Maintaining a strictly human-centric orientation to music education can sever one’s identity as Earth. I have shown in previous publications the subtle ways that my own music education contributed to a sense of isolation and the formation of a belief system that reinforced the notion that humans are superior to the earth system. In this chapter, I argue how anthropocentric definitions of music are symptomatic of the Western industrial worldview responsible for much human suffering, environmental degradation, and destruction of Earth. I draw upon ecojustice education and ecofeminist literature to provide a critical framework from which to identify the harms inherent in the Western industrial worldview. I also draw upon ecopsychology literature to further that critique, and to advance a potentially healthier and more just orientation from which music educators and learners might imagine sustainable approaches that may foster a re-earthing of life. Such an orientation might allow for healing through a deeper, less dissociated, and more enlivened focus that includes listening and sounding in wild ways—with expressions made from more authentic connections with the self and/as Earth. New extensions and purposes for music education start with the care and wellbeing of one’s body—one’s earth body—as it is one’s most direct and immediate experience of Earth.

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Must We Define Music as an Anthropocentric Endeavor? Toward an Eco-Centric Identity

  • Tawnya D. Smith

摘要

Maintaining a strictly human-centric orientation to music education can sever one’s identity as Earth. I have shown in previous publications the subtle ways that my own music education contributed to a sense of isolation and the formation of a belief system that reinforced the notion that humans are superior to the earth system. In this chapter, I argue how anthropocentric definitions of music are symptomatic of the Western industrial worldview responsible for much human suffering, environmental degradation, and destruction of Earth. I draw upon ecojustice education and ecofeminist literature to provide a critical framework from which to identify the harms inherent in the Western industrial worldview. I also draw upon ecopsychology literature to further that critique, and to advance a potentially healthier and more just orientation from which music educators and learners might imagine sustainable approaches that may foster a re-earthing of life. Such an orientation might allow for healing through a deeper, less dissociated, and more enlivened focus that includes listening and sounding in wild ways—with expressions made from more authentic connections with the self and/as Earth. New extensions and purposes for music education start with the care and wellbeing of one’s body—one’s earth body—as it is one’s most direct and immediate experience of Earth.