Utopia, ideology, crisis, and challenges

Maria Alice Volpe – [email protected]
  Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

UTOPIA: May the institutionalization of knowledge shelter theoretical and ethical positions from the widest range of perspectives from above and below the Equatorial axis.

IDEOLOGY: What is the meaning of keeping knowledge institutionalized within territories such as the “international community of scholars”, the “Brazilianists”, the “Americanists”, the “Latin-Americanists”, and the “native scholars”?

CHALLENGE (statement): The continuing need to reconceptualize structures of knowledge.

CRISIS: Is banana my business? The planet ghettofied… Exoticist stereotypes associated with music and music research are still plenty in international context, and have frequently led to the assumption that any inclusion would only take place as much as the “center” may have some interest in the cultural specificities of “peripheries”. Would the global system of knowledge be doomed to remain ghettofied in case studies and geographically-bounded communities of scholars?

CHALLENGE (question): How music research can respond to the recognition of the “multi-canonical” musical reality (Robert Morgan, 1992), the “poly-paradigm equilibrium” (Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira, 1998), and the advent of “multiple reason” (Ernildo Stein, 2001) in rethinking conceptual frameworks along with the continuing process of institutionalization of knowledge?