著者

井上 貴子

出版者

社団法人 東洋音楽学会

雑誌

東洋音楽研究 (ISSN:00393851)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.1997, no.62, pp.21-38,L2, 1997

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The purpose of this paper is to explore how one can apply the recent advances in gender theory to musicology, concentrating on concerns about feminist criticism and the historicizing of gender. I will use the post-structuralistic concept of gender, because I believe that this is a rigorous approach to theorizing gender and most effectively avoids <i>ghettoization</i>. This approach also transcends historical periods, areas and genre boundaries.<br>Gender theory has been the most important concept for feminists, rallying many people to join the debate. Feminists have asserted that the subjective identity of men/women is a social and cultural construction. The wide acceptance of this conceptualization, however, has led to social and cultural determinism: producing descriptive accounts of gender roles as a static dichotomic order ruled by the inherent logic of a certain society or period, supporting the idea of cultural relativism. In the case of musicology, feminist musicologists who attempted to reestablish women as the subject, have discovered women composers and musicians who have been ignored or concealed by leading musicologists. It is at this moment important that women studies are not relegated to a marginal and supplemental sphere which would serve to reify the existing belief of unequal gender relations based on biological differences.<br>To surmount such a static dichotomy, the strategic theory must be made based on the issues raised by feminism. In the larger field of art, linguistic and visual representations such as literatures, paintings, films, performances and so on, which can give concrete images of women, have drawn attention, but music has received much less. This might be due to the existence of strong belief in the autonomy of music because of the lack of concreteness in sound. Recent studies, however, have made it clear that music, which has been the last stronghold of <i>autonomous art</i>, is greatly influenced by ideologies and the larger societies. Without dispelling such a belief and recognizing the politics of art &mdash;any type of power related to the construction and practice of meanings in a society&mdash;, gender theory can not be effectively applied to musicology.<br>In an important development, feminist criticism has been applied to music. The most specific feature of musicology might be the ability of analyzing musical sound itself as well as notations, visualized texts of music. Feminist music criticism tries to explicate how meanings of musical sound are constructed: the process of articulating musical discourses through gendered discourses. Susan McCraly, the most well-known musicologist in this field, starts by rejecting the idea of <i>autonomous art</i> and then tries to bring to light the idea that music and its processes operate within the larger political arena. She analyzes not only worded music such as <i>opera</i> but also <i>absolute music</i>.<br>We should recognize gender issues raised by feminists are related to men as well as women: men as the transcendental or universal subject in a patriarchal society now become the mere male subject. Gender music criticism including feminist music criticism, has already started to be developed.<br>History of women apparently seems to acquire a certain status, considering the numerous books and articles that have been recently published. Have the leading historians indeed neglected it as having nothing to do with economic and political history? Such a phenomenon is called <i>ghettoization</i>. As a strategy for surmounting this, the theory submitted by Joan W. Scott has inspired many scholars. She regards the historicizing of gender as the explicating the ways of producing the meanings of gender in different contexts; the exposing the concealed power relation through paying attention to the politics of constructing meanings.<br>When her theory is applied to writing history of music,