Musical Democracy

Nancy S. Love

Description

Musical metaphors abound in political theory and music often accompanies political movements, yet music is seldom regarded as political communication. In this groundbreaking book, Nancy S. Love explores how music functions as metaphor and model for democracy in the work of political theorists and activist musicians. She examines deliberative democratic theorists—Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls—who employ musical metaphors to express the sense of justice that animates their discourse ideals. These metaphors also invoke embodied voices that enter their public discourse only in translation, as rational arguments for legal rights. Love posits that the music of activists from the feminist and civil rights movements—Holly Near and Bernice Johnson Reagon—engages deeper, more fluid energies of civil society by modeling a democratic conversation toward which deliberative democrats' metaphors merely suggest. To omit movement music from politics is, Love argues, to refuse the challenges it poses to modern, rational, secular, Western democracy. In conclusion, Musical Democracy proposes that a more radical—and more musical—democracy would embrace the spirit of humanity which moves a politics dedicated to the pursuit of justice.
Acknowledgments

1. Music and Democracy

2. Habermas’s Voices: Rationalizing Resonance

3. Rawlsian Harmonies: Orchestrating Consensus

4.Women’s Music: “Singing For Our Lives”

5. Freedom Songs: Moving the Spirit

6. Toward a More Musical Democracy

Notes
References
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie politique

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791481240
• Langue: English

Extrait

Musical Democracy

N A N C Y S . L O V E

Musical Democracy

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Musical Democracy

Nancy S. Love

State University of New York Press

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2006 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address State University of New York Press, 194 Washington Avenue, Suite 305, Albany, NY 12210–2384

Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Michael Campochiaro

Library of Congress CataloguinginPublication Data

Love, Nancy Sue, 1954– Musical democracy / Nancy S. Love p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN13: 9780791468692 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN10: 0791468690 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Music—Political aspects. 2. Music—Social aspects.

ML3916.L68 2006 780'.0321—dc22

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

I. Title.

2005033340

. . . Most people don’t seem to realize that there are still thousands on thousands of folks that go more by singing than they do by reading. (Woody Guthrie, quoted in Denisoff, Sing a Song of Social Significance1983, 102)

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Acknowledgments

Contents

Chapter One: Music and Democracy

Chapter Two: Habermas’s Voices: Rationalizing Resonance

Chapter Three: Rawlsian Harmonies: Orchestrating Consensus

Chapter Four: Women’s Music: “Singing For Our Lives”

Chapter Five: Freedom Songs: Moving the Spirit

Chapter Six: Toward a More Musical Democracy

Notes

References

Index

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Acknowledgments

A number of colleagues have provided comments on ear lier versions of my arguments here. I am especially grateful to Mary Caputi, Fred Dallmayr, Thomas Dumm, Kathy Fergu son, Dennis Fischman, Mary Hawkesworth, Mark Mattern, John Nelson, Shane Phelan, Morton Schoolman, Stephen Sch neck, Tracy Strong, and Stephen White. A spring 2000 sabbat ical leave from Pennsylvania State University allowed me to begin serious work on this project. I also want to thank the fol lowing Penn State graduate students who provided research assistance for the manuscript: Sushmita Chatterjee, Margaret Farrar, Chad Lavin, Challen Nicklen, and Jamie Warner. My thanks as well to Penn State undergraduates Alaine Day and Anthony Inverso, who located many of my source materials. I could not have asked for a better editor than Michael Rinella at the State University of New York Press. I espe cially want to thank him for seeing the value of a novel ap proach to political theorizing and selecting two anonymous reviewers whose comments have made this a better book. I also want to thank Diane Ganeles for supervising the produc tion process and Pat HadleyMiller for copyediting the man uscript. My thanks as well to Sue Poremba for proofreading the manuscript and Carol Inskip for preparing the index. I would like to thank the original publishers for permis sion to reprint material from several earlier publications. Portions of chapter two were previously published in “Dis embodying Democracy: Gendered Discourse in Habermas’s Legalistic Turn” inConfronting Mass Democracy and Indus

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