Traditional autonomies: valuing traditional music in autonomous social movements across Europe (Ireland, Austria, Greece)

Abstract

This thesis is an exploration of the performance of traditional music within autonomous social movements across Europe. It examines the political value that traditional music has in these movements and, through it, the creation of a particular political temporality that has important ramifications in general for emancipatory politics within the contemporary political conjuncture. The thesis argues: that tradition is an important temporal category within autonomous political movements in Europe; that these two concepts of tradition and autonomy can positively inform each other; that a polytemporal ontology can provide a foundation for a re-conceptualisation of tradition; that the traditionally autonomous politics of many social movements outside of Europe can and should also find ground across this continent.

The thesis is based on a theoretical framing that draws from Cornelius Castoriadis’s political theory of autonomy and philosophical hermeneutics, leading to an understanding that emphasises the interpretive elements of autonomous creativity. Methodologically, the project pursues a form of post-critical auto-theory, where experiences within autonomous social movements are understood as generative of theoretical insight. The three main substantive chapters are presented in a form of a montage that makes explicit the varied constitution of the arguments advanced within the thesis. Each of these three main chapters focuses on a particular way that traditional music is understood as valuable within autonomous social movements. Chapter 5 understands traditional music within a framework of polytemporal internationalism through an examination of the three specific contexts with which this thesis is concerned—Ireland, Austria and Greece. In chapter 6, it is argued that the performance of traditional music within these social movements resonates with and can help to foster a collectively oriented form of autonomous politics. In chapter 7, this cultural practice is understood as both a resource for the development of ecological subjectivities and as itself an ecological social formation. Together these provide an analysis of core political functions of this cultural practice, which can provide orientation for ongoing political and musical experimentation, discussed in the concluding chapter.

Date of Award	Nov 2025
Original language	English
Sponsors	Department for the Economy
Supervisor	Jim Donaghey (Supervisor) & Robert Porter (Supervisor)