The Woman Composer, New Music and Neoliberalism

Abstract

This article focuses on the discrimination against women composers in the concert programming of Australian new music. The paper argues that the emphasis given to the individual, coupled with such technologies of neoliberalism as gender mainstreaming, exacerbates the problem. The New Music Network (NMN), comprising several government-funded new music performance groups, is discussed. The NMN is shown to perform more music by men in a situation that is worse in 2013 than it was in the 1990s. The article suggests that the neoliberal instruments of gender mainstreaming and the ‘exceptional woman composer’ syndrome neutralize music and strengthen the hegemony of music by male composers. Focusing on the example of the Restrung New Music Festival in Brisbane, 2012, the article questions whether positive discrimination is an effective way to improve the representation of women's music in the concert venue, concluding that it does not have long-term benefits. From this analysis, the article suggests that neoliberalism is hostile to visible forms of prejudice and discrimination. The article signals that the way forward is to work with the imagination rather than attempting to find concrete solutions. Activating imaginative thought processes is enabled by the concepts of ‘nomad’ and ‘becoming-woman’, and ‘intra-action’ and ‘gender-and-music-in-the-making’. These processes have the potential to subvert the practices rooted in neoliberal ideologies. This is argued to be a move towards an account of feminist subjectivity that is politically empowering.