The Dialectics of Music : Adorno, Benjamin, and Deleuze

"Combining the philosophy and musicology of T.W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Gilles Deleuze, Joseph Weiss makes an original contribution to the field of aesthetics and critical theory. Highlighting previously hidden connections between these philosophers' work brings into focus a new perspective on the dynamic relationship between music, nature, history, and technology. Musical expression in this study is presented as one of the core ways in which human beings are able to escape their more base natures and instincts. The complex ways in which song is taken up across time and place is viewed through the prism of different technologies and histories. This historical process, which Weiss refers to as the 'instrumentalization of the voice', following Deleuze, is illuminated though a wide-ranging analysis encompassing lullaby, jazz, classical music, and the electroacoustic avant-garde. Deepening the aesthetic analysis of music in relation to the conceptual problems of continental philosophy, Weiss reveals enlightening theoretical consequences. By engaging with an eclectic range of 20th century theorists, including Primo Levi, James Baldwin, Édouard Glissant, Fred Moten, and Angela Davis, Weiss makes the argument that advanced music remains a refuge for political hopes that are as yet blocked from realization. Speaking to contemporary debates on post-humanism, memory, and the threat of neo-fascist social relations, the author outlines a bold new aesthetics of music"-- Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents Prologue Introduction: Natural-History after the Brahmsian Mode Chapter 1: Excursus I: From the Lullaby to Electroacoustic Music Gould, the Benjaminian Trauergesang Industrial Production and The Ninth Symphony From Bird Song to Insect Noise Reconciling Winds Dynamic Contrast Blurring the Human/Animal Distinction The Spell of First and Second Nature The Instrument Is the Animation Tone Color Informal Music Regressive Consciousness and the Destruction of Memory Humanism Résumé Semblance, Praxis, and the Non-pulsed End of Dialectics The Nonidentity of Nature and History The Desecration of Silence Critique of Pseudo-Praxis The Mute Song of Justice Chapter 2: Excursus II: The Sorrow Song of Nature Wreckage Universalized Totality Plugging the Sorrow Song into the Trauergesang Anticipatory Echo Stomping Out the Dialectic Blind Myth Silent Torture Was die Mode streng geteilt Dreambird Forced Quantity Scatting across Cultures State of Nature Fateful Improvisation Weathering the Storm Bury Me Deep Transpositional Metaphysics Advanced Decay Fugitive Life Technical Ecology Decontextualization Moon Satellite Neutralization Co-enactment Stuffy Troubadour Planned Spontaneity Cruel Pragmatism Deferred Improvisation Variations from the Bottom Chapter 3: Excursus III: Music after Auschwitz Conatus Ontologization Infinite Schuld Der Ursprung des Übermenschen The Categorical Imperative of Music Little Hans’s Lullaby The Most Advanced Aeon and Chronos Involuntary Reproduction Indifferenzpunkt Autumn Death Decasia: Part 1 Decasia: Part 2 Decasia: Part 3 Decasia: Part 4 Decasia: Part 5 Decasia: Part 6 Bibliography Index "Combining the philosophy and musicology of T.W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Gilles Deleuze, Joseph Weiss makes an original contribution to the field of aesthetics and critical theory. Highlighting previously hidden connections between these philosophers' work brings into focus a new perspective on the dynamic relationship between music, nature, history, and technology. Musical expression in this study is presented as one of the core ways in which human beings are able to escape their more base natures and instincts. The complex ways in which song is taken up across time and place is viewed through the prism of different technologies and histories. This historical process, which Weiss refers to as the 'instrumentalization of the voice', following Deleuze, is illuminated though a wide-ranging analysis encompassing lullaby, jazz, classical music, and the electroacoustic avant-garde. Deepening the aesthetic analysis of music in relation to the conceptual problems of continental philosophy, Weiss reveals enlightening theoretical consequences. By engaging with an eclectic range of 20th century theorists, including Primo Levi, James Baldwin, Édouard Glissant, Fred Moten, and Angela Davis, Weiss makes the argument that advanced music remains a refuge for political hopes that are as yet blocked from realization. Speaking to contemporary debates on post-humanism, memory, and the threat of neo-fascist social relations, the author outlines a bold new aesthetics of music"-- Provided by publisher Combining the philosophy and musicology of T.W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Gilles Deleuze, alongside an exploration of the dialectical character of music production, Joseph Weiss exposes the unresolved contradictions of contemporary music. By following the outermost mediations between nature, history, and technology, the book reflects on how advanced music critically responds to the ongoing catastrophe of both the Middle Passage and Auschwitz. Following what the author calls the “categorical imperative” of music, Weiss investigates the significance of a wide range of musical phenomena including the territorialization of the lullaby, the improvisation and sorrow song of the blues and jazz, as well as the cosmological limits of the electroacoustic avant-garde. In the era of commodity production, racialized violence and dispossession, the author defends critical music as a singular index of political possibilities.