Kathryn R Jourdan

This chapter takes as its starting point notions of music making as ethical encounter (Bowman, 2001) and as the exercise of hospitality (Higgins, 2007) in order to explore what ethical practice in music education might look like, through the philosophical writings of Emmanuel Levinas. It puts into question discourses of performativity, which may be understood as constraining and narrowing what we think of as “musical knowing” in the classroom. Thinking tools drawn from Levinas’s first major work, Totality and Infinity (1969), include notions of “practices of facing” and of “putting a world in common.” This conceptual lens enables an investigation of what it might mean for assessment in music education if we embraced Levinas’s radical openness—the breaking in of “infinity” into “totalizing” practices—bringing to light processes of music making, not simply the musical product, as well as the uniqueness of each pupil’s music making in relationship to others and to the Other, and capturing rich learning in the music classroom.

Jourdan’s “The Role of Music-Making in Peacebuilding: A Levinasian Perspective” begins by contrasting two case studies from earlier chapters, one which celebrates the transformative role of songs in peacebuilding in Northern Uganda and the other which highlights the problematic “importation of music-making in the Western classical tradition into the West Bank Palestinian territories.” Jourdan argues that music-making, especially conceived as “ethical encounter,” has the potential to contribute to peacebuilding. Drawing on the work of the French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas she explores both the limitations and the extraordinary potential of music ‘to put a world in common’, to ‘look into the face of the Other’ and build non-violent relationships that can change societies.

What happens when pupils encounter unfamiliar musical expressions in the music classroom? What responsibility do we have towards those whose music we ‘use’? Underlying these concerns is the need for an ethical underpinning for music education. Drawing on a year-long ethnographically informed case study of music-making in the lives of a class of 13 and 14 year olds, this article begins to explore an ethical orientation towards music education, conceptualised as a means of encounter with the Other. Strands of just one pupil's everyday experiences and perspectives are examined in the light of the work of French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas for whom ‘the Other’ suggests an absolute difference, a stranger whom we encounter face-to-face and who calls from us a profound ethical response. Themes emerging from this exploration have implications for music educators as existing models of what it means to come to know in the music classroom are broken open. The curriculum is one way in which the relation to the Other can be realised, but is a site in which this obligation and responsibility to the Other is ‘commonly, casually, systematically denied’ (Standish, P. 2008. Levinas and the language of the curriculum. In Levinas and education: At the intersection of faith and reason, ed. Denise Egéa-Kuehne, 61. New York: Routledge).

What happens when pupils encounter unfamiliar musical expressions in the music classroom? What responsibility do we have towards those whose music we ‘use’? Underlying these concerns is the need for an ethical underpinning for music education. Drawing on a year-long ethnographically informed case study of music-making in the lives of a class of 13 and 14 year olds, this article begins to explore an ethical orientation towards music education, conceptualised as a means of encounter with the Other. Strands of just one pupil's everyday experiences and perspectives are examined in the light of the work of French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas for whom ‘the Other’ suggests an absolute difference, a stranger whom we encounter face-to-face and who calls from us a profound ethical response. Themes emerging from this exploration have implications for music educators as existing models of what it means to come to know in the music classroom are broken open. The curriculum is one way in which the relation to the Other can be realised, but is a site in which this obligation and responsibility to the Other is ‘commonly, casually, systematically denied’ (Standish, P. 2008. Levinas and the language of the curriculum. In Levinas and education: At the intersection of faith and reason, ed. Denise Egéa-Kuehne, 61. New York: Routledge).

What happens when pupils encounter unfamiliar musical expressions in the music classroom? What responsibility do we have towards those whose music we ‘use’? Underlying these concerns is the need for an ethical underpinning for music education. Drawing on a year-long ethnographically informed case study of music-making in the lives of a class of 13 and 14 year olds, this article begins to explore an ethical orientation towards music education, conceptualised as a means of encounter with the Other. Strands of just one pupil's everyday experiences and perspectives are examined in the light of the work of French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas for whom ‘the Other’ suggests an absolute difference, a stranger whom we encounter face-to-face and who calls from us a profound ethical response. Themes emerging from this exploration have implications for music educators as existing models of what it means to come to know in the music classroom are broken open. The curriculum is one way in which the relation to the Other can be realised, but is a site in which this obligation and responsibility to the Other is ‘commonly, casually, systematically denied’ (Standish, P. 2008. Levinas and the language of the curriculum. In Levinas and education: At the intersection of faith and reason, ed. Denise Egéa-Kuehne, 61. New York: Routledge).