On theory, citational practices and personal accountability in the study of music and affect

This essay attends to select affective politics of theoretical practices in the study of music and affect. Concentrating on EuroAmerican theoretical frames, I address how assumptions generating key theories in affect studies complicate ethnographic analyses of musics emanating from various historical, social and cultural locations. I attend to challenges that object-oriented approaches provide ethnomusicologists in particular, arguing that a focus on practice affords opportunities to avoid the reifications of ‘music’ and ‘affect’ as potentially agentive. In considering strategies of presentation and publication, I call citational practices into question, elucidating inequities in distinct processes of legitimation. This essay stands as an invitation for increased transparency and personal accountability in theorising, with special attention to affective entanglements and attachments.