Original scientific paper
Applying Critical Tools to Critical Theory - With Some Remarks on the Implications for Musicology
Johann Visagie
; University of the Free State, Department of Philosophy, Bloemfontein, South Africa
Abstract
This article applies three tools of critical analysis to critical theory (in both the wider and narrower sense of the term) and its use in musicology. The tools in question are taken from a set of philosophical theories that the author has been working on for a number of years. These theories can be linked together to form the subtheories of a comprehensive, unified approach called DA (Discourse Archaeology) theory. The subtheories or analytical tools that will be used here, are those that comprise an ideology theory, a rationality theory, and a theory of conceptual key-formulas. Using these tools, certain deficiencies in critical theory - and its application to music - are exposed; note is taken of the special case of Derrida and deconstruction; and in the end the theme of music itself as a form of ideology critique, is also addressed. The possibilities of music as critique is framed in the context of the future possibilities of theory and its tools. A future disclosure (theoretical) and experience (practical) of reality as being much more relative than even post-modernism or deconstruction allows, is the final perspective that is briefly developed. Six of the subsections of this article are provided with endsummaries, each formulating a "deconstructive" goal (in terms of the DA approach) for self-critically engaged critical theorists to pursue.
Keywords
critical theory; ideology theory; rationality/rationalism/anti-rationalism; deconstruction; spirituality
Hrčak ID:
62343
URI
Publication date:
14.1.2005.
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