Activist Music Teaching: A Way Forward or a New Autocracy?

Abstract

The push toward socially just music education begs the question of whether activist music teaching may foster a new autocracy. In this paper, I consider how Deleuzian lines of flight and the related concepts of nomadism, territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterri-torialization trouble or extend activist music education. I further explore the question of how students might dissent and draw a “line of flight” from the activist authority of the teacher. I draw on Deleuze and Guattari’s (2005/1987) nomadism and “lines of flight” to consider the limits placed on the lines of flight drawn by students when a leftist ideology operates in the classroom.