Rancière's Equal Music
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3858397 |
|---|---|
| Authors | J Moreno (0000-0002-4602-2630, North-West State Technical University, corresponding author), Gavin Steingo |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 5-6 |
| Pages | 487-505 |
| Publication date | 2012-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Contemporary Music Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0749-4467 • E-ISSN: 1477-2256 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/07494467.2012.759415 |
| OpenAlex | W1970865203 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 12 |
This article addresses the position of music (and art more generally) in the thought of Jacques Rancière. For Rancière, all societies and communities are partitioned first and foremost on the level of sense perception. Both music and politics are therefore aesthetic in the Kantian sense, as the organization of forms that determine what is able to appear to the senses. As such, music has no special powers—it is neither transcendental nor ineffable—and can only offer emancipatory projects what it shares with them, that is, certain ‘re-distributions’ or ‘parceling outs’ of the sensible (i.e. the visible and invisible, the audible and inaudible). Political music, then, is radically equal to any other action. Furthermore, any challenge to a given society's sensible distribution is based on the axiom of equality. Music, finally, becomes equal to politics when it renounces its alleged singularity and asserts the fundamental equality of human intelligence and intelligibility. Keywords: : Jacques RancièreDissensusEqualityIntelligibilityAestheticsPolitics Acknowledgments The authors wish to thank Alexander Ness for allowing us use of his work on Pythagoras. Notes Gabriel Rockhill notes two other definitions of politics in Rancière: ‘the act of political subjectivization that breaks with the police order [any form of established order]’ and ‘the meeting ground between police procedures and the process of equality’ (Rockhill, Citation2009, nn. 5, 308). The reference, here, is to Attali (see Lewis, Citation2008, p. 510). Co-author Jairo Moreno addresses this issue in his forthcoming work on Latin American musical modernisms and their imbrication within US Empire. Rancière refers to the capacity of identity politics for transformation ([1995] Citation1999, p. 36), although earlier he disqualified notions of relatively stable identity as political means (1992). For Oliver Davis, Rancière's critiques are ‘troublingly consistent with the consensus of mainstream French republican universalism, notoriously sensitive as this is to what it labels pejoratively as le communautarisme’ (Davis, Citation2010, p. 88) (see also Deranty, Citation2003; Chambers & O'Rourke, Citation2009; May, Citation2009). Bourdieu's analysis of music's muteness vis-à-vis habitus makes sense only because he frames his interpretation within the principles of poetic music. One recognizes trademark Kantianisms here: the coming into being of a transcendental subject which however cannot think itself; the genius ‘unaware of the law it produces’ (Davis, Citation2010, p. 23)
Admiration · Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Literature · Musical · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Visual arts · Critical Theory and Political Philosophy · Diverse Music Education Insights · Law · Music History and Culture · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,55 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2024 (10) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |