Querying Dialogues: A Performative Editorial on Queering Music Therapy

Candice Bain,Maevon Gumble

doi:10.15845/voices.v19i3.2904

Abstract

Queer theory is a post-structuralist critical theory that destabilizes sexuality and gender categories and challenges the concept of normal, fixed, and binary identities. This approach to understanding identities has evolved into a verb, “queering,” to encapsulate an action or method of challenging a range of systems of oppression. Literature on the application of queer theory to the field of music therapy is developing, particularly the expansion of queer theory to identities beyond sexuality and gender in the clinical space. For example, how does queer theory apply to music therapy with clients of multiple, intersecting marginalized identities, such as those who are disabled, ethnic minorities, etc. How do we move beyond fixed categories, attend to intersectionality, and resist the pathologization of those we work with? Ultimately, queer theory offers opportunities to push us in new directions for how we understand therapists, therapy participants, the therapeutic relationship, and radically inclusive practice.

Highlights

During my undergraduate music therapy program in 2012, I took an introductory queer theory course, a post-structuralist critical theory that destabilizes sexuality and gender categories and challenges the concept of normal, fixed, and binary identities
I was impacted by The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge (1978) by Michel Foucault, Epistemology of the Closet (1990) by Eve Sedgwick, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993) by Judith Butler, Arlene Stein and Ken Plummer’s (1994) paper, “I can’t even think straight: ‘Queer’ theory and the missing sexual revolution in sociology,” Roderick Ferguson’s Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (2004), and Audre Lorde’s (1979) “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
What I was learning about queer theory initially seemed to be at odds with what I was learning in my music therapy classes and reading in our literature

Summary

Introduction

During my undergraduate music therapy program in 2012, I took an introductory queer theory course, a post-structuralist critical theory that destabilizes sexuality and gender categories and challenges the concept of normal, fixed, and binary identities. It is 2019, and after much more reading, engagement, and dialogue, the conversation about queer theory in music therapy has: expanded beyond sexual orientation and gender to other cultural identities, started to attend more to intersectionality, and started to challenge the very foundations, boundaries, and biases of music therapy.

Results

Conclusion