Postcolonial Affect: Ambiguous relationality in Casteels's L'(autre) fille aux cheveux de Bali by Gavin Lee

This article examines postcolonial affect as expressed in the Belgian-born Singaporean citizen Robert Casteels’s L’(autre) fille aux cheveux de Bali (2002), in which it is shown that sonic identities (gamelan and Chinese instruments; quotations from Debussy and Bartók) give way to the ambiguous, modulating relationality of dis/affiliation, dis/affinity and a/ proximity. Micro-changes in musical affect lead to the loosening of enculturated or acculturated emotional and perceptual responses associated with established identities. Musical affect thus serves as a corrective to neatly differentiated identities that are constructed in narratives of imperial exoticism, postcolonial autonomy or multicultural harmony. The article was first published by the Journal of the Royal Music Association in 2015 (Volume 140, No. 2, page 417 -443) and published online by Cambridge University Press on 1-1-2020.