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Shared Musical Lives makes the case for the epistemological and ethical significance of musical experience, discussing the concept of sonification in the context of disability in order to challenge and broaden existing conceptions of disability and music and provide new ways of thinking about the philosophies of music and disability.
List of contents
- Pandemic Preface
- Sonification: An Overture
- Chapter 1: A Brief Taxonomy of Musical Others
- Chapter 2: Musical Selves
- Chapter 3: The Epistemic Force of Musical Encounters
- Chapter 4: Wordlessness is not Worldlessness: A Lyrical Interlude
- Chapter 5: The Musical We
- Conclusion: Musical Worlds
- Index
About the author
Licia CarlsonÂis Professor of Philosophy at Providence College. She is the author ofÂThe Faces of Intellectual Disability: Philosophical Reflections, and has co-edited books on disability, and on phenomenology and the arts. She is widely published in the philosophy of disability, and her research interests include the philosophy of music, feminist philosophy, and bioethics. She has taught at Seattle University, Harvard University, and currently lives in the Boston area, where she is a violinist with the Longwood Symphony Orchestra.
Summary
Shared Musical Lives makes the case for the epistemological and ethical significance of musical experience. Music can be a source of self-knowledge and self-expression, and hence reveal important dimensions of the self to others. This knowledge—of both self and of others—has a moral force as well. Shared musical experience can transform and establish new modes of being with others, cultivate virtues, and expand the moral imagination. The term sonification (which means translating data into non-verbal audible tones) provides an organizing principle for the arguments in the book.
Transposing the concept into a philosophical key, this book explores two forms of sonification: first, the process by which musical experience reveals dimensions of the self and relationships with others; and second, philosophical sonification, or the critical examination of philosophical concepts, arguments, and theories in view of what musical experience reveals. These two kinds of sonification are discussed specifically in the context of disability. In this book, author Licia Carlson brings the musical lives of people with cognitive and intellectual disabilities into the foreground in order to challenge and broaden existing conceptions of disability and music and provide new ways of thinking about the philosophies of music and disability.
Additional text
Shared Musical Lives brings us a source of joy, comfort, and rejuvenation at a time when all of us need a clearer understanding of what it means to be human. Licia Carlson gives us a remarkably humane philosophical meditation on the cultural vibrancy of disability arts and its potential to infuse dignity and meaning into lives often misunderstood and underappreciated. Carlson's book calls us to witness and appreciate the political, ethical, and healing force of music for everyone.
