Deborah Wong (UCR, UC Riverside)
“Higher and Farther: Whose Subjectivity?”
I will share a section of a small book I am writing titled Rogue Methodologies: Ethnomusicology, Woman, Other, which addresses ethnomusicology’s methods in a time of change. I argue that US-based ethnomusicology has an unacknowledged possessive investment in White liberalism which has granted the discipline a progressive past and present, but change is needed. I position ethnomusicological critique as one of our core responsibilities and turn to Disney empowerment songs as an example of how unitary subjectivities are mapped onto young women of color. I deploy tools and concepts generated by feminists of color to show how nonunitary subjectivities, third spaces, and alternative modernities are invaluable critical and political tools for ethnomusicologists. That is, I use feminist tools to resituate the white liberal humanist assumptions at the heart of my discipline. My core purpose is to resituate my discipline, as a project of love and commitment, by considering how subjects and objects have been made, and thus how researchers could be unmade.
Stoeckel Hall 106
1:30 pm