(En) Corps Sonore: Jean-Luc Nancy’s “Sonotropism”

Hickmott, Sarah

Abstract

This article offers a critical, feminist, and interdisciplinary account of the question of listening in Jean-Luc Nancy's 2002 text, À l'écoute. Nancy's text is at once an auditory counterpart to his larger philosophical project; an articulation of the specifically sonorous subject; and a more expressly musicological contribution to his other work on the literary and visual arts. While Nancy's — among others' — attempts at steering philosophy away from or beyond a visual bias proliferate, considerably less commentary has been devoted to the way in which inherited ideas about aesthetic ‘objects’ — in this case music— already inhabit certain conceptions of the senses. By paying close attention to the characterization and inclusion of music in the corps sonore, and by tracing the genealogies of Nancy's thought on music (and sound), this article will finally offer a rereading of Nancy's oto-iconographical reading of Titian's Venus and Cupid with an Organist; one that highlights the ethical and political dimensions of Nancy's position. I shall argue that problematic and preconceived notions about the supposed nature of music abound in Nancy's philosophy of listening, revealing a metaphysical (sono)tropism that is all too familiar.

Citation

Hickmott, S. (2015). (En) Corps Sonore: Jean-Luc Nancy’s “Sonotropism”. French Studies, 69(4), 479-493. https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/knv152

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Sep 18, 2015
• Publication Date: 2015-10
• Deposit Date: Mar 15, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 7, 2021
• Journal: French Studies
• Print ISSN: 0016-1128
• Electronic ISSN: 1468-2931
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 69
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 479-493
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/knv152
• Publisher URL: https:/doi.org/10.1093/fs/knv152