Criticizing the Misuse of “Decolonization” Is Important—But Having a Full Conversation About Colonialism and Ways to Counter It Is Just as Important

Following Tuck and Yang’s influential article “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” the emerging consensus in Euro-North America and Australasia (the “West”) is that decolonization must pertain to the return of land. In that sense, universities and academic societies can never decolonize unless they return lands which they occupy. “Decentering” has therefore become a preferred term for curricular changes that attempt to be more inclusive. Certainly, “decolonization” can and has been misused. Student-centering pedagogies, for example, are important but do not necessarily counter coloniality.

The centrality of Indigenous voices in decolonization in the West is indisputable, and the viewpoints in Eve Tuck’s article coauthored with K. Wayne Yang should therefore be prioritized in Western, especially settler colonial contexts. However, what is less often appreciated is that the focus on replacing “decolonial” with “decentering” can result in a simplified conversation. What the stringency of use of “decolonial” should point to is not just the issue of land, but the depth and complexity of universities’ colonialism that should always be referenced. 

There are three main points to be made about universities’ and academic societies’ colonialism. 

1. Universities and academic societies occupy indigenous lands. 

2. Universities and academic societies have maintained and exported Eurocentrism, conducted imperial surveys of global geographies and cultures, and have historical links to slavery and the profitable opium trade that was forced by the West onto unwilling global partners. 

3. Universities and academic societies mine BIPOC counterhegemonic knowledge, with elite universities commodifying it into DEI courses.

Restricting the use of “decolonial” should always be accompanied by a fuller discussion of universities’ and academic societies’ colonialism—the point is not just to berate those who misuse the term “decolonial,” however justified it may be. Furthermore, a map for how to counter universities’ and academic societies’ colonialism should always be provided; otherwise, universities and academic societies are simply allowed to maintain the colonial status quo. Granted, the depth and complexity of universities’ and academic societies’ colonialism means that any action taken to counter their colonialism is always partial, inadequate, and entangled with their colonial legacy. However, the alternative is to just maintain universities’ and academic societies’ colonial status quo, as oppose to the entanglement of attempts at countering their colonialism, alongside their colonial legacy. Here, then, are some partial and inadequate ways in which universities and academic societies can counter their colonialism, in relation to Indigenous peoples whose lands were stolen, and black people whose labor was stolen.

1. Return indigenous lands. 

2. Partner with indigenous/black businesses

3. Incorporate indigenous/black topics in music curricula

4. Increase the proportion of indigenous/black students and faculty

In addition, universities and academic societies have to come to terms with their imperial legacy which is projected externally towards the world. Universities and academic societies are the corollaries of Western imperialism that has touched all geographies, resulting in 100% Western music history courses even up to the early twenty-first century in Singapore (although the British left in 1959), and a rising gap in contemporary China between growing populations of students of Western music, versus falling numbers of students of Chinese music. Calling the countering of Western music history “decentering” misses the point that Western music history is a colonial cultural form cultivated by Western universities and academic societies and projected globally. Calling it decentering leaves Western music history unaccountable for the part it plays in colonialism. Cultural and epistemic colonialization is colonialization. Cultural colonization is how "subjects that are socially located in the oppressed side of the colonial difference [are made] to think epistemically like the ones on the dominant positions" (to quote Ramón Grosfoguel in "The Epistemic Decolonial Turn"). Cultural colonization is the reason for Rishi Sunard and Clarence Thomas. It applies equally in contexts of historical and continuing settler colonization and minoritization (in the West), as well as historical and continuing exploitation colonization (beyond the West). Here, then, are some partial and inadequate ways in which universities and academic societies can counter their colonialism.

1. Return formerly and currently colonized lands outside the West which are still occupied.

2. Partner with businesses owned by peoples, usually BIPOCs, from formerly and currently colonized lands outside the West 

3. Incorporate topics in music curricula (including global music history curricula) on peoples, usually BIPOCs, from formerly and currently colonized lands outside the West. The point is to counter the specific colonial aspect of Western music history by targeting the way in which it has excluded other histories, rather than Western music history per se (in its totality), which is one among many histories that should be studied.

4. Increase the proportion of peoples, usually BIPOCs, from formerly and currently colonized lands outside the West, among students and faculty

The three groups of points above move the conversation to the depth and complexity of universities’ and academic societies’ colonialism, as well as ways of countering it in partial and inadequate ways, as opposed to concluding the conversation with berating those who use “decolonial” inappropriately. It is just as important to explicate how universities and academic societies are colonial, and point to ways of countering it.

Fred Everett Maus, "Queer Sexuality and Musical Narrative"

This is a draft of a chapter that has been accepted for publication by Oxford University Press in the forthcoming book Queer Ear: Remaking Music Theory edited by Gavin Lee, due for publication in 2023. Preorder the $39.95 paperback with a 30% discount code AAFLYG6 here. 

Preamble by Gavin Lee

My forthcoming edited volume Queer Ear has no afterword, a book structure that perhaps reflects the multivalence within the book and its open-ended possibilities. Here, having convened the recent Queer Sinophone Sound symposium (2023) (Western Sydney University and University of Sydney), I lay out one response to the very book I had edited. As an editor, I might be seen as an insider to the project, but I write in this response from another part of my identity that is more than queer. 

In prominent intellectual Wang Xiaobo’s essay “On the Question of Homosexuality,” the reader of today is presented with what is taken as self-evident truths in most of the English-speaking world, e.g. homosexuality is not a choice and hence not a moral issue. (Wang’s essay reflects on the pioneering Their World: A Look at the Chinese Male Homosexual Community, which he had co-authored with his opposite sex partner Li Yinhe, who was the lead researcher, in 1992.) But what is interesting is Wang’s essay’s intervention in the sociohistorical juncture of post-1978, post-Cultural Revolution China in which it was written. The fundamental issue in the essay is that homosexuals should not be oppressed based on prejudice, rather than US queer theory of the 90s (Butler, gender performance etc.), which Li was invested in (Li revealed in 2014 that she has been with a trans male partner for the past 15 years, after Wang's death in 1997). Wang’s essay contained what was conceivable and most urgent for him to articulate within the specific sociohistorical juncture of 1990s China. 

Similarly, Queer Ear is very much the product of its context, where queer discourses can be articulated. In contrast, while organizing the Queer Sinophone Sound symposium, I encountered composers who remained in the closet, and performing groups who did not want to be written about for fear of state surveillance. This led me to think about the conditions of possibility for there to even be a queer world, a queer soundscape, a queer ear—just as Wang’s essay is constricted by his time and place. Growing up in Singapore in the 90s as a closeted English-speaking teen, the queer world I discovered was one of US queer writers such as David Leavitt, Edmund White, and Paul Monette. There were just a few big bookstores where a wide range of fiction and nonfiction books (entirely or almost entirely in English if I recall correctly) could be found. Aside from the newly invented internet chat rooms called IRC (Internet Relay Chat) (as obsolete as phone lines today), US queer literature was the only other queer space I found within the "Gender Studies" section of those bookstores. I knew being gay was terrible from my parents, who told me gay people were mentally ill, and from someone I had briefly dated in high school, who had been told by his best friend that homosexuality is a sin—and dating me means their friendship is over. 

Just recently, I reread one of my favorite passages from David Leavitt’s Equal Affections (a beloved purchase from the Borders bookstore in the 90s in Singapore), about how Walter, going through his mid-life crisis, is contemplating leaving Danny. Walter peers out from his office in one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center towards the other tower. Reading this passage, I recognized a temporal disjuncture between Leavitt’s 1989 novel and the post-9/11 era. There are other references in the novel which feel dated, include men who felt they had to be discrete in kissing goodbye. The present moment is sometimes understood to be one of queer expression and fierce resistance—yet we might ponder whether this queer universe is universal within places like San Francisco, where just last night, I had witnessed a powerful drag performance by Indigenous artistes Aunty BB Anuhea and Piss E Sissy, versus in the sea of red surrounding urban dots of blue. What is the extent to which queer resistance is possible in other times and places—in China of the 90s, or even today, and in Singapore, where gay sex was decriminalized only in 2022 (but queers were simultaneously denied marriage equality in the same session of parliament)? How does one weigh the option of critiquing closeted composers and gay teens in other geographies, from within spaces of queer expression and resistance, whether in San Francisco or in US queer music academia, queer music theory? Does critique mean embracing the inchoate articulation of queerness in the vast majority of geographies outside the Europe/US—or does it mean eviscerating global queers for not being queer enough? Even for those in Europe/US, queers may be “born in the homes of the oppressors”—to use Paul Attinello’s memorable phrase (in his afterword to my Rethinking Difference in Gender, Sexuality, and Popular Music). Many queers continue from a young age to (as I stated in my introduction to Queer Ear) “collect scraps at the heteronormative table, recycling and reusing bits and pieces of an often hostile world to fortify our closets.” This is the context in which we should understand Maus’ analysis of how Edward Cone hid his gayness within non-specific language such as: a “strange, unsettling element” that “persistently returns” and blossoms into “ingratiating” music offering “sensuous delights.” This shows us how even in oppressive contexts, queer listening with a queer ear has created safe inner spaces for those who had no other recourse, or were shaped by their contexts into believing that they didn’t. In Foucauldian terms, the articulated knowledge of the pre-2001 era is “connaisance,” whereas as relative outsiders to that era, present day writers such as Maus are able to see the conditions of possibility—“savoir”—which had shaped that articulated knowledge. (2001 delineates the work of the OG New Musicologists from the work of a later generation whose writings were produced in a climate of increasing LGBTQ+ acceptance as discerned through marriage equality.[1])

Maus’ “Queer Sexuality and Musical Narrative” is an incredible essay. Consider that, perhaps, music theory has been queer all along, and is now just coming out. Click here and enjoy!

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/195RHN7_oDNRCCeo2eSQZ1uHzh3OT-hrh/view?usp=sharing  

Excerpt: 

"Now if one asks, as I did at the beginning of this section, how “Schubert’s Promissory Note” might relate to Cone’s gay male subjectivity, the answer is in part obvious, in part obscure. Here and in the subsequent discussion of Newcomb, I do not draw on detailed knowledge of these writers’ lives. My suggestions are based on generalizations about the lives of twentieth-century gay men and other LGBTQ+ subjects—specifically, about people growing up in respectable, mostly homophobic twentieth-century Euro-American settings. They are based on the experiences that could occur within certain cultural resources of identities, events, psychologies, and narratives. Recall, too, that Cone was born in 1917 and grew up in the South in a particularly homophobic time, amidst widespread pathologizing of homosexuality. Someone growing up gay, lesbian, or bisexual in such a society was likely to experience same-gender sexual attraction, when it arose, as, on one hand, alluring, on the other hand, discontinuous or incompatible with much of their environment, and therefore possibly quite frightening. This fits well Cone’s description of “a strange, unsettling element” that “persistently returns” and blossoms into “ingratiating” music offering “sensuous delights.” In Cone’s continuation to topics of disease and disaster, the account becomes obscure and problematic. It seems we are to understand Cone as having some unspecified personal relation to the distressing conclusion of this composition. It is possible to fill in details of a story that might match Cone’s personal situation, but what I can offer is purely conjecture. Here is one version. In this story about a young gay man, call it Narrative 2A, there is incompatibility between the serenity of the protagonist’s familiar world and a dawning awareness of forbidden sexual appetites, leading to delightful but dangerous sexual exploration. The protagonist finds himself in an impossible situation, unable to reconcile two aspects of his life that both seem indispensable. The outcome, which could be understood as fearfully imagined or as real, is a catastrophe in which neither his initial placid identity and environment nor his unfettered enjoyment of a new sexual life can survive. The music provides a vivid image of this catastrophe."

Notes

[1] 2001 also marks the commencement of US military unilateralism and the new multipolar global order with China's entry to WTO, accompanied by the reorientation of the Republican party around race as a distraction from the economic effects of US neoliberal offshoring made possible by China.

Thoughts on Timothy Jackson's New Writings

Distractionary self-victimization is a 21^st century form of racism, created in a context in which direct attacks of BIPOCs are inadmissible in liberal circles, thus some people make themselves looks like the targets of attack from BIPOCs. 

It is important that we note that distractionary self-victimization is a product of the white racial frame, a 21C version of the old racist trope of projecting violence onto the black other in order to validate racist attacks.

The discursive move is to universalize particularity, distorting the statements of critics of specific Jewish people through conflationary rhetoric that reframes specific conversations using Hitler and the Holocaust.

Recently, I did a search for Timothy Jackson and came across two of his pieces from 2022. The first was published in the US-based Jewish Journal, in which Jackson described the fallout from his Journal of Schenkerian Studies (JSS) issue as “harassment of Jewish scholars for objecting to antisemitic conspiracy theories.” The second piece, similar in tone, was published in The Times of Israel. Neither publications are known to be extremist, though the Jewish Journal is described as “right-center” by MBFC.

It is disturbing that the two publications above have accepted Jackson’s statements at face value, which signals a need for a deeper understanding of public discourse surrounding the JSS incident. This requires putting aside the JSS issue for a moment, and looking at larger patterns first. Fundamentally, the pitting of minorities against one another is a product of a white supremacist system in which both racist and even anti-racist discourse have been weaponized for attacking minorities. In reaction to the accusation of anti-black racism, Jackson responded by labeling his critics as antisemitic, tying his fate with that of Schenker. There is obviously much to be said about the entire controversy. Here, I would like to focus specifically on counter-accusations of being attacked by another social group, in order to distract from one’s own misconduct. I refer to this as self-victimization. The two key phrases here are 1) “one’s misconduct,” i.e. the people portraying themselves as a victim do so because they were accused of wrong-doing in the first place, and 2) “to distract,” i.e. the counter-accusation is intended to distract from that misconduct.

Readers can refer to Ewell’s article, in which he criticized Schenker, for evidence of the latter’s racism, acquired through assimilation to German nationalism. In an attempt to defend Schenker, Jackson resorted to anti-racist discourse protesting purported antisemitism against Schenker and himself, which has worked in so far as some publications have picked up Jackson’ writings. There is of course no defense for antisemitism, but what we are seeing with Jackson is a cynical appropriation of the discourse of antisemitism. By fallaciously constructing himself as a victim, Jackson distracts the public from his original misconduct. 

The key to successful distraction through self-victimization is to lump oneself into a broad category of people who are persecuted and marginalized, hoping to evade careful microanalysis of each individual case. Microanalysis, then, is precisely what we need to engage in. There is, fundamentally, a difference between Jewish people suffering and protesting antisemitism, and people of any ethnicity who use antisemitism as a distractionary counter-accusation. Self-victimization relies on outpours of public sympathy to overwhelm the analytical parts of our brains. In the case of antisemitism, there is a sprawling discursive apparatus designed to conflate 1) critics of specific Jewish people and asymmetrical Israeli state violence, such as Jasbir Puar, and 2) Hitler. Jackson is trying to relocate Ewell from category 1 comprising people who have criticized Jewish people such as Schenker for misconduct, to category 2 comprising anti-Semites. I note that Jasbir Puar has in the past failed the vetting for invitation to speak at music conferences because of this kind of cynical conflation. In this conflation, all critics of specific Jewish people are antisemitic, and all Jewish people are victims, regardless of whether they have issued racist statements like Schenker, or used antisemitism as a distractionary counter-accusation like Jackson. The discursive move is to universalize particularity, distorting the statements of critics of specific Jewish people through conflationary rhetoric that reframes specific conversations using Hitler and the Holocaust.

Speaking more broadly beyond the specifics of Jackson’s distractionary self-victimization and conflationary rhetoric, I wish to emphasize the importance of microanalysis of individual cases. Microanalysis is important in the larger discursive picture as well, because self-victimization has multiple valences. In the above, I discuss victimization of oneself. But there is also the white supremacist discourse of portraying minorities as self-victimizers, who supposedly insist on systemic racism that white supremacists consign to history ("how can Barack Obama be president if the US was racist?”). Even black intellectuals have criticized victimhood as an obstacle to black empowerment. General psychology sees victimhood as an obstacle to success. None of these forms of self-victimization fulfil the criteria of distractionary self-victimization—the use of counter-accusations to distract from one’s own misconduct. As we saw with Jackson, distractionary self-victimization is used for the purposes of marginalizing BIPOC people, accusing the latter as racist—the irony here lies in the fact that Jackson is himself a member of the Jewish minority. Regardless, if the public falls prey to such distractionary self-victimization, they participate in racism. It is important that we note that distractionary self-victimization is a product of the white racial frame, a 21C version of the old racist trope of projecting violence onto the black other in order to validate racist attacks. Distractionary self-victimization, when directed against BIPOCs, is racist, regardless of whether the perpetrator is white or BIPOC.

As a side note, I was brought to the concept of distractionary self-victimization by episodes 2 and 3 of the Netflix show, Million Dollar Beach House, based on a group of real estate agents working in the Hamptons. The show has been called racist because of the distractionary self-victimization by cast member Peggy, who subjected black cast member Noel to gaslighting. Episode 2 ends with the showing of a luxury home by Noel, representing the seller, to Peggy’s client Justin, who purportedly vets real estate investments for wealthy individuals. At the beginning of the showing, Noel tries to get a sense of which individuals Justin represents. At a later point, when Justin reiterated Peggy’s point that the house was overpriced (Peggy is shown arguing that in confessional interviews), the discussion gets heated. Upon Justin’s insistence on calculating the precise price point of the house, Noel becomes frustrated and the conversation seems to descend into a needless argument that I at least can’t imagine myself being interested in if I were really employed in Justin’s position—why bother to see a house that is as overpriced as Justin believes it to be? 

At the beginning of Episode 3, set in the office, Peggy accuses Noel of being “disrespectful” and “pompous” for asking who Justin’s clients were, and for retorting that one doesn’t ask for discounts when one walks into a “Rolls Royce” dealership. Noel himself admits that it wasn’t his best showing. What is of interest here is how Peggy is shown (no doubt through production manipulation) to be intentionally trying to embarrass Noel—if she really believed that the house was overpriced as stated in her confessional interviews, what possible motive could there be for bringing Justin to see the house, other than to show Noel up? In the heated office discussion, Peggy goes on the attack while painting herself as victim: Noel disrespected her by vetting her clients to see if they were qualified buyers; it was inappropriate for Noel to wear sunglasses to meet them (Justin was also wearing sunglasses); Noel was “pompous” though he was baited into it. One could wonder what is the appropriate adjective for a white colleague (Peggy) who organized a “lesson” (the showing) for their black co-worker (Noel) instead of actually trying to explain to the latter why the house should be differently priced.

Forcing Noel to push back by cornering him, Peggy then made a sumptuous meal out of her victimhood, distracting from her original intention which was to destroy the credibility of a co-worker. This kind of distractionary self-victimization is a 21^st century form of racism, created in a context in which direct attacks of BIPOCs are inadmissible, thus some people make themselves looks like the targets of attack from BIPOCs. Unfortunately, within white supremacy, BIPOCs have been entangled in racist acts as both perpetrators and victims. Microanalysis is needed to differentiate between legitimate “victims” of history who are nevertheless fighting back, and distractionary self-victimization by the Peggys and Jacksons of the world.

How to Talk about Inclusion: A Guide for Allies

1. Many people reading this blog post have some measure of privilege, whether from being middle class, or because of race (white), gender (male), (hetero)sexuality, and ability. This is obviously not any individual's "fault"! But when talking about inclusion, do acknowledge these factors, because one has personally benefited from being part of certain social groups (e.g. in social assimilation and professional recognition)—this is often termed “privilege,” and because these factors are the axes by which oppression is visited by society on BIPOCs, women, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities. I’m sure the last thing anyone intends to do is to create more pressures on marginalized peoples. Do complement any sort of discussion with critique of the factors that led to the centering of white, male, heterosexual, and able-bodied composers, often helped by white, male, heterosexual, and able-bodied writers throughout history. I call the acknowledging of one’s privilege, which inadvertently affects marginalized others without privilege, “self-accounting.” BIPOCs, women, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities did not create the white, male, heterosexual, ableist canon.

2. In relation to point 1, do adopt a constructive approach and share strategies and resources. If one happens to have resources for musical inclusion with regards to e.g. ability, do share them with whomever you are having a conversation with; e.g. I received advice once to use built-in heading options in Word/Google Doc in my course syllabi, to help with readability and accessibility. Do be honest about where one is at in one's own journey of inclusion, and help others along the way. Avoid performative allyship that comprises posting comments to demonstrate one's inclusive orientation, but without offering anything else that is constructive. 

3. Don't expect perfection from students or others. In pedagogy, students do go through a journey that takes several courses to complete (race, gender, sexuality ability; multiple geographies). E.g. There may be courses in black music histories (with women and queer composers), women composers (with BIPOC composers), LGBTQ+ composers (with BIPOC composers), and lesser known Western composers. I do expect students to be more and more attuned to inclusion, but there isn't one course that will help students to be 100% inclusive, and if it exists, it's may be because somebody tried to cram all the inclusive work into one course, while leaving other courses untouched. This is called tokenism. 

4. Do learn about the issues involved, whether race, gender, sexuality, or ability. If one is unfamiliar with the issues involved, do assume the stance of a learner, and ask questions. People of marginalized groups may not always have the time to respond, but sometimes they will, depending on whether they have the capacity to do so. If marginalized people do not respond to your questions, don’t take it personally. This may simply be because marginalized people have busy lives; this is in part because dominant groups often want to learn from marginalized people, who find themselves conducting a lot of public communication. Do learn about global, black, Indigenous, Asian, and Latin American music histories. Do take the initiative to find the answers and develop an understanding of global history, periodization, composers, performers, transculturation etc.

5. Following from the point above, do develop a more layered understanding of marginalities. There is a real problem of “narrative scarcity,” a term from Asian American studies which refers to the extreme lack of representation. Let’s use the case study of concert music. If one were to specify queer black composers, 90% of people will think of Julius Eastman, because there is a scarcity of queer black composers, given the double oppressions of racism and homophobia. Or, if one were to specify Chinese women composers, 90% of people will think of Chen Yi, because there is a scarcity of Chinese women composers, given the double oppressions of racism and sexism. 

6. One often expects the composers that one knows to be mentioned. However, this kind of expectation leads to canonization; already a huge segment of published work in English on global avant-garde composers are on Chou Wenchung. There are hundreds of countries, and hundreds of composers within each of these countries. Inclusion and diversity are anti-canonic principles.

7. Do consider whether one has been invited to take part in a conversation. If marginalized people want some help in amplifying a message, this will be made clear by explicit invitation or just social conventions.

Hope this helps!

Global music history syllabi

Gavin Lee, Sinophone Music History (66 tracks in Spotify playlist “Sinophone Music History GL”)  

Gavin Lee, Black Music History based on input from members of the AMS Pedagogy study group and Decolonizing Ethnomusicology Facebook page (219 tracks in Spotify playlist “Black Music History GL”; 41 scores)

Gavin Lee, Global Music History (“Music History I: Global Overview”)

Gavin Lee, Global Form and Analysis

How “Taruskin is Dead” Is Actually a Celebration of His Accomplishments, Or, What Is China’s “New Musicology,” Post-Taruskin?

By Gavin Lee

This is a translation and expansion of my Chinese article published in Shanghai Conservatory’s Taruskin series on Oct 12, 2022. I aimed to be polemical, criticizing the near exclusive Chinese focus on Taruskin as an occlusion of other New Musicologists as well as new decolonial and posthumanist research. I am grateful to Xu Lufan, Liu Peng, He Xian, and Hong Ding for discussing Taruskin and Chinese musicology with me.

 

When Boulez announced that Schoenberg is dead, it was entirely in keeping with the modernist ideology of innovation that perhaps ameliorated any perception of disrespect. Now in 2022, just months after Taruskin’s death, the title of this article might also, in the same way, be received as a call for innovation that is after all the hallmark of academia. Because the “death” we are referring to here is not Taruskin’s biological death, but to his oeuvre of scholarship, the announcement that Taruskin is to be superceded is above all a recognition of his decisive influence in musicology. There is, in this sense, no higher praise than to announce that Taruskin is dead. I hope can only hope that someone announces that “Gavin Lee is dead” when the time comes.

Taruskin's influence in China has largely to do with his monumental Oxford History of Western Music, as opposed to his research on Russian music, nationalism, early music etc. Although the Oxford history is a work of history (rather than historiography), it contains significant considerations of methodology and summarizes others's musicological research, and has become a source from which Chinese scholars deduce historical methods. While Taruskin has been known in China for some time, more attention was paid to him around 2017, especially his Oxford History, which led to the publication of an edited volume from Yang Yandi and Liang Qing, entitled Taruskin: What Is the Essence of Music History? (2019). This contained essays explaining Taruskin's historical method, with his Oxford History being a central reference point; in a sense, what we have is Chinese scholars interpreting Taruskin's interpretation of Western music and history. We might understand the recent attention on Taruskin in China as a reflection of the longer-term project scrutinizing the writing of Western music history, led in particular by Yang.

Bearing in mind that the Oxford History is currently absorbing a significant amount of attention from Chinese musicology, I provide in this article an extremely brief but timely assessment of its 6 volumes as well as Taruskin’s entire oeuvre. I pay attention in particular to Taruskin’s relation with New Musicology, and the possibility for new thinking through his transculturation in China. To do that, I need to first lay out arguments for why Taruskin is dead. Again, I see this as the highest recognition of Taruskin’s achievements. In ancient Chinese martial arts stories, it is the always the most formidable swordsman who protagonists want to challenge. Taruskin is one of the intellectual giants of musicology.

Taruskin is dead because:

1) For those of us thoroughly familiar with Taruskin’s overall research, it can be curiously difficult to pinpoint his achievements: What is Taruskin’s innovation? The reason, I think, is because his once novel ideas have become so influential that they are simply part of mainstream musicological thinking. You wouldn’t even think twice about critiquing “authenticity” in early music because it’s so obvious that authenticity is merely a construct, and that history cannot really be recovered in 2022. Because we have already learnt Taruskin’s lesson by heart, it is perhaps time for us to move on from him.

2) For those of us familiar with his monumental Oxford History, it is not that easy to pinpoint his achievements, because, as Susan McClary pointed out, much of the 6-volume work is a distillation of multiple authors of New Musicology. Thus Taruskins’s views on Schubert or the Cold War, as embodied in the Oxford history, are not really his views, but the views of others. It is perhaps time for us to move forward from him to those other authors.

3) For those of us who are familiar with Taruskin’s work on Stravinsky and Russian music, it is not that easy to pinpoint his influence among Chinese scholars of Russian music, because Chinese scholars have generally turned to primary and secondary materials in the Russian language directly, rather than receiving Russian music through Taruskin’s English language writings. This is a reminder that there is such a thing as “global musicology” (to use Daniel Chua phrase), which refers to an enlarged conception of musicology beyond that in Europe and North America.

4) For those of us familiar with Taruskin’s polemical diatribes against New Musicologists, it can be surprisingly difficult to discern the continued relevance of this debate. Arguably, after 30 years of construction and deconstruction, New Musicology might, in a way, actually be dead. The hallmark of New Musicology was its interdisciplinary hermeneutic interpretation of musical works through literature, art, philosophy, and various critical, postcolonial, feminist, and queer theories. By the 2020s, the musicological world of the West has shifted. Today, emancipatory music studies proceed not by hermeneutic interpretation of Western musical works, but by statistics and old-fashioned history. For example, Philip Ewell points out that almost 100% of the music examples in music theory textbooks are by white composers—where are the black, Chinese, Egyptian, Brazilian, Japanese, Indonesian and other composers? Tamara Levitz has studied the early history of the American Musicological Society in 1930s, revealing how its then leaders deliberately excluded world musics from their society. In posthumanist studies, writers like Rachel Mundy, Holly Watkins, and Robin James are interpreting music in terms of plants and robots. New Musicology is dead, and so is Taruskin’s annoyance with it.

5) Since New Musicology is dead, I think it’s a good time for those of us working in China and who identify as Chinese to think about what a Chinese, Sinophone, East Asian, or global musicology might look like. We live in a multi-polar world where there can be multiple viewpoints. Maybe what I’m really trying to say is that Western musicology is dead, in so far as it has diminished importance for Chinese thinkers with our own points of view.

In discussing Taruskin with students in my graduate seminar recently, I had assigned the topic of “New Musicology in China,” intending to refer to the application of US/UK new musicological methods by Chinese scholars such as Xu Lufan (postcolonial theory) and He Xian (feminist and queer theory). Students commented that it was rather difficult to find such research, as most related Chinese writings focus on explicating particular US New Musicologists’s writings, rather than bringing, say, Taruskin’s methods to bear in one’s own areas of musicological inquiry. What struck me in particular was one student’s impassioned query about why we are focusing on the application of Western scholars’s methods in China. Why can’t New Musicology in China be about home-grown methods? What exactly does “new” mean for China?

Those of us in academia know from our earliest pursuit of scholarship that it is innovation that determines whether we sink or swim in this profession. In a sense, what is new is simply that which different from and supersedes the established. According to Michael North (in Novelty: A History of the New), however, nothing is 100% new, for old components are necessarily incorporated in the new product—how can something arise out of nothing? A perception of the new, then, arises only in two ways: recombination of old, or recurrence of old. In scholarship, what is recombined or recurs is old ideas. Following this line of argument, there can’t be anything absolutely new in either new music or New Musicology.

The other thing about the new is that it is always relative. A new idea ceases to be so once it is mainstreamed. This has been the case with scholars who once proposed novel ideas in the 90s, but whose work have been mainstreamed to such a degree that they are no longer new. We wouldn’t think twice about deconstructing authenticity in early music, nationalism or gender norms because of Taruskin’s and McClary’s achievements. In its earlier days, what was new about New Musicology was its interdisciplinary borrowings from queer, feminist, postcolonial, and other theories. This conforms with North’s idea that the new arises from recombination, in this case, of musicology with other disciplines.

But what does innovation mean when we enlarge the discursive space to include the entire globe? My observation is that, again the rules of relativity and recombination apply. What is new in China, even now, is New Musicology, which is still new, relative to Chinese scholarship. Because of the language barrier, it was only in recent years that New Musicology has become more widely known in China, primarily through Taruskin’s distillation of multiple authors’s thinking in his Oxford History. New Musicology is still relatively (and thus by definition) new in China.

Another source of newness in Chinese musicology is some of the more original recombinations of Chinese scholars’s positionality, on the one hand, and Western methods, on the other. Ye Songrong has applied Chinese philosophy in the hermeneutics of Western music; e.g. he argues that the Chinese philosophy of moderation known as zhong yong zhi dao might shed new light on the pursuit of the new in musical modernism, and I would add, in musicology. In the field of global music history, Zhang Yuexin has explored Beethoven in China, Fang Xueyang has examined the circulation of Chinese instruments in 18th-century Europe, and Cheong Wai Ling, Hong Ding, and Kevin Tam have investigated 12-tone musical circuits between Berlin and Wuhan. Lin Binqing has referred to the presence of Chinese “native” researchers to decenter the primacy of insider/outsider as a central tenet of Western ethnomusicology; Chinese scholars could prioritize other issues such as sustainability.

In the light of North’s deconstruction of the “new,” I began to wonder what really is the point of scholarship, if it is not a race for novelty. One answer of course lies in the emancipatory impetus of feminist, queer, and decolonial theories. But I also tried to think about what musicology is like for folks who aren’t engaged in these specific fields. As a reference, I turned to the winners of the AMS Kinkeldey prize over the past decade and saw publications on Stravinsky, Wagner, and Mozart by familiar names, Tamara Levitz (who has engaged with decolonial theory in recent years), Scott Burnham, and Karol Berger. Their hermeneutic and historical re-interpretations of canonic composers embody the mainstreaming of New Musicology that, using North’s criterion of “relatively new,” is finally old (and perhaps even “dead”).

Chinese musicology is still processing Taruskin his tribute to New Musicology, the Oxford History, both relatively new in China. But after we have heeded Taruskin’s lessons, it may be that the best thing he can do for us is to light a blazing path for us like a phoenix, so that a new kind of Chinese New Musicology may be born in his place.

 

Works Cited

Berger, Karol. Beyond Reason: Wagner contra Nietzsche. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2016.

Blazekovic, Zdravko and Xueyang Fang. “Chinese Instruments and Performers in 18th-Century Europe.” Journal of the Central Conservatory of Music 2019, issue 4. 兹德拉夫科·布拉兹科维奇，方雪扬，18世纪欧洲的中国乐器及乐器演奏家，中央音乐学院学报，2019年第2期：11-27。

Burnham, Scott. Mozart’s Grace. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013.

Cheong, Wai-Ling, Ding Hong, and Yi-Ching Kevin Tam. "From Berlin to Wuhan: Twelve-Tone Composition and the Pedagogical Legacies of Kohoutek, Krenek, and Smith Brindle in China." Acta Musicologica 94.1 (2022): 48-67.

He, Xian. What is Fatal? The Femme Fatale and Consumerism in Lady Gaga’s Telephone.” Journal of the Central Conservatory of Music 2022, issue 3. 何弦， 何以致命？：Lady Gaga音乐录影带《电话》中的“致命女人”与“消费主义”，中央音乐学院学报，2022年第3期。

Levitz, Tamara. Modernist Mysteries: Persephone. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Lin, Bingqing. “Way Out of the Myth of Western Ethnomusicology Theory.” New Voices of the Music Office, Yuefu xinsheng 2011, no. 3: 104-108. 林冰清，走出西方民族音乐学理论的迷思，乐府新声 2011年第3期：104-108。

McClary, Susan. “The World According to Taruskin.” Music & Letters 87.3 (2006): 408-415 

Xu, Lufan. “Entangled Writings: Exoticism in Busoni’s Turandot,” Huang Zhong 2021, issue 4. 徐璐凡，缠绕的书写：析布索尼歌剧图兰朵的异国情调，黄钟，2021年第3期。

Ye, Songrong. "Western People's Music, Chinese Scholarship: Researching Western Music from a Chinese Perspective." Music Research 2013, no. 6: 39-51. 叶松荣，《西方人的音乐 中国人的学术 ——对以中国人的视野研究西方音乐观念与实践问题的理解》，音乐研究 2013年第6期：39-51。

Zhang, Yuexin. Beethoven in China: Research on a Case Study of Issues in the Reception of Western Classical Music. Beijing, China: Central Conservatory of Music Press, 2013. Landmark study of Beethoven reception in China. 张乐心，贝多芬在中国：西方古典音乐接受问题个案研究，北京：中央音乐学院，2013。

以“塔鲁斯金已死”致敬这伟大音乐学家。希望到时，有后人宣告“李勋康已死”

布列兹宣布勋伯格已死当时，完全符合现代主义的创新意识形态，也不一定有任何不尊重的感觉。现在是2022年，就在塔鲁斯金去世几个月后，本文的标题也仍然应该被当作是创新的号召，这毕竟是学术界的标志。这里提到的“死亡”不是塔鲁斯金的生理死亡，而是在宣布塔鲁斯金将被取代，但这不仅不含贬义，反而是对他在音乐学上的决定性影响的认可和最高评价。在武侠小说中，人们只会想要取代称霸武林的大侠，不是那些所谓的虾兵蟹将。 从这个意义上说，没有比宣布塔鲁斯金已死更高的赞扬。我只能希望有后人在时机到来时宣布“李勋康已死”。 

古代的中国哲学早已提出，生与死、阴与阳、和空与形色都是相对概念（这是不是建构与解构的前生，后来在20世纪法国哲学家笔下“投胎”？），所以在中国语境中用“已死”解构一下塔鲁斯金的成就可能是最适当的选择。以下列出塔鲁斯金已死的5个说法：

关照塔鲁斯金的总体研究，要确定他的成就有可能不是很直接达到答案的一件事。原因在于他曾经的新思想已经变得如此有影响力，以至于它们是主流音乐学思想的一部分，有一种理所当然的感觉。你不会再三考虑批评早期音乐中的“本真性”，因为很明显，本真性只是一种建构，历史无法在2022年恢复。因为我们已经牢记了塔鲁斯金的教诲，也许是时候离开他了。

关照塔鲁斯金不朽的《牛津西方音乐史》，要确定他的成就也并不容易，因为正如苏珊·麦克拉蕊（Susan McClary）指出，这6卷作品的内容是新音乐学多位作者的升华。在牛津史中塔鲁斯金对舒伯特或冷战的观点，其实不是他原创的观点，而是借鉴其他人的科研。也许我们是时候离开他去看向其他作者了。

关照塔鲁斯金关于斯特拉文斯基和俄罗斯音乐的出版物，要确定他在研究俄罗斯音乐的中国学者中的影响并不容易，因为中国学者通常直接参考俄语的一手和二手资料，而不是通过塔鲁斯金的英文文献接触俄罗斯音乐。这牵连到国际音乐学学会主席Daniel Chua的“全球音乐学”概念，它指的是超越欧洲和北美而包含全世界的音乐学家的大学术范围。

关照塔鲁斯金在牛津史中对其他新音乐学家的强烈批评（美国音乐学学会在他的讣闻中提到他武侠乞丐“pugilistic”的辩论方式），不容易辨别这场辩论在2022年的关键性。可以说，经过30年的建构和解构，新音乐学实际上可能“已死”。新音乐学的特点是它从后殖民和女权主义理论对音乐作品进行诠释。而当今西方的音乐学界已发生变化。有解放意识的音乐学研究不再是通过对西方音乐作品的诠释进行，而是通过统计学和老式的历史。例如，菲利普·尤厄尔（Philip Ewell）指出，音乐理论教科书中几乎100%的音乐例子都来自于白人作曲家的作品——黑人、中国、埃及、巴西、日本、印度尼西亚和其他作曲家在哪里？塔玛拉·莱维茨（Tamara Levitz）研究了20世纪30年代美国音乐学协会的早期历史，揭示了它当时的领导人是如何故意将世界音乐排除在他们的学会之外。在后人类主义的研究中，像雷切尔·芒迪（Rachel Mundy）、霍莉·沃特金斯（Holly Watkins）和罗宾·詹姆斯（Robin James）这些学者用“植物”和“机器人”来解读音乐。新音乐学已死，而塔鲁斯金的烦恼也随着已死。

既然新音乐学已死，对于在中国的学者来说，现在是思考中国、华语语系、东亚或全球音乐学的好时机。我们生活在一个多极的世界，可以有多种观点。甚至可以说，“西方音乐学已死”，意味着西方思想在一个多极世界的重要性必定有与之前相对降低的趋势 。无论是塔鲁斯金、新音乐学或西方音乐学，“已死”这说法意味着它们的主导地位，是最高的认可，但也标志了终止和超越。(《美国音乐学的终止/目的》The End of American Musicology是詹姆斯·柯里James Currie在2019年国际音乐学学会东亚分会会议的主旨演讲标题；“end”是多义词，在他演讲里有双重意思。也许对他而言，美国音乐学“已死”，甚至于“该死”？)

当然，从以上第一点（塔鲁斯金的主流化）就可以看出，其实塔拉斯金“未死”(这也是塔鲁斯金读书会的出发点），只是创新是科研的使命，而生死可能带来不同的思考，算是从事有价值的精神追求的一种概念建设吧！但是学术一味的创新也有可能僵化，成为一种“自律”的固定形式，就是为了创新而创新，和真理的追求脱节。“已死”-“未死”以双重概念考核可以互相克制，可称为中国哲学的“中庸之道”，指的是只有达到平衡才能稳定长久。“塔鲁斯金已死”的真正意义正在其中，即是往前迈一步，也同时把他最核心的贡献传承下去。

Epistemic Re-Colonization of Musicologies Elsewhere, Or, Orientalism

This is a follow up to my 2021 post on How Other People’s Conception of Difference Erases My Lived Experience. Since then, I’ve recalled or experienced further incidents that I now regard as the colonization of global musicologies and musicologists. As someone who has lived and worked in Asia for most of my life, I count myself among global musicologists. (It's not so much that I identify as a musicologist as that others see me as one.)

The re-colonization of global musicologies is something that occurs when North American/European scholars appropriate the anti-racist movement led by BIPOCs, and then adopt a purist position, from which they paint global scholars outside of colonial-imperial centers as regressive. It is with the most “advanced” theory on race and decoloniality emanating from North America and Europe, which regards themselves as the vanguard of knowledge, that global scholars, often in former colonies, are re-colonized. The way this re-colonization occurs is through both publications and microaggressions, often a combination of the two. 

Frequently, it is the case that the anti-racist and decolonial tenets in question (often new, but sometimes also old), are a much better fit for North American/European contexts than for material global practices with different histories and formations of racism, classicism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism. Yet when I point this out, I am treated as a country pumpkin from elsewhere. (As a counterpoint, let me simply say that excluding study group panels, I’ve convened 14 panels at AMS/SMT/SEM conferences since 2014). These newest ethical tenets become the means by which North American/European scholars impose their own understanding over global geographies and global scholars. Any deviation from the latest anti-racist/decolonial rules set in stone by North American/European scholars is taken to mean that global scholars are uneducated, drawing on methods as outdated as those from the 19C. There is little recognition that the methodological landscape of North America/Europe is a product of colonial history and designed to ameliorate asymmetries from the perspective of the colonial-imperial epicenter. For instance, anti-essentialism (in global music history) and identity have different significance globally than in North America/Europe because this is a matter of how global people are seen through North American/European lenses. What counts as, looks like, and is critical or feasible in “musicology” or “sociology of music” or “X of music” is not the same everywhere. For example, it is much easier to conduct research on queer musical modernism in the US than in China, where queer composers stay in the closet, and where queerness is often expressed in the form of its absence—in performances of straight-acting (see Wang's chapter in Lee 2018).

Often, when I raise the issue of racism and coloniality, I have been treated as being ignorant of research, some from the 80s, which is regarded as having satisfactorily addressed racism. From my perspective, this inability to discuss remnants of racism and coloniality in the music disciplines is a form of what Robin DiAngelo calls "white fragility." The problem is that music research—music journals and monographs—are regarded as anti-racist panaceas that have taken care of social problems in music-making and musical institutions. Racism is regarded as having been resolved for some time now, which implies a dismissal of recent discussions of anti-racism and decolonization. As for why global musicologists are treated as if they come from a land where knowledge is outdated and frozen in time, we have a familiar term for this—orientalism.

How can we counter epistemic recolonization and orientalism? I would be interested to know your thoughts.