideration of O'Casey's dramaturgic choices and his deployment of popular forms of theatrical representation which are radically different from and often inimical to established aesthetic norms.
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The linking theme of the essays collected here is the intersection of musical work with social and cultural practice. Inspired by Professor Strohm's ideas, as is fitting in a volume in his honour, leading scholars in the field explore diverse conceptualizations of the 'work' within the contexts of a specific repertory, over four main sections. Music in Theory and Practice studies the link between treatises and musical practice, and analyses how historical writings can reveal period views on the 'work' in music before 1800. Art and Social Process: Music in Court and Urban Societies looks at the social and cultural practices informing composition from the late Renaissance until the mid-eighteenth century, and interrogates current notions of canon formation and the exchange between local and foreign traditions. Creating an Opera Industry focuses on how genre and artistic autonomy were defined in operas from diverse eras and countries, explaining the role of literature and politics in this process. Finally, The Crisis of Modernity treats nineteenth-century music, offering new models for 'work' and 'context' to challenge reigning theories of the meaning of these terms.
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Philosophy of music
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Late modernity
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Identity, Narrative and Politics argues that political theory has barely begun to develop a notion of narrative identity; instead the book explores the sophisticated ideas which emerge from novels as alternative expressions of political understanding. This title uses a broad international selection of Twentieth Century English language works, by writers such as Nadine Gordimer and Thomas Pynchon.The book considers each novel as a source of political ideas in terms of content, structure, form and technique.The book assumes no prior knowledge of the literature discussed, and will be fascinating reading for students of literature, politics and cultural studies.
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A deepening interest in both social and interior experience was a distinguishing feature of the cultural life of eighteenth-century Britain, influencing writers in all genres from fiction to philosophy. Focusing on this interplay of ideas and genres, Mark Phillips explores the ways in which writers and readers of history, memoir, biography and related literatures responded to the social and sentimental concerns of a modern, commercial society. He shows that the writing of history, which once concentrated exclusively on political events, widened its horizons in ways that often paralleled better-known developments in the contemporary novel. Ultimately, Phillips proposes a new model for the study of historiographical narrative. Countering tropological readings identified with Hayden White, he offers a more historically nuanced approach that stresses questions of genre and reception as a guide to understanding how narratives were reshaped by new audiences and new social needs. Drawing inspiration from both the social analysis of the Scottish Enlightenment and the sentimental aesthetics of the contemporary novel, historical writing began to explore the areas of social experience and private life for which there was no place in classical historiography. The consequence, Phillips argues, was a significant reframing of historical thought that expressed itself through new themes, including the histories of commerce, manners, literature, and women, and through some lively experiments in narrative form. This book offers a rich picture of historiography that will interest students of history and fiction alike.
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Inspired by discussions on postmodern theory, the dissertation deals with irony and parody as methods reflective of the political and ideological dimensions of a literary work. Moreover, the dissertation problematizes postmodern representation and examines the manifestations of irony and parody in contemporary Canadian short fiction with the aim of uncovering the manner in which they may serve as a prism for critical examination of culture, as well as the extent to which the mentioned methods render this selection of fiction political. Dealing with the postmodern and contemporary short fiction, the dissertation explores the purpose and effectiveness of postmodern methods – irony and parody – in Canadian short stories published between 1999 and 2016. The interpretations of these short stories uncover the persistence of a ‘double-edged’ or ‘double-voiced’ sensibility achieved by the use of postmodern irony representing the authentic expression of contemporary authors, even when the postmodern philosophical basis and the short story form, in terms of the genre conventions, do not allow for further elaboration. Moreover, the sensibility of the contemporary Canadian short story reflects the postmodern philosophical refusal to situate its vision in a critical or ethical center in its emphasis on the interrogative process. The manner in which postmodern techniques are used reveals the
awareness of the constructed nature of the discourse shaped by the inheritance of tradition which the storytelling process explores. In those terms, the discourse of these contemporary authors is a product of the exploration of the cultural and the socio-political affinities and distinctions of the contemporary society. Therefore, it represents both a manifestation of the postmodern difference, from the cultural and political perspectives of the storyteller, and the acute awareness of narrative as an instrument of interpellation addressed at the reader. Contemporary authors recognize both the act of storytelling and its product – the narrative discourse, as continuous with the discourses of the past, but also as the product of the present moment, which underscores the very dialogical relation between the two – the past and the present – in a decentered exploration.
Postmodern music
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Towards a Twenty-First-Century Feminist Politics of Music. By Sally Macarthur. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. 210 pp. Driven by author's desire to reinvigorate feminist musicology using Deleuzian philosophical tools, this book promotes productive power of thought, or what Deleuze terms the virtual. Sally Macarthur is more interested in what women's music might become than in what it currently is, and she strives throughout to consider future open and unbounded by standards and norms of present. The current volume considers complex networks of composition, performance, consumption, academic discourse, and pedagogy that compose field of music. Though some readers may initially be perturbed to find that Macarthur leaves definition of music ambiguous, it gradually becomes clear that her decision to do so is aligned with her politicized philosophy. A definition of music would restrict possibilities of what it could become, enclosing it in repetitive patterns of past and hindering our ability to think in in-between spaces of old and new (4). Macarthur's Deleuzian theoretical model introduces productive questions that undercut hierarchical and propel explorations of music into unknown. Macarthur's multifaceted approach to music is particularly relevant to musicologists and composers working within academic institution, but it is also more generally of interest to feminists writing and teaching in humanities. Each of Macarthur's six chapters accesses themes of music and feminist musicology in different ways. Specifically, in first four chapters, she considers usefulness of empirical research in feminist scholarship, concepts of author and work implemented in musicological writing, trends in discourse and economic power structures of music marketing, and history of feminisms in musicology. In remaining two chapters, Macarthur exemplifies usefulness of Deleuzian questions and concepts developed in preceding pages, taking pieces by Sofia Gubaidulina, Elena Kats-Chernin, and Anne Boyd case studies. She also considers research undertaken by two students: Katharine Nelligan, a composer interested in electronic dance music, and Danielle Bentley, a PhD student who investigates issues surrounding music's tendency to alienate audiences. Throughout these discussions, Macarthur strives to think outside discourses she perceives hindering current musicological endeavors, and she remains overtly critical of positivism, narrative knowledge, totalizing dualities, and neoromantic conception of author. While validating her focus on future--on imminence rather than transcendence--Macarthur attempts to avoid repetitive master narratives that she views governing Western musical and in doing so challenges readers to rethink how they write about and teach music. As a vehemently political and functional book, Towards a Twenty-First-Century Feminist Politics of Music contributes to a growing body of Deleuzian writing on music and introduces feminists to a variety of tools that can help us productively engage continual becoming of music. (1) In her review of statistical data originally presented in empirical studies on state of women in music, Macarthur surmises that these positivist efforts ultimately prove what is already self-evident: Women's music barely signifies on concert platforms (30). (2) Although these studies advocate expansion of women's role in musical production by providing concise numerical information and using statistics as tools of persuasion to activate change (27), she concludes that this established research model ultimately produces thinking which forecloses thought (33). Rather than using quantitative research to illustrate negative difference between polarized categories (women/men, minority/majority, inferior/superior), Macarthur asks us to focus on ways that women's music opens up a transformative potential capable of destabilizing dominant mode of musical production. …
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Drawing on a passion for music, a remarkably diverse interdisciplinary toolbox, and a gift for accessible language that speaks equally to scholars and the general public, Jann Pasler invites us to read as she writes music, unveiling the forces that affect our sonic encounters. In an extraordinary collection of historical and critical essays, some appearing for the first time in English, Pasler deconstructs the social, moral, and political preoccupations lurking behind aesthetic taste. Arguing that learning from musical experience is vital to our understanding of past, present, and future, Pasler's work trenchantly reasserts the role of music as a crucial contributor to important public debates about who we can be as individuals, communities, and nations. The author's wide-ranging and perceptive approaches to musical biography and history challenge us to rethink our assumptions about important cultural and philosophical issues including national identity and postmodern musical hybridity, material culture, the economics of power, and the relationship between classical and popular music. Her work uncovers the self-fashioning of modernists such as Vincent d'Indy, Augusta Holmes, Jean Cocteau, and John Cage, and addresses categories such as race, gender, and class in the early 20th century in ways that resonate with experiences today. She also explores how music uses time and constructs narrative. Pasler's innovative and influential methodological approaches, such as her notion of question-spaces, open up the complex cultural and political networks in which music participates. This provides us with the reasons and tools to engage with music in fresh and exciting ways. In these thoughtful essays, music--whether beautiful or cacophonous, reassuring or seemingly incomprehensible--comes alive as a bearer of ideas and practices that offers deep insights into how we negotiate the world. Here, Jann Pasler's Writing through Music brilliantly demonstrates how music can be a critical lens to focus the contemporary critical, cultural, historical, and social issues of our time.
Call and response
Hybridity
Music Geography
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Purpose – I argue that one can articulate a historically attuned and analytically rich model for understanding jazz in its various inflections. That is, on the one hand, such a model permits us to affirm jazz as a historically conditioned, dynamic hybridity. On the other hand, to acknowledge jazz’s open and multiple character in no way negates our ability to identify discernible features of various styles and esthetic traditions. Additionally, my model affirms the sociopolitical, legal (Jim Crow and copyright laws), and economic structures that shaped jazz. Consequently, my articulation of bebop as an inflection of Afro-modernism highlights the sociopolitical, and highly racialized context in which this music was created. Without a recognition of the sociopolitical import of bebop, one’s understanding of the music is impoverished, as one fails to grasp the strategic uses to which the music and discourses about the music were put. Design methodology/approach – I engage in an interdisciplinary study of jazz via analyses and commentary on selected texts from several scholarly disciplines. Findings – To acknowledge the hybridity and social construction of jazz esthetics in no way nullifies the innovations and leadership of African American jazz musicians whose artistic contributions not only significantly shaped modern jazz in the mid-twentieth century but also whose musical voices continue to sound and set esthetical standards in contemporary expressions of jazz (and beyond). Originality and value – My chapter is highly interdisciplinary, bringing philosophical explanations of race, discourse, and the ontology of music into conversation with numerous sociological and (ethno)musicological insights about jazz.
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Reviewed by: Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique ed. by Ronald Radano and Tejumola Olaniyan Ruth E. Rosenberg Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique. Edited by Ronald Radano and Tejumola Olaniyan. (Refiguring American Music.) Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. [ x418 p. ISBN 9780822359869 (hard-cover), $99.95; ISBN 9780822360124 (paperback), $28.95; ISBN 9780822374947 (e-book), various.] Music examples, photographs, bibliographic references, index. This collection of fifteen essays had its genesis in a multi-year, interdisciplinary research initiative at the University of Wisconsin–Madison called "Music-Race-Empire." The scope and depth of the scholarship reflects contributions across the humanities, including musicologists and ethnomusicologists, cultural historians, anthropologists, and scholars from American studies, African American studies, and beyond. The essays range from ethno-graphically-grounded studies of popular music, to previously unexamined histories, to nuanced analyses of musical encounters in a range of imperial contexts. The organization of this collection around things "audible" might suggest its conscious positioning under the umbrella of sound studies, a field that is invested in the history of listening and the investigation of how sound, language, and listening produce knowledge. But the introduction, by editors Ronald Radano and Tejumola Olaniyan, distances itself from "problematic trajectories in what might be called the neoliberal turn in sound and popular-music studies" to focus instead on "specifically human and, most typically, historical modes of auditory action—of people performing and making 'music'" (p. 4). The project, as they conceive it, is not to treat the auditory as an aspect of empire separate from its broader structure, or to privilege the affective experience and epistemological consequences of hearing/listening over seeing/looking. Instead, scholarship in the anthology is intended to treat the audible in a dialectical or relational manner, as something which conditions empire and functions as part of its regimes of knowledge and power. The volume is divided into four sections: "Technologies of Circulation," "Audible Displacements," "Cultural Policies and Politics in the Sound Market," and "Anticolonialism." Readers will also find worthwhile convergences if the chapters are approached in other orders or groupings; this review is meant to highlight some of the methodological and thematic connections not already suggested by the editors' headings. In the most general sense, this collection treats music as a political and social force, so several of the chapters are about music that critiques or resists empire. This is the case with the two essays dedicated to hiphop, which has from its inception been concerned with political commentary and racial justice. Now global idioms that have spread and changed via new technologies and media, rap and hip-hop are vital means of expression for communities and individuals who have been marginalized, misrepresented, displaced, or silenced. In "Rap, Race, Revolution: Post-9/11 Brown and a Hip-Hop Critique of Empire," Nitasha Sharma analyzes the lyrics of desi rappers as they progressed from pre-9/11 critiques of postcolonial realities and American culture to articulations of a new political subjectivity that emerged post-9/11. This subjectivity of "post-9/11 Brown" reflects the shared experience of those groups targeted as "Muslim" and, spurred by the Arab Spring and facilitated by the digital revolution, has become "a pan-racial, cross-religious, and global identification among [End Page 89] those who link racism to empire building"(p. 294). Marc Perry observes a similarly transnational phenomenon in the Cuban hip-hop scene in an essay about the convergence of American radical black activist discourse, anticolonial and anti-imperial Cuban and Puerto Rican sentiment, and growing racial identification among Cuban raperos around the year 2000. Another major theme of this book is how imperialism has shaped the writing of music history and how archives might—or must—be rethought. Penny von Eschen models how music, such as that of Jamaican-born dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson (LKJ), might be conceived as an archive from which to create alternative narratives of history (in this case of the Cold War). In another essay, Brent Hayes Edwards looks at the archive of British ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey in its relation (or non-relation) to anticolonial literature about Africa. Of course, any single archive holds the potential of infinite histories, as Jairo Moreno observes...
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Abstract Approaching Conrad as a transnational writer, this essay argues, poses a challenge to the Anglo-Modernist contextualizing hypothesis that has shaped his reception in the twentieth century. In responding to a condition of linguistic and cultural marginality, Conrad anticipated the artistic projects of writers such as Luigi Pirandello, Italo Svevo, James Joyce, and Franz Kafka, who have contributed to creating a polyphonic literary space within twentieth-century European literature. This transnational space is the proper context for Conrad's texts. This alternative hypothesis will require a research programme involving not only Conradians but scholars of other European literatures, comparativists, narratologists, students of British intellectual history, and all those interested in theories of the novel, particularly those developed by Mikhail Bakhtin. Notes 1 In A Personal Record Conrad writes: “But then, you see, I have been called romantic. Well, that can't be helped. But stay. I seem to remember that I have been called a realist, also. And as that charge, too, can be made out, let us try to live up to it, at whatever cost, for a change… . It is at least as gratifying to be certified sober as to be certified romantic, though such certificates would not qualify one for a secretaryship of a temperance association or for the post of official troubadour to some lordly democratic institution such as the London County Council, for instance” (Conrad Citation2008, 100-1). 2 “The English, Namier thought, were peculiarly blessed because, as a nation ‘they perceive and accept facts without anxiously enquiring into their reasons and meaning.’ For ‘the less man clogs the free play of his mind with political doctrine and dogma, the better for his thinking.’ This theme is repeated by thinker after thinker; it is the hall-mark of the white emigration. Namier tried to dismiss general ideas by showing their historical inefficacy; Popper by denouncing their moral iniquity (‘holism’); Eysenck by reducing them to psychological velleities; Wittgenstein by undermining their status as intelligible discourse altogether” (Anderson Citation1968, 19). 3 With only two exceptions, writes Annan, “[a]ll the members of the original Bloomsbury group … have already appeared in the families which we have examined” (Annan Citation1955, 277–80). 4 See Hampson 2011 in this connection.
Romance
Polyphony
Institution
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