Framing the Musical Subject, Technoculture and Curriculum: A Heideggerian critique

This paper addresses the framing of the musical subject applying Martin Heidegger's philosophy as articulated in his essay \"The Question Concerning Technology\". I discuss Heidegger's notion of poiesis and, within this, his argument for the saving power of art (music as art) in the confrontation of technology's essential unfolding. Global empires and techno-culture define and frame the musical subject in politically interested ways. Where technological enframing procedures impinge on institutional sites such as schools, discourses of official music educational 'knowledge' are conditioned and remain uninterrogated in terms of their impact upon the musical subject. Music education ordered under a technological regime, as it is in the New Zealand Music Curriculum, requires, of necessity, a critical philosophical questioning of the politics of musical knowledge and of sites of poiesis as they occur within a particular ideological context. Ontological questions concerning technology's role in the ordering and construction of musicality as a site of identity- 'being musical' and the protection of musicality become critical issues. Finally, musical culture and the global musical subject in the postmodern condition are contextualised within a global cybereconomy with all its inequalities in power relations.