CHE article on music and torture

The Chronicle has an article on music and torture, focusing on the work of Suzanne Cusick and mentioning something I had written in passing. It's worth a read, since it runs down the work of several scholars (J. Martin Daughtry, Jonathan Pieslak, Phil Bohlman, and others) who have been covering this area, which anyone reading this blog knows I care a good deal about. I mean we have a "music and torture" tag -- go look at it. I defy you to find a single line in which I give the slightest impression of being in any way disturbed by, put off by, disapproving of, etc., this field of scholarship, wanting to change the subject, wanting just to talk about "the music itself."

Oh, wait, the author of the CHE piece, Lara Pellegrinelli, has somehow managed to do this. 

The responses to Cusick's work and the resolutions suggest that musicology remains a discipline in crisis. In one of the few critiques made outside the e-mail lists, Phil Ford, an assistant professor of musicology at Indiana University, responded with logic reminiscent of the detractors of the new musicology from the 90s, who feared the discipline might lose focus on "music itself." On the Dial M for Musicology blog, Ford posted about a "kind of vulgar sociology that insists that cultural objects have a value or meaning only relative to their use in society.

So. In her desire to fashion a narrative of a "discipline in crisis", Pellegrinelli has taken a single line -- from a POST DEFENDING SUZANNE CUSICK -- and somehow tried to make it out that I am disapproving of this entire avenue of scholarly inquiry. No, I'm disapproving of reductive humbug of the sort mediocre ethnomusicologists, sociologists, and cultural studies types routinely churn out. I'm just as disapproving of the just-the-music-itself humbug that mediocre musicologists churn out, but that wasn't relevant to what I was writing in this post. (I have, however, talked about just-the-music-itself humbug here and here, for a start.)  Pellegrinelli, an ethnomusicologist herself, appears to have taken offense at that single line and decided it pretty much said all that needed to be said about my point of view. She then proceeded to ignore every other thing I have ever written on the subject. Needless to say, I never heard from her and was never asked to contribute to this story. (I would have done so gladly.) 

Do I need to point out that this is lazy, dishonest, incompetent reporting? That I am being held up as an example of a point of view that I not only do not hold but that is completely contrary to the one I do hold? And that the point of view ascribed to me is one I am intensely displeased to be associated with? 

If there's anything retro-90s about this, it's Pellegrinelli's desire to manufacture some bogus drama out of what has been a basically normal difference of scholarly opinion and use the whole thing as a platform for a self-serving and pharisaical moralism. "Discipline in crisis" indeed. What a lame tyro journalist cliche. I've written about the perennial temptation of those writing intellectual journalism to manufacture bogus "angles" for their stories, and here the temptation has not been resisted. No, musicology isn't a "discipline in crisis": it's a discipline where people have disagreements, sometimes marked ones. In other words, it's a normal discipline. The irony of this episode is that the Dial M post that Pellegrinelli has used so misleadingly was intended to stake out a position of anti-torture activism limited by a concern that the issue of torture -- so important and so important to get right -- would be used as a way for grandstanding opportunists to stigmatize differences of opinion and thereby to do an injury to freedom of conscience. 

Comments

[Lisa Hirsch]

Phil, I hope you'll send this as a letter to the CHE - which has a different music & torture article that I was coming over to ask about: http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i35/35b01001.htm

Oh, and, if you read Steve Smith's blog Night After Night, Laura Pellegrinelli is Dr. L.P.

[Lara Pellegrinelli]

Hi Phil-

Actually, we've met before. We had dinner with a group of people at EMP last year. I do take a look at this blog now and again and obviously don't agree with your assessment of the discipline in this post, which I do believe is in crisis - if we were doing well, other people might be reading us - though I'm also all for conversation and exchange.

In terms of contacting you for the story, I think that having a public forum like this one does and should count as being representative of you and your opinions, as my article will stand for me and mine, for better or for worse (I don't imagine that my having done this piece is going to help my career and in fact also poses some risk). That's not being lazy. It's public, it's quotable, as are the various email lists, though I suspect some will approve of that even less.

As for having taken you out of context, I thought very carefully about that sentence. Most of what you were saying in that post was related to agency - fine - but what I respectfully object to is again what I read here and can only take at face value: "No, I'm disapproving of reductive humbug of the sort mediocre ethnomusicologists, sociologists, and cultural studies types routinely churn out."

As for the "hype" of the article, like other journalists, I didn't get to chose the title or the teaser that went in the email or table of contents. I certainly did not choose to have the article printed in the same issue as the other piece that's been under discussion-- all I was told was that there was a companion piece and I now understand why I was kept in the dark about it. I had never written for the Chronicle before, and I will likely never write for them again. The editorial process was very poorly organized as was "fact checking," for which I'm also bound to pay the price.

The issue of torture is an important one, as I think you'd encouraged others to write about it. Despite any failures on my part or The Chronicle, I think it was worth it to put the piece out there. I'd invite anyone with objections to send a letter to the editor or to be in touch with me personally.

sincerely,
Lara Pellegrinelli

[Phil Ford]

Dear Lara,

I do remember you from that dinner -- with my usual bad memory for names I had forgotten that your name was Lara. My apologies.

As for the "discipline in crisis," I'll go along with you so far as saying that it's a serious problem that music scholarship is little-read and -considered. A crisis . . . well, I don't know. A pickle, maybe? Be that as it may, this doesn't seem to be the meaning of the passage I cited from your article.

You're quite right that anyone who publishes his/her remarks can expect to have them quoted. That's usually a good thing, of course. My objection was to the way my words were being used to articulate a position 180 degrees from what I actually believe. (If you had contacted me, I could have at least showed you a better representation of my views.) If it had been any other topic -- American Idol or Zen or Ken Nordine or anything else I like to write about -- I would have had a bit more of a sense of humor about it all. But this is torture we're talking about here. It is deeply insulting to have one's words framed in such a way that they appear to defend (however indirectly) the crime, the indecency, the utter shame of torture. I just don't have a sense of humor about this. I'm not the sort of person to go around demanding apologies, but I feel I am owed one here. I simply do not and have not, ever, articulated the views you have attributed to me, and I vehemently object to being associated with them.

(Incidentally, re. fact checking, well, journalism is like scholarship that way. There are editors in the process, but you still have to take responsibility for what you write and take your lumps when you get stuff wrong.)

You are upset that I wrote about the "reductive humbug of the sort mediocre ethnomusicologists, sociologists, and cultural studies types routinely churn out." To make an obvious point: anything that can be done well can be done badly. For every Bourdieu -- a great thinker I read and value -- there are countless mediocrities who ape the gestures of the method but cannot think subtle thoughts within it. Their work is reductive, and I don't like it. This was my point. This is not the same thing as asserting that sociological approaches to art don't work -- I've never suggested that. As I wrote above, I don't like reductive just-the-music-itself stuff, either. And here again we need to make a distinction between good and mediocre work within a scholarly genre.

All this is beside the point, though. You write that you object to what I've said about reductive applications of sociological method -- fine. But how does this end up saying anything at all about the cultural politics of torture? Let's say for a moment, for the sake of the argument, that I am exactly the person you made me out to be in your article. Let's say I never want to talk about anything but the notes on the page and I think Bourdieu is a kind of cheese. Would it not be just as possible for me to protest torture as, say, an ethnomusicologist who specializes in post-colonial theory? What does scholarly method have to do with political commitments?

I think there are some hidden assumptions here that scholars who believe X must also belong to political persuasion Y. Come to think of it, it's a lot like saying that people who like musical genre X (say, hiphop) must also have Y-shaped politics -- some sort of subaltern political identity for a hiphop kid, for instance. Maybe there's some sort of statistical correspondence between hiphop and subaltern political identities, but such general levels of correlation don't tell you anything specific about any one person's relationship to any one expressive text. (The relationship between "Only Built 4 Cuban Linx" and a fat white bearded middle-aged musicologist, for instance.) To proceed as if general kinds of social use (hiphop as a means of constructing subaltern youth identities) entirely determine the meanings of an expressive text would be to indulge in exactly the reductionism I was writing about -- that "vulgar sociology that insists that cultural objects have a value or meaning only relative to their use in society."

[KG]

I'm wondering why the CHE felt it necessary to publish two companion pieces on this issue that don't seem to be furthering productive debate. Do controversial opinions about relatively small disciplines, such as musicology and ethnomusicology, really bring in the ad / subscription revenue?

[Lara Pellegrinelli]

Are you sure you want me to respond? It might just be another lazy, dishonest, incompetent, bogus, self-aggrandizing move on my part. I had to reread what you wrote in order to form a response, and I'm starting to think I'm the one who should get an apology. You didn't have much to say about the piece aside from how it pertained to you. But it is your bully pulpit.

It is more than a "serious problem" that no one outside our discipline seems to read what is being written inside our discipline. That much of the better work being done on jazz - my area - and popular music is being done by scholars in other fields. That it takes a good decade or two for us to absorb what is happening in other fields. Notice all the stuff that's come out on embodiment in the last few years? Elaine Scarry's the Body in Pain came out in 1985. I daresay we're not part of the conversation. Is that what passes for normal?

Politics is part of this. I went back and reread Bohlman's Musicology as a Political Act for the first time since graduate school as I started to work on the article and, while some of it has dated, a lot of it rang true for me. I started to think about what it really meant to move music as an object of study to viewing music as a discourse-- which naturally implies more than acknowledging different ethnic groups in music survey courses or sprinkling in women composers. It's also more than accounting for cultural context, which is mostly what I see on your blog. It's an approach as much as it is subject matter. If people in the discipline still aren't getting that about the "new musicology" after all this time - and there are plenty of them - that viewing music as a discourse makes politics fundamental in a way that these other bandaids - nods to political correctness - do not, then it is a crisis, which is what Bohlman called it to begin with over 15 years ago.

I come from a school of thought where cultural objects only have value or meaning relative to society. I can't fathom ever writing a sentence like the one I quoted of yours in any context. Sure, there is individual agency which you emphasize, perhaps in keeping with your anarchist tendencies. But it's not all personal agency. I see your emphasis and your reasoning there as desirous of detaching the music from cultural constructions. Why, for example, do you keep railing so much against subaltern political identities? Reliance on this kind of language can be reductive, but it also exists for good reason. It's the combination of these things that led me to say your position was "reminiscent" of these earlier arguments.

I in no way implied that you were a defender of torture. What you did write was in fact a critique of the resolutions and Cusick's work. Is it not possible to critique Cusick and yet still object to torture? I also find it strange that you characterize your writing about Cusick as a "defense." Come on-- if you were a lawyer, she'd qualify for a mistrial as an "icky new musicologist." Seems to me you're simply defending her objection to torture, which you share, and her right to voice an opinion (though you seem to want to silence mine).

You can think what you want about my self-serving reasons for writing such an article. I can tell you it has been no picnic for many reasons, including ones that only take a little imagination if you read my byline. I'm not sure what you think my rewards would be, other than staying up to 1am answering abusive blog posts.

If I have a agenda it's this: I'm a journalist. I'm a scholar. I get tired of reading and hearing things in scholarly circles that are uninformed about the media, in particular, journalism, which impacts our ability as a discipline to engage with politics among other things in ways that I hope had some clear examples in the CHE piece. The media is not some faceless, monolithic entity, though I'm guessing that's what you assumed when you wrote what you did about me.

It's easy to criticize-- go out and write for something besides a scholarly journal or your blog, where your audience is more likely to share your opinions and there's little risk involved. It's a lot more productive and mature than name calling and navel gazing.

LP

[Phil Ford]

Look, I don't want to draw this out. It's a big world and we can agree to disagree, etc. I'm not going to apologize for anything I wrote and neither will you, so forget about it. Peace.

But one last thing -- a rather important thing. That line about the "icky new musicologist" was an ironic characterization of Jonathan's attitude towards Suzanne Cusick. I actually had to explain this to Suzanne in person, so you weren't the only one to get my meaning wrong, but still, it wasn't a dart aimed at her. Go back and read it again.

[Phil Ford]

Hey KG --

There aren't all that many stories about musicology at CHE, and such as there are don't give much of an idea of what it's really like in here. But as I've said before, intellectual journalism usually doesn't give a very satisfactory account of anything it touches. The only other CHE story I was ever involved with (a piece on postdocs) was badly flawed and embarrassing for all concerned, and the head of my own postdoc program was furious. This always happens.

I should take the opportunity to note that there is another piece on music and torture at CHE by Ilias Chrissochoidis, whom I know slightly from back when I was a postdoc at Stanford.

http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i35/35b01001.htm

Since I've been bringing the negative here for the last couple of days I won't say anything much about his piece, except that I just cannot accept the notion that the system of academic employment, even at its most abusive, could possibly be compared to torture. This has been the tactic of many a torture-apologist: they minimize the moral enormity of torture by taking various metaphorical kinds of torture ("my upstairs neighbor cranked Black Sabbath until 3 a.m.! It was torture!") and conflating them with real and unmetaphorical torture. (When I hear someone saying stuff like this on TV and making out like waterboarding is no big deal, I always think they should try it themselves, like Christopher Hitchens did. As I recall, he lasted about 25 seconds.)

I don't think Ilias was trying to diminish real torture in quite this way; I think the issue of torture is actually only a pretext for the real subject of the piece, which is his own feelings of resentment at an academic discipline he feels has marginalized him. Not that I'm not sympathetic (sucks not to have a steady job), but this article he wrote isn't going to help.

In general, being pissed off all the time at how unfair academic life is doesn't help. Not at all. Those of you who are on the outside looking in -- working as an adjunct or finishing a Ph.D. (or both), wishing and hoping for a TT job -- might not appreciate how much this kind of bitterness is a perennial temptation for academics. It never gets any better! You have stupid and unfair student evaluations; stupid, unfair peer review comments; stupid, unfair P&T requirements; stupid, unfair commenters at academic meetings concern-trolling you and going on about how "troubled" and "concerned" they are that you didn't mention their pet theory. There is no stage of academic life that is not unfair. Might as well make your peace with it now, or you won't last.

[Lara Pellegrinelli]

I knew it was supposed to be ironic, but I thought the tone was disrespectful. Peace, out.

[KG]

As a relatively new musicologist and ethnomusicologist, it seems to me that both pieces were meant as a critique of the AMS. What is more, they seemed to come from nowhere and just reopened all of the wounds that are still healing from recent posts on musicology job wiki lately. (See Phil Gentry's entry on it - http://www.pmgentry.net/blog/2009/04/polite-musicologist.html - to get another perspective. Thankfully those conversations were moved to another place by some anonymous souls.) Frankly, we are such a small group of scholars, I am not sure what role the CHE sees itself having in all of this, apart from stirring up controversy.

I am really concerned that comments from your blog were taken out of context. It makes me never want to write a blog entry again.

[Phil Ford]

Hey KG --

I really get what you're saying. And thanks for bringing up Phil's post, which was timely and on-point.I totally agree that the CHE has done nothing to contribute to the problems that Phil wrote about. When I read it I went over to the jobs wiki, and that just made me sad . . . all that bitterness sloshing around. That post of Phil's gave me a lot to think about -- whether blogging just makes the negativity worse, whether we should bother to write publicly when everything seems to turn into another opportunity for a flame war. Actually, thinking about it, it kind of made me want to start blogging again (I'm not counting this whole spat, I'm talking about the stuff on performance I've been writing and plan to keep on writing). If we want the tone to be a little higher, no-one's going to do that for us. That said, blogging is often a pain and anyone who doesn't want to do it is totally justified in not doing it. But I still think there is something to be said for it.

[Justin Williams]

Sorry, this is a bit tangential to the debate, but one thing struck me about the Chrissochoidis article (and it is relevant to the state of our discipline):

"To prove its upscale intellectuality and academic prestige, the AMS imposes a fixed 25-percent acceptance rate for submissions to its annual meeting and limits each issue of its triannual publication, the Journal of the American Musicological Society, to only three articles — around 150 conference papers and nine articles a year for a 3,600-member society."

Now JAMS does seem unique in this way: I've never seen journals in other fields that usually publish only three long articles per issue (but I could easily be wrong).

But my real question is if the 25% thing is _that_ odd? I'm not experienced enough to know, but I would assume that the main BIG U.S. national conference in every field (psychology, MLA, American Studies, engineering, math) would have a relatively low acceptance rate? Perhaps I'm wrong here?
It just seems 'normal' to me that the AMS would have a low acceptance rate (whether or not you agree with what gets accepted is another thing), and that there would be higher rates (i.e. more opportunity) at AMS regional and other conferences in the discipline.

Phil, definitely keep up with the great blogging!

[jonathan]

AMS is made up of individual humans.

National AMS programming panels are made up of humans.

The JAMS editorial board is made up of individual humans.

In eighteen or so years of submissions, I've given five papers, whicfh means (since you can't give papers in consecutive years) eight rejections. In several cases, I published the studies anyway.

Search committees are made up of individual humans, and the variables and wild cards in hiring processes are simply innumerable.

Are not all the disagreements signs of a *flourishing* discipline? For what it's worth, I would include my loathing of of Cusick's work, whether or not it's fair to say that my view of her can be reduced to considering her "an icky New Musicologist." This is real debate, with people spitting flames on either side. The only people who would see this kind of intellectual engagement/aggro as the sign of a "discipline in crisis" are 1) hard-left types, 2) hard-right types, or 3) people who for some reason live off drama and strife, and have a personal need to see the discipline that way. Maybe they're just tryin' ta sell papers, maybe they're looking to find the Real Reason for their lack of success on the job market.

And with that, he opted to stop.

[PTG]

RE KG's comment, I think the operative phrase is "out of nowhere." In fact, the first connection I drew when I saw the CHE pieces was to Dr. Bellman's Zimmerman piece--Why now? It's not like the Chronicle is a quarterly. Did some hapless CHE editor drift into the Dial M archives some night and think, hmm--"this one has battle royale written all over it!"?

To extend the trivialization of painful chapters of American imperialism a bit further (which is what the whole debate--and the Zimmerman tragedy, to some extent--amounts to), it's as if Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution happened a year after the (non?)event that caused it. I never understand, in music academia, how a blindside attack will come, even decades later, on one or two misconstrued sentences in a *PNM* or *JAMS* article. This was a simlilar action, writ-small. I hope Dr. Bellman will reprint his AMS list-serv letter here: his point, that the CHE's "state-of-the-discipline" reductions read like a long-lost letter from 1995, is well-taken.

Markos Moulitsas, the Daily Kos guy, spells out a few keys to successful protests (the third's not relevant here) http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/4/16/720821/-Why-yesterdays-protests-were-stupid :

be novel and/or unexpected
have a sympathetic, singular, and media-friendly message
-provide great visuals-
tap into a hot-button and timely issue

The CHE pieces were not novel; their general themes were in fact shopworn and played out. Sympathetic? Often whiny. Singular? The arguments sprayed around like Rambo in the gun shop at the end of First Blood. A hot-button and timely issue? After a consensus has grown AGAINST torture in the legislative and executive branches? The only possible timeliness is to the argument over prosecuting Bush admin. figures--and I'm sure Eric Holder will hang tight until he can have the memberships of the AMS and SMT just put it to a vote.

Ick, that became long. I was going to post it at my own blog, but it's totally off-theme and tone.

[PMG]

For what it's worth, Phil, when I read Lara's CHE piece I just assumed that she had confused you and Jonathan! Which I think would be easier to do than to think that somehow you were anti-new musicology.

[Peter Alexander]

I doubt that L.P is reading any more, but in case you are: As a journalist as well as a musicologist, I have to say that you are missing the point -- maybe deliberately, maybe not. The point is: You characterized Phil's position as representing "logic reminiscent of the detractors of the new musicology from the 90s, who feared the discipline might lose focus on 'music itself.'" You gave that characterization first, BEFORE you quoted anything Phil had written. That characterization seriously skews anything that comes after. Besides that, I don't find that the single passage you quoted -- as obnoxious as that sentence may be to you personally -- supports your characterization. And you only give the one sentence from a lengthy and nuanced post. So yes, I believe that you owe Phil an apology for your characterization of his position. If you are going to describe other people's positions, you had better get it right -- as a journalist or a scholar. You did not. You should admit it and you should apologize. That comes before any other discussion. Period.

[MichaelD]

Disagreements have heretofore been aired between Phil Ford and Lara Pellegrinelli; therefore, by the power vested in me by Ol' Debbil' Musicology, I hereby declare this blog in crisis.

But seriously folks, just because disagreements arise within our profession, does that really mean that we are in a crisis? In a culture (largely) without torture, after all, disagreements are bound to arise. At least within the field of musicology, we don't burn our opponents at the stake, we politely disagree with them. If it makes you feel better to call this state of affairs a "crisis", fine. As for me, I prefer to view our musicological culture of tolerant, sometimes humorous disagreement as progress. heck, it sure beats torture!

* In order to prevent this existential crisis from flaring up at future AMS meetings, may I kindly suggest that Phil and Lara maintain at least a 6 foot distance from each other at all times. [Incidentally, this will also mitigate against contraction of swine flu.]