Public, Private, Popular: Music-Makers, Rights, and the Limits of Liberalism

Matt Stahl, The University of Western Ontario

Paper presented at the International Communication Association's 64th Annual Conference, Communication and the Good Life held in Seattle, Washington

Conference program available at https://convention2.allacademic.com/one/ica/ica14/index.php?cmd=Online+Program+View+Paper&selected_paper_id=713544&PHPSESSID=3jt0795sb5nkue8v5e7n27ba45

Abstract

This paper interrogates claims for recognition and for rights, made by and on behalf of occupational / professional popular music performers, regarding the disposition and attribution of intellectual property and the control of their labor. Briefly surveying rights discourse in popular music documentaries and biopics, it examines two notable claims by popular music makers on rights relating to intellectual property (before Congress, 2000) and workplace autonomy (before the California Legislature, 2001-2002), treating these discourses and legislative appeals as instances of liberal rhetoric and political practice, participant in liberal discourse and institutions. Approaching liberalism as the political-philosophical obverse of capitalism, the paper derives a framework from Wendy Brown’s (1995) discussion of Karl Marx’s essay “On the Jewish Question” to interrogate the ways in which discourses and practices of rights in popular music skew toward the naturalization of liberal institutions even as they appear to critique and contest institutions of capitalism.