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April 16-17, 2004
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April 16-17, 2004
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Music and Political Identity Kathleen M. Higgins
University of Texas
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KATHLEEN M. HIGGINS (Ph.D. 1982, Yale) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas and an annual Visiting Professor at the University of Auckland. Her main areas of research are continental philosophy and aesthetics, especially musical aesthetics. Professor Higgins is the author of Comic Relief: Nietzsche's Gay Science (Oxford, 2000), What Nietzsche Really Said (with Robert Solomon, 2000), A Passion for Wisdom (Oxford, 1997), A Short History of Philosophy (with Robert Solomon, Oxford, 1996), The Music of Our Lives (1991), and Nietzsche's Zarathustra (1987), which Choice named an outstanding academic book of 1988-1989. She has also edited or co-edited books on such topics as German Idealism, aesthetics, ethics, erotic love, and non-Western philosophy.
Professor Higgins has been a Resident Scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study and Conference Center and a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University Philosophy Department and Canberra School of Music.
-- Abstract -- The music that is most politically effective, either for reinforcing sectarian affiliation or for transcending it, is music that is relatively transparent, music whose structures are sufficiently well-known that one easily identifies with it. The more transparent a given listener finds particular music, the more easily he or she will identify with it, and the thicker the sense of identity involved. Unless the music has been given a particular political spin, the imaginative resonance with various layers of the listeners' identity tends to be open-ended. Open-ended imaginative resonance involves the listener's spontaneous mental activity, and this activity can result in novel insights about the way in which the listener's identity is related to the music and to others who are connected with it. Among these are insights about the way in which human beings are related, even beyond sectarian boundaries.
If transparent music is most politically effective, neither music that is wildly avant-garde nor music that appeals to the lowest common denominator of musical background will do the most to fortify a sense of global community. Yet this does not preclude the possibility that music can facilitate cross-cultural understanding. Many of the bases for identification with music draw attention to universal features of human experience. Focusing on these bases can also help us to begin to orient ourselves in music that seems initially opaque. Ultimately, music may be our closest approximation to a universal language.
Website constructed and maintained by Douglas Shrader / Department Chair Philosc@Oneonta.edu December 9, 2003
