On Listening, by Jean-Luc Nancy, Interlude
In Derridean fashion, Nancy's continuation of "On Listening," its Interlude, concerning music, is a play on the french word 'mot,' and its relation to other sounds. This game, this play, is the sense, the meaning of the word. In a sense, the word has brought him to this meaning as he has listened. Likewise with music, the listening strains to end in sense.
"Sense, if there is any, when there is any, is never a neutral, colorless, or aphonic sense: even when written, it has a voice" (34). Nancy says that this is the meaning of to write: making a sound beyond signs; a "vocalizing" of a sense that would otherwise be silent except for a self. Nancy quotes Francis Ponge, "I never come to write the slightest phrase without my writing being accompanied by a mental speaking and listening, and even, rather, without it being preceded by those things" (35). [As I read Nancy for the second time, reviewing my notes, I form the words over and over again in my head, sometimes finding my tongue moves in rhythm with these silent words in my head. For the few (any?) actually reading this, perhaps Nancy's work has caused you to do the same. Interestingly, a novel--ones that are easily read, at least--do not force us to do this. We can skip words--paragraphs, even--and still read the novel. But without this vocalization, I do not think we can say that we have listened to it.] This speaking is "the echo of the text" and is what "opens it to its own sense" and a plurality of, literally for different listeners, senses (35). And this sound--Nancy shifts back into music at this point--is more than its listener. Nancy says it listens to itself, thereby finds itself, thereby deviating from itself, and is able to resound further away, becoming another subject, which is "neither the same as nor other than the individual subject who writes the text" (35). [I am hearing traces of Ricoeur here, especially as the text is able to gain an autonomy from the author, embarking on its own course, but Nancy has also tied the text to its author.]
Speaking is a "question of two things together": rhythm and timbre (36), the movement and color of sound, outside pitch and volume. Nancy says these form the constitution of sound offered to listening. This constitution is paralleled by the womb where we can only hear, never see, and begin to listen.
[I think Nancy is here saying that the color of sound--its timbre--which is invisible, is the actual communication. It is the communication because sound opens up its own space for possible relationship and while the child is in the womb, unformed by language, timbre is what is shared between it and what it hears. There is only noise to the child, but its timbre reflects communication of the other--an other not its mother.]
"Sense, if there is any, when there is any, is never a neutral, colorless, or aphonic sense: even when written, it has a voice" (34). Nancy says that this is the meaning of to write: making a sound beyond signs; a "vocalizing" of a sense that would otherwise be silent except for a self. Nancy quotes Francis Ponge, "I never come to write the slightest phrase without my writing being accompanied by a mental speaking and listening, and even, rather, without it being preceded by those things" (35). [As I read Nancy for the second time, reviewing my notes, I form the words over and over again in my head, sometimes finding my tongue moves in rhythm with these silent words in my head. For the few (any?) actually reading this, perhaps Nancy's work has caused you to do the same. Interestingly, a novel--ones that are easily read, at least--do not force us to do this. We can skip words--paragraphs, even--and still read the novel. But without this vocalization, I do not think we can say that we have listened to it.] This speaking is "the echo of the text" and is what "opens it to its own sense" and a plurality of, literally for different listeners, senses (35). And this sound--Nancy shifts back into music at this point--is more than its listener. Nancy says it listens to itself, thereby finds itself, thereby deviating from itself, and is able to resound further away, becoming another subject, which is "neither the same as nor other than the individual subject who writes the text" (35). [I am hearing traces of Ricoeur here, especially as the text is able to gain an autonomy from the author, embarking on its own course, but Nancy has also tied the text to its author.]
Speaking is a "question of two things together": rhythm and timbre (36), the movement and color of sound, outside pitch and volume. Nancy says these form the constitution of sound offered to listening. This constitution is paralleled by the womb where we can only hear, never see, and begin to listen.
[I think Nancy is here saying that the color of sound--its timbre--which is invisible, is the actual communication. It is the communication because sound opens up its own space for possible relationship and while the child is in the womb, unformed by language, timbre is what is shared between it and what it hears. There is only noise to the child, but its timbre reflects communication of the other--an other not its mother.]
Labels: listening, Nancy, PhD, phenomenology
posted by Aaron Perry at
2:34 PM
2 Comments:
AP--
I'm reading your posts!
Interesting stuff here in these last two entries. Perhaps you already know this, but I thought it worth mentioning that monks throughout the centuries always read aloud, especially Scripture.
In fact, writing as we experience it today in printed books is quite different than the monks who read from hand manuscripts and this difference is important. Ivan Illich has a wonderful little book, In the Vineyard of the Text, which discusses some of this via Hugh of St. Victor.
Blessings,
Tim
Good stuff AP! Glad to see you dealing with Nancy - he's becomes one of those interesting people in my life - someone I'm not researching for anything, but that I really enjoy reading.
On the listening stuff, I really think that it is incredibly Derridean. I wonder at times if this actually a phenomenology of Derridean (as opposed o much American) deconstruction. For Derrida, deconstruction is about letting the other came to the fore in the text, allowing what was present but made absent become present again. It's allowing this other to appear. As such, it requires very close reading and a hospitable stance from the reader to the text. I think that Nancy, through his phenomenology of listening, describes how it is that as a deconstruction one allows this other to come to the fore and appear.
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