We Don’t Need Another He(te)ro

Abstract

This chapter explores in greater detail the motivations for and processes of the construction of masculinity within ethnomusicology. Understanding the centuries-long feminization of music in Western culture, anthropology and its methodology—fieldwork—are revealed as utilized in the creation of a specifically academic masculinity. However, while fieldwork is instrumental in the creation of one facet of masculinity (i.e., representation of a self marked by bravado, courage, intrepidness; the ‘anthropologist as hero’), it is argued that for the largely white, privileged male academic, recourse to such stereotypes alone is insufficient. As such, it is intellect and rationality, manifesting via the use and production of Theory (itself coded as masculine) that allow for the maintaining of power over the musical, the racialized Other, and the positivistic, feminized musicologist.