On Listening, by Jean-Luc Nancy, "March in Spirit in our Ranks" and "How Music Listens to Itself"

Nancy now explores the role of music (and dance and architecture) in its role in aiding the rise of Nazi Germany. "Without in any way wanting...to retrace an obscure genealogy of Nazism, I cannot prevent myself from noticing, when it is a question of music and of National Socialism, that something had already been preparing itself for a long time--something that did not as such prefigure the Third Reich, but that offered it a choice space" (51). He says that music, dance and architecture can be arts of "expansion"--the propagation of a "subjectivity" (51).

Subjectivity, in order for it to take root, must be communicated and music "harbors a force of communication and participation" that all forms of power--religious, secular, aesthetic--have recognized (52). Nancy points out the example of the Reformation and how it contained "marked musical translation," as well. So, this historical period belonged not only to religion, but to music, as well...and by implication, to politics and philosophy (54).

"How Music Listens to Itself"

"If someone listens to music without knowing anything about it...without being capable of interpreting it, is it possible that he is actually listening to it, rather than being reduced to hearing it?" (63). Musical listening must have both dispositions.

"To listen...is to touch the work in each part--or else to be touched by it, which comes to the same thing" (65). Music is thus close to visual sensory arts here, except that musical composition keeps the listener anticipating its development and waiting for its result (66).

"Music is the art of the hope for resonance: a sense that does not make sense except because of its resounding in itself. It calls to itself and recalls itself, reminding itself and by itself, each time, of the birth of music, that it to say, the opening of a world in resonance..." (67).