UCLA

This paper responds to Zachary Wallmark's "Sacred Abjection in Zen Shakuhachi," a nuanced application of Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection to the music of the Fuke sect of Zen Buddhism. The paper notes the persistence of the emic/etic binary in ethnomusicological theory, and repurposes Kristeva as a means of deconstructing this binary. Noting Wallmark's dialogical approach to ethnography, the paper argues that ethnomusicology can benefit by thinking of musical tradition-bearers as interlocutors rather than objects of study.