This project involves postdisciplinary, critically-engaged explorations of the crucial role of bodies in relation to music:
the performing body, the listening body, the gendered (raced, classed, aged) listener or performer. The main contribution of
this project is to define a problematic (or area of research) that has so far remained marginal in terms of music, despite
highly fruitful interdisciplinary work of this sort on other artistic fields, and the gradual, mutual engagement between cultural
theory and musicology. The aim is not to come up with one specific model, but to create as many models as possible,
according to their relevance to different musical approaches and situations.
Aims and Objectives
This project contributes to the current debates on bodies and music among musicologists, ethnomusicologists, feminist and queer theorists, critical theorists and cultural theorists.
In particular, it will:
bring together people working in diverse disciplines from various critical theoretical perspectives to examine the issue of bodies and music using a variety of theoretical approaches e.g. feminist, poststructuralist, Marxist (notably via Theodor Adorno)
develop critical approaches that account for bodies and music. Existing theory might be adequate for bodies, but has not been embraced by musicologists: what modifications and adaptations are necessary to generate new models that are useful across disciplines? In a postdisciplinary context?
illuminate musical meaning from a body-focussed perspective (i.e. we intend to explore it as something more than a sequence of sounds, or self-contained recordings and performances).
consider how music might produce raced, gendered, and/or queer bodies, especially with relation to issues of performativity. Music is not a creation of mind or hand, or something only for the ears. All who partake in music are doing so within socially constructed situations and expectations.
investigate possibilities in music production that challenge the limits of social construction (i.e. can music or music listening be self-conscious in way that can alter the situations it finds itself in?)
lead to the establishment of an international network of researchers addressing similar questions from related critical perspectives.
Central Research Questions
What does examination of music and music-making bring to critical theories of the body and vice versa?
Are current theories of bodies adequate for examining musicking bodies?
What is the nature of the co-construction of music and bodies (i.e. the musical body is not self-contained, but continually reconstructed through musical events)?
How does music construct an embodied sense of national/gender/sexual/ethnic identity? (For example, is the embodied identity constructed by Irish trad music available to the new immigrants (Polish, Indonesian)? How might this (or other local music practices) relate to anxieties over national identity within the recently-expanded EU?)
How can music and music criticism intervene in rather than merely observe these processes?