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Ch. 10 - Rethinking The Transgressive: A Call For “Pessimistic Activism” In Music Education, Panagiotis A. Kanellopoulos

The Road Goes Ever On: Estelle Jorgensen's Legacy in Music Education

This essay asks the question: How are we to think of what Estelle Jorgensen has called “the transgressive” in music education today? My entry point to the question is the suggestion that the struggle against modes of music education that eulogize the status quo, against oppression and authoritarianism, against practices that exclude and intimidate students, has to take the form of “a struggle on two fronts” (Badiou). A struggle against imposed canonicities and obsolete approaches to music teaching but also a struggle against the emerging neoliberal appropriations of education, learning, and creativity. The chapter sketches a struggle-on-two-fronts perspective with regard …