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Forsterignores or disparages such encounters as if they were impediments to exclusive identification with the musical subject as all-conquering virile youth. One result may be to put a queer spin on the figure of the conquering hero consistent, if not identical, with Beethoven's own idealization of it. " Like its sexual counterpart in Forster, Ice-T's racial position tethers him to a masculinity that is continually policed, both literally and figuratively. The result in "Cop Killer" is a hailof bullets, the expressive vehicle of a hypermasculine subject who has virtually become an automaton, the youthful conqueror as killing machine.

Previous page page_32 next page > < previous page page_33 next page > Page 33 Two From the Other to the Abject: Music As Cultural Trope Assume for the moment that my first chapter has told the right story. The loose ensemble of contemporary efforts to understand reason, language, and subjectivity in relation to concrete human activities rather than to universal principles has sparked a classical paradigm shift in musicology. 1 Formalism and positivism, although far from dead, are no longer hegemonic; music, particularly classical music, is increasingly interpreted, not only as an object that invites aesthetic reception, but also as an activity that vitally shapes the personal, social, and cultural identities of its listeners.

5 When music historiography constructs these, or parallel, oppositions, it produces an other within a field of musical practice in order to clear a space within that same field for the self. The same thing can be said to happen when musical compositions unfold through the opposition of stable to unstable or recurrent to nonrecurrent features. " 6 But matters do not end here. The logic of alterity operates not only internally, within a musical terrain, but also externally, upon music as a whole.