"Mahler and Migrants on the "Final Frontier

A Contrapuntal Reading in Small-Screen Musical Geopolitics

Bibliographic Data

ID3948940
AuthorsDavid K Seitz (0000-0002-0098-9037, Harvey Mudd College, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume30
Issue1
Pages268-299
Publication date2025-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeopolitics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14650045.2024.2308120
OpenAlexW4391746011
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited82

Hollywood science fiction’s predilection for Western classical music has been critiqued for presenting such music as the unrivalled apex of human cultural achievement. Building on such critiques, this article seeks to unsettle the apparent homogeneity and solidity of the canon from within. It turns to Palestinian American literary theorist Edward W. Said’s famous notion of contrapuntal reading, a method for tracking counterhegemonic appropriations of canonical works inspired by Said’s lifelong passion for classical music. The article makes a case study of the reception of ‘Counterpoint’, an episode of the television programme Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001) that frames a narrative about persecuted refugees with Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony. While ‘Counterpoint’ can be read as a self-aggrandising exercise in heroic Western humanitarian self-making, sustained consideration of Mahler’s deep identification with displacement and dispossession and his racialised reception history invites an alternative reading of the soundtrack, modelling a contrapuntal reading in musical geopolitics

Art · Frontier · Geopolitics · Literature · Musical · Political science · Politics · Diverse Musicological Studies · Law · Music History and Culture · Musicology and Musical Analysis

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