Beyond Lacoue-Labarthe’s Alma Mater: Mus(e)ic, Myth and Modernity, paper given at Modernité du mythe, à partir de Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Trinity College, Dublin

Hickmott, Sarah

Abstract

Addressing the role of music in Lacoue-Labarthe’s thinking, this article identifies a tension between his commitment to a nostalgic narrative that insists on the maternal/uterine origins of music’s emotional essence and his critique of the way that music, in its distinctly modern construction, is figured in relation to a nostalgic attempt to recoup the emotive power attributed to the mythological ancient model it assumes as its (illusory/absent) origin. Though this article highlights a problematic repetition of the mythologizing of music’s maternal origins, by drawing on Lacoue-Labarthe’s own critical understanding of musical modernity it also poses the possibility of moving beyond characterizing music and the maternal-feminine as timeless givens that precede our categories of analysis.

Citation

Hickmott, S. (2017, May). Beyond Lacoue-Labarthe’s Alma Mater: Mus(e)ic, Myth and Modernity, paper given at Modernité du mythe, à partir de Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Trinity College, Dublin. Presented at Modernité du mythe, à partir de Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Trinity College, Dublin

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: Modernité du mythe, à partir de Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
• Publication Date: 2017-05
• Deposit Date: Mar 15, 2019
• Series ISSN: 0014-0767,1931-0234
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1143156