Music's Immanent Future: The Deleuzian Turn in Music Studies ed. by Sally Macarthur, Judy Lochhead, and Jennifer Shaw

Abstract

Reviewed by: Music's Immanent Future: The Deleuzian Turn in Music Studies ed. by Sally Macarthur, Judy Lochhead, and Jennifer Shaw Dimitris Exarchos Music's Immanent Future: The Deleuzian Turn in Music Studies. Edited by Sally Macarthur, Judy Lochhead, Jennifer Shaw. Abingdon, Oxon, Eng.: Routledge, 2016. [xx, 240 p. ISBN 9781472460219 (hard-cover), $160; ISBN 9781315597027 (ebook), $28.98.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index. [End Page 529] Music's Immanent Future is a kaleidoscopic collection that reflects on aspects of music studies today, drawing on concepts by Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Jean-Luc Nancy, Julia Kristeva, and Michel Foucault, among others. The collection, subtitled The Deleuzian Turn in Music Studies, includes seventeen chapters grouped into five parts that explore themes such as music studies in higher education ("The Academic Music Machine"), musical practices ("Deleuzian Encounters"), composition ("Materialities of Sounding"), listening ("Immanent Listening"), and ontology ("Deleuzian Ontologies"). In addition to an overall introduction to the book, there are introductory chapters to each part—"folding" chapters that serve to connect the different strands of the contributed chapters in each part. The Deleuzian concept of the fold indexes the possibility of space that is opened up each time, avoiding the single-view perspective that "leads to privileging the identity of the author." The book's main ambition is to move beyond a typical account of music, conceived to have "an essence, surface, and depth," and achieve a multiplicity of types of engagement, both by its authors and by its readers (p. 2). Such multiplicity (a central Deleuzian concept, whereby difference is privileged over identity, and relationship in is privileged over relationship to) is evident by the editors' choice of approaches. (It should be noted that the book originates in two symposia at the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University, in 2012 and 2013.) Not all chapters employ a Deleuzian approach, properly speaking. Two out of three contributing authors in part 1 make no explicit reference to Deleuze. This is also true of the entirety of part 3, in which composers discuss their approach to music making. Similarly, the two contributing authors of part 4, and the sole contributed chapter of part 5, make no substantial Deleuzian analysis either (except for brief references). This seems to suggest that a turn to a Deleuzian mode of thought has been underway in music studies, even when scholars do not engage with Deleuzian or Guattarian concepts. The implicit conclusion might be drawn then that there is something Deleuzian in the way authors employ concepts by Nancy, Kristeva, Foucault, or others. The editors, however, do not warn readers away from concluding that these authors should be categorized as "Deleuzian." I doubt that this was the intention of the editors or contributors, and to say the least, that conclusion would have very little connection to Deleuze's thinking. This decision to include such diverse approaches is counteracted by the introductory chapters to each part, thus providing a Deleuzian perspective (without which parts 3 and 5 would seem out of context). If a Deleuzian turn has been underway even with no explicit reference to Deleuze, then of what does this turn consist? The keyword immanent in the title suggests that all authors favor an approach to music that is not representational, which would entail subsuming things to the already-known. Rather, "Immanent listening … is a continual openness to the not-yet-known." The practice of listening is central to all activities—including composing, analyzing, and performing—as it enables thinking beyond traditional boundaries: "Immanent listening seeks to dissolve all boundaries, and the categorisations that divide the self from the other, and the self from sound object" (p. 9). All the above practices are explored in the book, including those of education and the formation of musical canons, as for example in the chapter by Susan McClary, whose pedagogical practice supersedes the dichotomies of [End Page 530] Western/non-Western, art/popular, and so forth. Nonetheless, the book is mainly preoccupied with Western art composition, with references in the chapters by McClary and Bruce Crossman to other kinds of music precisely as others. For instance, the book lacks discussion of improvised music (Western or not, jazz, traditional...