Performing De-stigmatization: Contesting Antisemitism and Polarized Narratives in the Public Sphere through Sonic and Musical Activism

• In Event: Antisemitism and Destigmatizing Counteractions in the Public Sphere: Affect, Power, and Performativity Post-October 7th 2023

Abstract

Continuing the conversation from the previous panelist’s contribution, this paper investigates the author’s – and other artist-researchers’ - involvement in sonic (re)animation initiatives of Jewish repertoires and their revivals as musical and musical-liturgical practices and performances that articulate intricate states of Jewish religious and spiritual values, and boundaries of intra-Jewish identity and belonging. Such musical articulations as they are enacted, as well as their subsequent analysis, arguably have enormous potential for de-stigmatization in light of prevalent antisemitic and Judeo-phobic rhetoric in the public sphere and on social media in the wake of the events of October 7th 2023. Such performances - while they are conceptualized for a number of different reasons - can counter politically expedient narratives and propaganda in the public sphere - including on many social media platforms. In recent times, anti-Jewish rhetoric often performatively appropriates the symbolic language and currency of decoloniality, even as it erases minority history, diversity, identities, and lived realities of individuals and communities that do not fit comfortably within liberation narratives.
This paper frames this discussion through an exploration of the recent sounding and (re)animation of Jewish prayer traditions by women scholar-practitioners in a context in which they were historically articulated by only masculine-identifying subjects. These initiatives act both as a positive embodied statement of Jewish communal identity and Jewish diversity but also prompts a counter-stigmatization process that responds to top-down political narratives through a queering process of sonic reclamation, reanimation, and gendered transformation. This paper examines ethnographic instances of musical performativity, including the author’s own autoethnographic engagements drawing on their experiences as an observant Jewish person of color embodying Middle Eastern Jewish, Islamic, and Shamanistic (pre-Islamic) practices and roots, and also as an active musician and Jewish prayer leader.

Author

• Miranda Crowdus, Concordia University