Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
6-2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Program
English
Advisor
Tanya Agathocleous
Committee Members
Wayne Koestenbaum
Vivian Liska
Nancy K. Miller
Subject Categories
Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | German Literature | Jewish Studies | Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America | Literature in English, British Isles | Music | Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies
Keywords
Global Anglophone literature, British Empire, German Jewish studies, media studies, nationalism
Abstract
The Sound of Complicity explores how novelists turn to music to critique ethnocentric nationalisms in times of catastrophe and their aftermath. It investigates the inter-imperial legacy of musical nationalism in German romantic thought and its recognition and transformation in postcolonial Anglophone fiction. This comparative research in global Anglophone and German-language novels indicates that concepts like the global north and global south should not be viewed as binary opposites, particularly in view of the wide range of ethno-nationalisms. This project considers music in relation to religious and sectarian, fascist and xenophobic, cultural, and settler colonial forms of nationalism. In novels from Australia, Austria, India, Ireland, and South Africa, ironic representations of music possess surprising affinities in different contexts of exclusionary belonging. The sequence of chapters foregrounds anticolonial writing by Rabindranath Tagore that critiques nationalism and anticipates aspects of fascism. It then highlights the nexus of music, colonialism, and fascism in work by James Joyce. The concluding chapters on Elfriede Jelinek and J. M. Coetzee examine the unresolved aftermath of fascism and colonialism in contemporary fiction. Figures of music in these chapters include national anthems, song cycles, classical music techniques, and adaptations of novels for opera. Through close reading, musicology, and archival study, the dissertation emphasizes the musicality of language as a tactic to implicate readers in compromising narrative perspectives. It explores the moral ambiguity of music for its emotionally compelling qualities and its deployments in exclusionary political movements. It finds that there is a deep intimacy between the history of western aesthetic thought and imperial ideology around feelings of pure interiority in musical experience. Yet the authors in this study attempt to recover the desire for belonging from the politics of domination through music and humor. This dissertation intervenes into the aestheticizing of politics and the politicizing of aesthetics at the intersection of postcolonial studies, western music philosophy, and German Jewish thought. The Sound of Complicity sheds light on the ethical commitments of novels that deal with the moral ambiguity of everyday life under ethno-nationalist regimes. It provides a new theoretical and historical perspective on music in literature. It illuminates previously unstudied archival materials and untranslated writings, and it expands interdisciplinary and comparative approaches to global Anglophone literature.
Recommended Citation
Chinitz, Michele, "The Sound of Complicity: Fascism, Colonialism, and Music in Novels" (2024). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/5894
Graduate Center users:
To read this work, log in to your GC ILL account and place a thesis request.
Non-GC Users:
See the GC’s lending policies to learn more.
Included in
Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, German Literature Commons, Jewish Studies Commons, Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Music Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons