Taylor Swift and Process Philosophy:
A Submission to the Taylor Swift Swiftposium
An international academic symposium attempting to explain just how Taylor Swift has become so influential occurred in Melbourne, Australia, on February 11-13, 2024. Called Swiftposium, it was a hybrid academic conference for scholars to engage in critical dialogue about Swift’s popularity and its implications for a range of issues including gender, fandom, popular culture, literature, the economy, the music industry, and more. Swiftposium was collaboratively organized by scholars from six universities across Australia and New Zealand. Click here to learn about it.
I had hoped there would be a session on process philosophy and Taylor Swift, but I missed the deadline for submitting proposals. I share my contribution below. In Part One, I present twenty key ideas in process thought. Skip it if you already know about process philosophy. In Part Two, written by ChatGPT, I share specific songs by Swift that speak to these themes. My proposal is that, through these songs, Swift can invite an outlook on life that resonates with the process movement. In Part Three, I offer an outline of a book, not yet written, on Swift's career as understood in a process perspective. My hope is that another scholar, younger and more able, might write this book,
- Jay McDaniel