ABSTRACT
At the heart of ethnomusicological work as writing sits a doubleness of being-in-relation as selves and others which is intersubjective, intercorporeal, and in-between. The colonial past and present of ethnomusicology draws attention to the political nature of such being-in-relation and calls us to consider the response-abilities we hold toward a different kind of ethico-onto-epistemological writing practice otherwise than coloniality. In this chapter, I draw upon and extend the work of French feminist philosopher, thinker, and creative writer Hélène Cixous to consider the possibilities that feminist and decolonial ethics or rather feminist and decolonial “response-abilities” might hold for opposing norms and breaking loose from the authority, dominance, and violence of coloniality in the language, texts, and discursive praxis of ethnomusicology. I attempt to un/re/entangle the response-abilities I held being-in-relation to coloniality as a white-settler-colonial woman, teaching about Indigenous Australian music, writing ethnographically about Indigenous Australian music alongside thinking about my positioning in-relation to Indigenous Australian peoples as mother and wife in an Aboriginal family. Such being-in-relation was becoming increasingly unsettled as the words I wrote about the worlds of others in ethnomusicological writing seemed to be nothing more than a metaphor for a social justice and change that was more about “just-us” than justice for others. To write ethnomusiology in a-way which is attentive to the feminist and decolonial ethics of alterity that Cixous speaks of, I suggest, is to consider how such a “dangerous” approach to writing of the double might challenge and fracture the authority and aesthetics of coloniality in ethnomusicological writing.
