Modernities: A Planetary Perspective

02.10.2024 16:30 – 18:00

A central challenge in ethnomusicology today is how to connect an older (though progressive) commitment to the critique of 'modernities' with the current energies surrounding the 'environmental humanities'. One involves a commitment to the local and the strategic, to the project of 'provincializing' (we might say, following, Dipesh Chakrabarty). The other involves thinking across huge temporalities, geographies and spaces, to understand the relationship of culture to 'deep time' (we might say, following Richard Irvine). One a centering, the other a decentering in the environment, of 'the human being'. But the tension may be more apparent than real - or, at least, turn out to be productive to explore. This lecture will consider lines of thought connecting 'modernities' with 'deep time' in a region, the 'Middle East' (long a contested colonial category), that provides significant inroads into this question with regard to music.

Lieu

Musée d'ethnographie de Genève (MEG), Boulevard Carl-Vogt 67, 1205 Genève

entrée libre