Abstract
Speaking out of place in a profession where it is characterized as “extreme” and “a special interest,” feminism in music education serves as a catalyst for interrogating the profession’s philosophies, practices, and discourses. It has proven to be necessary and influential to the extent that it cannot be ignored, responding to problems like gender segregation and stereotyping of music education positions, music instruments and musical roles, exclusionary performance practices and the music canon, all as implicated by sexuality and race. Responding to the exigencies of these and related issues and self-imposed imperatives to posit alternatives, feminism has been deployed as critique with goals that may be simultaneously too small and too large. This paper explores ways feminism in music education speaks from and in terms of nomadic out of place-ness as it initiates theory related to issues in music and education engaged with material life. I argue that Monique Wittig’s concept of “The Trojan Horse” and Luce Irigaray’s “ethics of sexual difference” in the context of Gilles Deleuze’s materialist ontology provide examples of feminist war machines that may be deployed in music education to enable difference, the importance and relevance of which are found in problems currently facing the profession.
Recommended Citation
Gould, Elizabeth
(2008)
"Difference Out of Place: Feminist War Machines in Music Education,"
Visions of Research in Music Education: Vol. 11, Article 3.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/vrme/vol11/iss1/3