Lyotard Cage

Jean-François Lyotard's Adaptation of John Cage's AestheticsAuthor(s): Nikolaus BachtReviewed work(s):Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Summer, 2003), pp. 226-249Published by: Perspectives of New MusicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25164530 .Accessed: 21/03/2012 12:07

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Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard's Adaptation of John Cage's

Aesthetics

*-?

Nikolaus Bacht

Let us say Yes to our presence together in Chaos. ? John Cage

AT

the international symposium on Post-Modern Performance, held November 17-20, 1976 at the Center for Twentieth Century

Studies of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Raymond Federman

presented a work entitled Voices Within Voices.1 The work is of rather

epigonal character, loosely combining linguistic diction reminiscent of Samuel Beckett and a performance set-up immediately recognizable as influenced by John Cage. Cage sat in the audience; his reaction, as

related by another auditor, was the following: "In Milwaukee, I remem

ber, there was a meeting on performance in postmodern culture orga

nized by Michel Benamou. Raymond Federman had made his

Lyotard's Adaptation of John Cage's Aesthetics 227

contribution . . . John Cage, who was with us there, stood up afterwards

and, with uncharacteristic vehemence, withdrew his support from the

work, protesting that, despite its clever deconstructive apparatus, it remained dedicated to expressing the lack of meaning for a subject." Having to this point maintained descriptive restraint, our auditor now

rushes headlong into blatantly underdetermined conclusions: "In short it"?the work?"was modern, in other words, romantic."2 We owe this

account to Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard, who held a Senior Fellowship at the

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1976 and had been invited by the

organizers of the International Symposium on Post-Modern Perfor mance to participate in a panel discussion with Cage.3

Instances of such reckless reasoning can be found in abundance in

Lyotard's writings, especially in those predating The Postmodern Condi tion (1979).4 At that time, Lyotard was aiming at an "intensively unserious" discourse, as he put it, knowing full well that its objectivations might appear funny to his recipients.5 The passage quoted above cer

tainly is unserious, perhaps even intensively so, and at the same time

funny. It should not be overseen, however, that Lyotard's portrayal of

Cage's reaction to Federman implicates Cage in a venomously anti modernist rhetoric that is absent from his own work. This opens the

intriguing possibility that the origins of Lyotard's theory of a "postmod ernist avant-garde," or "postmodernism as avant-garde," programmati

cally articulated only a few years after his encounter with Cage at the International Symposium on Post-Modern Performance and fiercely debated ever since, could lie to some degree in an "intensively unserious"

reading of Cage. To determine whether Lyotard was indeed harnessing Cage to his

cause, it would of course be helpful to have more information about their

personal relations. Unfortunately, as Lyotard's private documents are not

published or even archived yet, we do not know how deeply they knew each other and when exactly they first met. It seems, however, that the affection was not reciprocal, very much as between Schoenberg and Adorno. Cage never introduced Lyotard into his circle of friends, nor did he ever mention him in his writings, which is a sure sign that he took lit tle or no notice of Lyotard; after all, the names of friends had almost con

ceptual significance for Cage, and anyone who influenced him in any way was always readily acknowledged. In Lyotard's texts from the "inten

sively unserious" phase, by contrast, Cage is omnipresent as a standard bearer for a peculiar aesthetic doctrine, designated "aesthetics of intensi

ties," "affirmative aesthetics" or "libidinal aesthetics" (esth?tique libidi

nale). Lyotard devised this aesthetic doctrine, just as his postmodernist aesthetics that has become so influential, as a theory of the avant-garde.

228 Perspectives of New Music

Cage serves not just as its focal figure; arguably, the aesthetics of intensi ties might not even have materialized without his influence.

To date, this association of a self-professed French avant-garde thinker with an established, if controversial, American avant-garde artist remains

under-explored. Lyotard's early writings, and in particular his articles on

the aesthetics of intensities, are in philosophical secondary literature at

best considered a false academic start,6 but generally simply disregarded. In most cases, this is of course due to the "intensive" tone of these texts

and Lyotard's "unserious" style of argumentation, neither of which

excites historical reflection. In some quarters, however, reception of early

Lyotard is avoided for more tangible reasons. Wolfgang Welsch and his

school, to furnish an example from Europe, have styled Lyotard as a

postmodernist idol through skilful academic publicity. Fervent advocates

of postmodernism in Germany, they are undoubtedly aware that a thor

ough critical examination of Lyotard's early writings could show the

author of The Postmodern Condition and The Diff?rend (1984)7 in a bad

light, jeopardizing the assertion of a postmodernist paradigm distinct

from the Frankfurt School, a distinction which Welsch & Co. assert with

remarkable verve.8

Lyotard's reception in the English-speaking world?and especially in

North America, where he received numerous academic honors9?is strik

ingly similar. More critical writers like Peter Dews see Lyotard's "inten

sively unserious" thought as a philosophical dead-end.10 Those with a

professional interest in consolidating postmodernist theory studiously ignore this phase: not even an expository account is provided in the stan

dard introductions;11 The Lyotard Reader contains none of the early art

icles;12 Judging Lyotard passes no judgment upon them;13 and the

publications dedicated specifically to the political dimension of Lyotard's thought and career pay no attention to these articles despite their obvi ous political agenda.14 Mark Roberts's unpublished and little known doc

toral dissertation on Lyotard's aesthetics does not explore the Cage link

although the study contains a chapter on music.15 Even Fredric Jameson, who is, despite some local criticism, heavily indebted to Lyotard in his

reassertion of Marxism within a largely postmodernist understanding of

society and culture, plays down Lyotard's early phase, probably because

it is also his most overtly anti-Marxist phase.16 This paucity of critical attention to the aesthetics of intensities also

extends to the discipline of musicology. The only existing musicological contribution on the subject is an article by Hermann Danuser entitled "The Postmodernity of John Cage: The Experimental Artist as Seen by Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard."17 Danuser puts an odd twist on the matter: for

him, the fact that Lyotard drew upon Cage counts as evidence for the lat


ter's supposed postmodernity, just as if Lyotard had exerted influence on

Cage and not Cage on Lyotard. To make his point, Danuser has to work with an a priori assumption of postmodernist potential in Cage's aesthet

ics, an assumption that, as we shall see below, is revealed as problematic even by simple chronological considerations.

Thus, substantial comparative groundwork needs to be done prior to

any further critical investigation into the aesthetics of intensities. The anal

ysis presented here will focus on Lyotard's articles from the early 1970s that were published in 1973 in an anthology entitled Des dispositifs pulsion nels}* Lyotard was evidently familiar with Silence (1961),19 A Tear from

Monday (1967)20 and even Notations (1969),21 a publication that is essen tial to an understanding of Cage but, unfortunately, little read. Writings by Cage that were published after 1973 and more recent developments of

Cage's thought are bracketed out, with the exception of "MUREAU,"22 a text which Lyotard heard in a performance by Cage and David Tudor in

June 1972, while working on the aesthetics of intensities.23 The first section of the present article proves by means of intertextual

analysis that Lyotard incorporates a number of Cage's key ideas into his own texts, thereby applying writing techniques based on the latter's chance operations. The second and third sections expose the discursive

strategy underlying Lyotard's appropriation of Cage's aesthetics. To

explain this strategy, the fourth section addresses the cultural-historical context of the aesthetics of intensities. The concluding section offers some reflections on the consequences for our view of both Cage and

Lyotard.

Writing and Chance

Cage's writing experiments offer a particularly suitable point of departure for our analysis. The aim of these experiments was to develop a form of notation that frees sounds and words from the domination of writing, leaving them as much as possible of their immediacy. In the preface to

Notations, a compilation of 269 avant-garde scores gathered by Cage for the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, he outlines edito rial rules which can also be seen as the guiding principles of his notational

experiments: arrangement and formatting of the brief commentaries

accompanying most of the examples are, in order to transcend the boundaries between written words and notated sound, determined by chance operations; in addition, a multitude of different typefaces, letter

sizes, and intensities is used to enhance the immediate effect of writing.24


Cage was neither the only nor the first one to undertake such experi ments. Some fine artists working in his orbit in New York were involved in similar projects. Cage and his friends were influenced by James Joyce and St?phane Mallarm?, who, in the 1910s and 1920s, pioneered the extension of syntactical and formal means of literary expression. How

ever, it is important to note that the American composer Henry Cowell also greatly influenced Cage's writing experiments, especially in his early and middle phase. In "History of Experimental Music in the United States" (1958),25 Cage accounts for the compositional technique employed by Cowell in Mosaic Quarter. "[Some works by Cowell] are

indeterminate in ways analogous to those currently in use by Boulez and Stockhausen. For example: Cowell's Mosaic Quartet, where the perform ers, in any way they choose, produce a continuity from composed blocks

provided by him."26 Cage has of course advanced, and eventually over

come, Cowell's aleatoric methods. Already in the late 1950s, indetermi

nacy was achieved by Cage no more through choice but through chance

operations; later, in the 1970s, Cage provided only performance direc tions but no pre-produced material. Yet, Cowell's collage technique aptly describes how Cage, until the publication of Notations, has organized words into texts. Cage himself has indicated what great importance Cowell's mosaic/collage technique had for his treatment of words:

"Mosaic," a text by Cage from 1963, unmistakably alludes to the Mosaic

Quartet.27 "Mosaic" is composed of syntactically simple, mostly short sentences.

Cage deliberately avoids introductory, or transitional, stereotypes, subor dinate clauses, explanatory remarks, concluding sections, footnotes, and even paragraphs. Quotations are italicized, and can thus instantaneously be identified as foreign material. The impression of discontinuity and

immediacy is intensified by sudden semantic disruptions (Example 1). Yet, Cage does not comply with all the principles advanced in the preface to Notations and in his remarks on Cowell's Mosaic Quartet. The

arrangement of the textual blocks is not determined by chance opera tions. Only the collage principle is used, whilst the indeterminacy prin ciple is ignored. Nonetheless, "Mosaic" is not to be understood as a

traditionally formed theoretical text. Its discontinuous texture, enhanced

by typographical devices, is supposed to make a strongly immediate effect.

Interestingly, the title "Mosaic" refers only to the article's form. In terms of content, it is an uncompromising polemical reckoning of Cage

with Schoenberg, which, however, derives its poignancy exactly from its formal design. Remarks Schoenberg made in his analysis and counter

point class, rendered in italics, are directly set against critical annotations


establish a unified terminology and. . . relevant descriptions and definitions if one

could begin by getting doctors to describe their own pains.... He wouldn't enter

a house because Strang, who lived there, had a cold. His students worshipped him.

So that when he said "My purpose in teaching you is to make it impossible for you

to write music," his words seemed helpful rather than devastating. Alban Berg.

Before acting, he examined all the possibilities; aged seventy-six he left the

decisions to others. Think it over, and if you find it works, then do it. Troubled by

asthma and needing 5000 marks quickly, he lists three unpublished works, praises

two, and discusses in connection with the third his feelings regarding praise, finding

self-praise, though malodorous, preferable to that bestowed by others. Sitting in the

living-room after dinner, Schoenberg was talking. Some of the ladies, Mrs.

Schoenberg among them, were knitting. Schoenberg insisted, as long as he was

talking, that there be no further knitting. To him, being a real musician meant being

literate and having an ear educated by European music. The twelve-tone method

was intended to replace the functional qualities of tonal harmony. These functional

qualities are structural: dividing wholes into parts. Methods make contiguities.

Not having the means to make new structures (Hauer), nor the desire to renounce

structure (process), Schoenberg made structures neoclassically. Two years before

he died, Vienna honored Schoenberg right and left, granting him free entry into

the city. This gave him pride and joy, singular pleasure, but reminded him too of his

opponents, diminished though they were in number and power. His Harmonielehre

begins: "This book I learned from my pupils." But: a teachers sole reward, he

said, was ascribing pupils' successes to himself. Anton Webern. Ruthless honesty.

For. . .all I want is to compose. Even the fact that I write so many letters is a

very harmful deviation from this principle. A nd though any one who means well by

me should certainly write to me as often as possible (for Vm always glad of that),

it should be in such a way that I don*t have to answer! He said she should leave the

room, that he would also, that those remaining would vote whether she might

continue in the class. Leaving after her, he said, smiling, "Be sure you keep her."

Aggressiveness. He was a self-made aristocrat. / wonder what you'd say to the

world in which I nearly die of disgust. Becoming an American citizen didn't remove

his distaste for democracy and that sort of thing. Of former times when a prince

EXAMPLE 1: JOHN CAGE : "MOSAIC, "

A TEAR FROM MONDAT, PAGE 45


by Cage. Even Boulez's "Schoenberg is Dead" (1952) 8 seems a friendly

and objective text in comparison with "Mosaic," as the following

example from Cage's text illustrates: "He"?Schoenberg?"was a self made aristocrat. I wonder whatyou^d say to the world in which I nearly die

of disgust. Becoming an American citizen didn't remove his distaste for democracy and that sort ofthing. Of former times when a prince stood as a protector before an artist, he writes: The fairest, alas bygone, days of art"29

Some texts in Lyotard's collection of essays entitled Des dispositifs pul sionnels closely resemble Cage's "Mosaic" in terms of both form and style (Example 2). Without doubt, Lyotard has studied Cage's textual tech

niques: although he uses paragraphs, he italicizes quotations, avoids foot

notes, organizes his short, powerful sentences into blocks?designated "items" by him?and juxtaposes them like stones in a mosaic, or paper

scraps in a collage. The "items" are arranged to a text according to the

results of chance operations, as the following quotation by Lyotard reveals: "I have determined six ideas (dialectics, criticism, indifference,

position, theology and expression, affirmation) under which I have distrib uted all my reflexions in the form of items. A first drawing has assigned to

each of these items the face of a dice. A second drawing (another throw of

the dice) has permitted me to establish the diachronic series of the ideas'

appearance. Next a drawing (little papers carrying the numbers 1 to 20) has determined which item, number 5 or number 14, for example, belonging to which idea (for example, indifference) would occupy place n

of the series. Several dimensions are left undetermined: the duration of each item, the duration of the blanks-silences which separate them, the chromatism (one would have been able to conceive of several writing

types), etc."30 Lyotard concludes as follows: "The designation of the

present item is: affirmation 13."31 The concept of affirmation is a Cagean one, and will concern us later. Its use in "Adorno come diavolo," and the

calculated interplay of aleatoric determination and indeterminacy, suggests that this writing experiment is not primarily inspired by Mallarm?'s A

Throw of the Dice (1897), but by Cage.32 A few other texts from Des dispositifs pulsionnels?"Sur une figure de

discours," "La dent, la paume," and "Notes sur le retour et le capital" (all dating from 1972)?are written in the same style as "Adorno come

diavolo." It is very likely, but hard to decide with certainty, whether chance operations have been used to form these texts. Perhaps chance

operations also played a part in the structuring of Economie libidinale

(1974),33 Lyotard's large-scale attempt to turn the aesthetics of intensi ties into a fully-fledged political philosophy.


Schoenberg, dit Adorno. Et le m?me silence des lacunes dans la

disposition errante d'Aesthetische Theorie. Machines dysfonctionnant, machines de Tinguely

? blancs ?v?nements o? la dialectique se

d?traque.

Schoenberg dit halte ? la dialectique. Mais dialectiquement.

Les harmonies parfaites sont ? comparer aux expressions de circons

tance du langage et encore plus ? Vargent dans V?conomie. Leur caract?re

abstrait les rend capables d'intervenir partout en m?diation et leur crise

est profond?ment li?e, dans la phase pr?sente, ? la crise de toutes les

fonctions de m?diation. Il faut bouleverser les param?tres de cette

?quation adornienne. La critique de l'?conomie politique enseigne

que l'argent ne r?sout rien, que ? son ? abstraction est l'abstraction

de la loi de la valeur, laquelle permet de mettre en relation d'?change, comme marchandises, les objets les plus diff?rents/indiff?rents. Les accords de tonale, de dominante, de septi?me de dominante ne sont

pas de la monnaie, ils sont au contraire les analogues, dans la musique

classique et baroque, des r?gles minutieusement observ?es pesant sur

la fabrication et sur le produit artisanaux, ils sont les ? chefs-d' uvre ?,

ils incarnent la conciliation cens?e parfaite du mat?riau et de la

forme. Ils sont le culte. Ce qu'Adorno d?crit, c'est leur usage cynique dans la culture, quelque chose comme le ? garanti fait main ? ou le

? mis en bouteille au ch?teau ? qui va venir distinguer, r?actionnai

rement, certaines marchandises dans l'?conomie industrielle et en

faire, pour un instant, des objets de prestige. L'argent en tant que la loi de la valeur visible, c'est dans la musique nouvelle, non pas l'accord de consonance, mais l'abstraction audible, l'indiff?rence aux

?carts r?put?s naturels, le d?coupage de l'octave en 12 1/2 tons,

l'?changeabilit? des degr?s selon les r?gles de renversement et de

r?trogradation, l'universalisation du principe de la s?rie ? toutes les

dimensions du son. Schoenberg a parl? une fois contre la chaleur

animale de la musique et contre son air piteux. Sa froideur est celle

du rescap?, ? l'inverse de la chaleur webernienne, proche du mat?riau, dit Adorno. Or la froideur schoenbergienne est celle de ces eaux o?

le kapital plonge toute chose selon le seul calcul. La dissonance conduite ? ses extr?mes cons?quences : c'est une formule du kapi talisme moderne.

EXAMPLE 2: JEAN-FRAN?OIS LYOTARD: "ADORNO COME DIAVOLO,"

DES DISPOSITIFS PULSIONNELS, PAGE 108


Historiography and Compositional Processes

Given Lyotard's adoption of Cage's writing techniques, it is not surpris ing that correspondences can be found even on a substantive level. The

musico-historiographical schema employed by Lyotard, for instance, squares with Cage's, down to the last detail. Just like Cage, Lyotard splits the avant-garde into a traditional faction, represented by Schoenberg and the Darmstadt School, and a radical faction, represented by Stravinsky,

Var?se, Satie, and the Americans.34 Webern is bracketed out of the tradi tional avant-garde by Lyotard: in a tendency that could be seen to

emerge already in Webern's Klangfarbenmelodie, he writes, Cage destroys the domination of time, i.e., rhythm and the organization of the musical artwork.35 This idea is a transparent borrowing from Cage's article "Rhythm etc." (1961). "We began," it says there, "by increasing the differences between the sounds making a Klangfarbenmelodie. . . .

After that there was no longer any fixed structure: just parts in any num

ber, superimposition, and duration. Time-sense changed."36 Both

Lyotard and Cage, incidentally, taking the next logical step, categorize the entire occidental musical tradition under the heading of "domination of time."37

Lyotard has made a great effort to substantiate this simplistic view of music history, faithfully inherited from Cage, by embedding the anti thetic notions of traditional composition as domination of time, and of the avant-garde, which purportedly destroys the domination of time, in a

theory of compositional processes. Decisive roles in Lyotard's tactics, apart from the protagonist Cage, are played by Freud and Nietzsche. In "Plusieurs silences" (1972), Lyotard introduces the psychoanalytic con

cepts Eros and Thanatos into his theory of the avant-garde: Eros, the love-drive (or Schoenberg), is seen as subjective, critical, and exclusive, desires what he lacks, keeps the primary processes in his sway. Dodeca

phonic composition, and composition in general, represents an erotic

secondary process; composing means "filtering and binding, excluding entire regions of the sonorous universe as noise."38 By contrast,

Thanatos, the death-drive (or Cage), is pre-subjective, affirmative and

inclusive, frees desire and the primary processes of life. His music is anon

ymous and intensive, does not express itself but produces, creates with out a single thought of a work or a composition. Thanatos "reveals itself in leaps of tension, in that which Klossowski calls intensities, and Cage events. Dissonances, strident sounds, really exaggerated, ugly silences."39

It is important to note that Lyotard's theory of compositional pro cesses is a deliberate misinterpretation of Freud. In Beyond the Pleasure

Principle (1920),40 Freud's classic text on Eros and Thanatos, both love


and death-drive, i.e., secondary and primary processes, are defined in duaHstic terms. The essential difference between the drives, according to

Freud, lies in their respective modes of representation; desire is in Eros

represented in conscious, linguistic fashion, whereas in Thanatos, it finds

expression unconsciously and non-linguistically. While Lyotard agrees with Freud's dualistic definition of the love-drive, he defines the death drive in monistic terms. In "Notes sur le Retour et le Capital," he writes: "The problem of the death-drive is in Freud constrained in a structural

metaphor (the system of the psychic apparatus). Even desire is thought of in terms of a quantitative-qualitative mechanic. 41 At some points in Freud's writing, however, Lyotard discerns potential for a non-dualistic

conception of the death-drive, for a theory not of desire as lack, but as

production.42 This is a crucial point in Lyotard's argument: his emphasis on the monistic character of the death-drive enables a theoretical synthe sis (or rather conflation) of Freud's notion of desire with Cage's, and in

particular late Nietzsche's, monism. Lyotard ignores completely the pro found influence of Eastern thought and medieval mysticism on Cage, which in fact shaped his non-dualistic inclination and his notion of com

position as process. Thus emerges a blank, which Lyotard fills by positing Nietzsche's monism of power?with all the arbitrariness the term "posit ing" implies. Desire as production, which Lyotard claims to derive from

Freud, becomes Wille zur Macht, will to power.43 Cage becomes

Zarathustra, or the transvaluator of all (musical) values.

Conceptual hurdles are cleared effortlessly, albeit with little elegance, by Lyotard. Freud's conviction that the death-drive is silent, is twisted to avoid contradictions with Cage's "story" about his visit of an anechoic chamber wherein he could listen to the sound of his own organism and thus experience that silence has no factual existence. The death-drive is not silent, Lyotard asserts; the body of Thanatos-Zarathustra Cage, which, as Lyotard kindly informs us, is "in healthy condition," makes a

noise;44 Freud's notion of the death-drive therefore denotes the fact that

"energy has no ear for unity, for the concert of the organism (the 'psychic apparatus'), that it is deaf to composition, i.e., to the principle of lack and to the void in which the organs, the articuli (the notes) are separated, and arranged, to form a cosmos and a musik?"4S The Ancient Greek notion of musik? returns us to Lyotard's black-and-white historiogra phy,46 which he seeks to corroborate with Nietzsche's authority: "There was a certain phase, that of Menschliches, Allzumenschliches,

... a non

affirmative phase," simplifies Lyotard, "when Nietzsche desired this

tragic, intellectual, anti-Wagnerian, sober, critical, Voltairian-Paulinian Mosaic music. But as soon as Nietzsche exceeds this 'phase,' as soon as


he occupies his inactuality proper, he no longer needs critique, . . . but

affirmation, the music of Cage."47 Nietzsche, Lyotard seems to be saying, needs Cage, and Cage needs

Nietzsche. With this claim, Lyotard decidedly opposes the interpreta tions of Daniel Charles, a French scholar who has published widely on

Cage since the 1950s. Lyotard is especially disturbed by Charles's read

ing of Cage through Heidegger and L?vinas. Not surprisingly, attempts at applying the latters' terminology, which is deeply rooted in the

philosophical and theological tradition, are repudiated by the

Nietzschean Lyotard; in his view, Charles's exegesis remains "within

nihilism," even if ?p%oci (a term denoting structuring first principles) becomes an-?p%oci ,48 Lyotard's method, however, resembles Charles's:

just as the latter, he tendentiously selects key concepts by Cage, strips them of their original context, and gives them an idiosyncratic slant (a Freudian-Nietzschean slant, as we have seen). Historiography and the

notion of composition as process are particularly clear instances of this

method. Yet whatever we make of this, Lyotard's critical tools need

further scrutiny, especially his commingling of Nietzschean terminol

ogy and Cage's concepts of affirmation and presence.

Affirmation and Presence

Affirmation, already present in early usage, is defined not merely as an

aesthetic attitude by Cage, but also, and especially, as a social one. This is

concisely and programmatically expressed in the aphorism quoted as an

epigraph to the present article: "Let us say Yes to our presence together in Chaos."49 "Saying Yes" becomes a central theme in A Tear from Mon

day, the document of the social-philosophical dimension of Cage's thought. As the aphorism indicates, "Saying Yes" is very much a collec tive attitude. The grammatical subject of the aphorism stands in the first

person plural and is evoked three times: "us," "our," "together." The

individual, though distinct from the collective, has no dominant role, even grammatically; the authorial "Let us . . ." signifies a motivational rather than imperative attitude toward other social agents. If we "say Yes to our presence together," if we, as Cage suggests elsewhere in a witty reference to C. G. Jung and with the grand naivety characteristic of his

social thought, indulge in a "collective consciousness,"50 we will improve the world.

According to Cage's aphorism, not only our collective consciousness is to be affirmed, but also our being in a world described as "Chaos." In other words, "Saying Yes" entails yielding to contingent material facticity.


The aphorism can thus be understood as a paraphrase of Cage's ideas on chance that highlights their intrinsic social meaning. Another such para phrase, one that places less emphasis on the relationship between individ ual and collective and more on chance, appears in the "Lecture on Commitment" (1961): "The question is . . . How immediately are you going to say Yes to no matter what unpredictability."51 Cage attempted with the greatest possible integrity to set examples of such immediate affirmation of the unpredictable?or "Chaos"?in his life and art, where

decisions, regardless of their importance and consequence, were made by casting dies, drawing lots, etc. The "Lecture on Commitment" and many other texts make crystal clear that such an affirmative attitude to life and art is strictly non-instrumental, non-committal and nonviolent. When

Cage speaks of revolution, and he does so very often, especially in A Tear

from Monday, it is always one of passive resistance, a subversive surrender

ing to the powers that be. When destructive acts were suggested to Cage, he typically reacted with laid-back comments such as: "It's too dra matic."52

There is no Cagean concept that Lyotard embraces more emphatically than the concept of affirmation; after all, the aesthetics of intensities is also designated "affirmative aesthetics." Yet there is a wide semantic hia tus in the way the two thinkers employ this particular concept. In

Lyotard, affirmation is equated with terms denoting a more dynamic thrust. One of them is "transvaluation," which, as we shall see below, car ries with it all the inhumanity with which it is charged in Nietzsche.

Another term that Lyotard uses synonymously with affirmation is "deconstruction." However, Lyotard's question: "What Cage looks for

in the I Ching, in what respect is that a de construction? "S3> does not imply Jacques Derrida's quasi-dialectical deconstruction or contemporary

methods of literary criticism. What Lyotard looks for in Cage's affirma tion of contingency is rather a deconstruction of discourses which render events in art and life predictable and necessary; a deconstruction of the

negative?Lyotard would say "nihilistic"?philosophy of the Frankfurt

School; a deconstruction of European music with its work concepts, intentions, and traditions.

Undoubtedly, affirmation, which in Cage expresses love for mankind and the world, is a lethal force in Lyotard. This shift of meaning is reflected in the temporal-philosophical implications of the concept of affirmation. We have already seen that the radical American avant-garde, and Cage's events in particular, are deemed by Lyotard capable of

destroying the "domination of time," and of overcoming the historical

stage of "composition as secondary process." To explain what constitutes

this capability, we traced Lyotard's notion of Thanatos. Quite


consistently with his line of reasoning, Lyotard assigns to affirmation a

specific temporal mode, the "Now," or presence. Tradition and the past bear no importance whatsoever in this mode; Lyotard's presence is inde

pendent, autonomous and self-affirming. Its main capacity is that of for

getting, and it renounces anticipation. A transvaluating force, it is capable of undoing the power of before and after, i.e., of history. This kind of

presence is the temporality of Thanatos, of the primary processes and of the radical avant-garde; intensively and pleasurably experienced, for

example in an event of Cage, it pushes culture back into nature and dis solves the borders between art and Ufe. Lyotard reports that this force could be felt in Cage and Tudor's performance of "MUREAU"

(Example 3).54 In the early 1970s, Lyotard could not have heard a more

advanced writing experiment than "MUREAU;" as a mute "text," it indeed resembles a defense wall built against meaning. However, one

only needs to read, or listen to, "MUREAU" attentively to realize that

Lyotard's notion that it might have a detemporalizing tendency is, to say the least, markedly interpretive.

This is equally true of Lyotard's qualification of the concept of pres ence. The concept is an important one in Cage, but presence stands in

Cage not in an antithetical relationship with tradition and history. Cage does not sever the present from temporal continuity; on the contrary, he mediates it with past and future. This shows Cage's indebtedness to

Schoenberg, who, in a reaction against the overestimation of knowledge based on memory, propagated the liberation of compositional rationality from tradition?a liberation of, not from, compositional rationality.55 Already in "The Future of Music: Credo" (1937), Cage postulates a

compositional technique both new and related to the past.56 Fifteen years later, after his first aleatoric compositions, this attitude still prevails: "We need not destroy the past; it is gone," Cage says in the "Juilliard Lecture"

(1952). "At any moment it might reappear and seem to be and be the

present."57

Evidently, Lyotard merely associates discursive surfaces, which hardly conceal his radicalization of Cage's aesthetics. Cage's introduction of chance operations into art and life do not aim at a complete dissolution of

temporal continuity. If his understanding of presence squared with

Lyotard's, Cage would in fact betray the social politics epitomized in the

aphorism "Let us say Yes to our presence together in Chaos."


MUREAU

sparrowsitA gRCbbeak"betrays itself by that peculiar squeakariEFFECT OF SLIGHTEst tinkling measures soundness ingpleasaWe hear! Does it not rather hear us? sWhen he hears the telegraph, he thinksthose bugs have issued forthThe owl touches the stops, wakes reverb erations d gwalky In verse there is no inherent music eofsttakestak es aman to make a room silent It takes to makearoomlt IS A Young a ppetite and the appETITEFOR IsHe OeysseemorningYou hear screamo f great hawka yd<jh bcdyShelie beinî lencel t would be noblest to sing with thewindTo hear a neighbor singing! u it wood The triosteum a day or twob mtryTheysays to-wee, to-weecalling to his team lives he ard over high open ??btd&da.y ?n?tead of the drum thensav pa with youn g birdswith young birdsfroma truck ndat every postt ed der oglects in the meantime o pi at so piercingders acheTheyo ato sing in earnest seven now chU AS ISu gddd gheasu s iot ei gh c n ch siYou woul d thiNK MUSIC woe being born again off roads are still heard at eve ningrcRlckets 'Echo is an independent?oundRhyme,and tell his story and breathe himself breathe A shriU loud alarm is incessantly repeated t heheroic hovers from over the pond tne cZtar metallic scream they vent off with a shriller craikThey go off with a hoARSer chuck ch uck noair hear sharp, screaming notes rending the ai rThis suggests wha t perpetual fbwo/spiritwould produceA thrumming beyond and thr oughimportant Every one can CAlltomind instances mi IL Trees crea* ringingWe, could not hear thehlrdsls thi thir? note confined to this season? Little frogs begin to peep toward sundown noonhorn is heard e choing from shore to shoreof perchwith a loud, ;i?ppl ing rustle t hink larmedand makes life seem serene and grandinex pr?s S ibly serene and grand CLppaA&ntty afrai dtu?th mote vlgon and promise bellslee uttering that sign-like note verwarm and mo?At not much o? the toad ev so ch eaply enriched for the listeningof that word "sound" and am the scene of liferingter viMusicand mel in melody ein the next townand fire openest al 1 her senses n k swhich they do not rememberee eeach recess o F THE WOODA Ea what various distinct sounds we heard there deep in thewoodshnAND echo along the shore ymORE THAN A Rodnd a sa stead y, BReathing, cr i eket-1 ike soundhunseen and unheard May it be such. summe* ola it suggests into the woodsThere is inâ^dne?A even ?n the mosqu??oe?' kumT/ieea have been so many empty music-halls heard from th e depth of the woodnigHT ?HE toward nightthe? r hour has svimity who a mkumming past so bus i I y 1 ungs sweet flowingfrom farther or nearerhuRR IED RIPPLING NOtes in the yardas we passed under itsatand sat do

wn to hear the wind roar swift and steadya peAô/twier he never seestw oof them i s perhaps heaiD COMMUNicated so disTINCtly through the oar t o the air across the river directly against his eardif f erently sounda

EXAMPLE 3: JOHN CAGE: "MUREAU," Ml WRITINGS c67~:>72, PAGE 35


Cultural-Historical Context

Lyotard was fully aware of this. Despite his admiration for Cage, he did not consider his aesthetics radical enough. Cage's thought, Lyotard argues, continues representation. Even his most extreme experiments destroy only the notion of the work, whereas the aesthetics of intensities must "destroy also the work of the works and of the non-works."S8 Cage's Schoenbergian idea of forgetting becomes in Lyotard total loss of mem

ory; r?int?gration of society and nature becomes dissolution of society in nature. One could argue that, after a full century of modern avant-garde theory and practice, only such radicalizations permit self-presentation as an avant-gardist. Lyotard's declaration of death to the modernist avant

garde, and his proclamation of the age of postmodernity and a

postmodernist avant-garde only a few years after the publications on the aesthetics of intensities, fit well into such an explanatory pattern. None

theless, an interpretation that one-sidedly emphasises the strategic aspects of the aesthetics of intensities would be incomplete. As philosophical theories are historical documents, a cultural-historical reading must also be attempted.

The aesthetics of intensities is part of what Lyotard calls the politics of intensities: "a vast subterranean movement . . .

slowing down of produc

tion, denial of consumption, refusal of'work,' (illusory?) communes, hap penings [English in the original], movements for sexual liberation,

occupations, squattings [English in the original], production of sounds, words, colours without 'work intentions.' The ... 'masters'"? Nietzsche's

Herren?"of today are: outsiders, experimental painters, pop artists, hip pies and yippies, parasites, madmen, internees. One single hour of their Ufe contains more intensity and less intention than a thousand words of a pro fessional philosopher. ... A new figure emerges: the inhuman, the super man, Dionysos."59 These sentences place Cage?the "inhuman," the

"superman," "Dionysos" (one could add "the transvaluator of all values," or "Zarathustra")?directly into the context of the student uprisings in Paris in May 1968.

Only one figure is missing to complete Lyotard's revolutionary panop ticum: Mao Tse-Tung. "Anything goes," Lyotard might have thought, and arranged into a collage Cage's ideas on silence, music without domi

nation, and friendship, and an image, then broadcast by Chinese state

television, of Mao doing physical exercise for propaganda reasons (an image that caused, perhaps, a greater stir in the French non

parliamentary opposition than in China): "When Mao swims through the

Yang-tse-Kiang, his body produces a noise, and the opposition of interi

ority and exteriority ceases to exist. . . . What there happens is movement


and music without appearance. Transvaluation, not domination. Being able to do the crawl presents not power over, but the capacity of sonori ties. When we swim side by side with a friend ... we neither want to win nor to attain anything, we just want to make music together.

. . . We may

happen to have the same rhythm, we may happen to lose it, and all this is as good as the polyrhythmic inventions of the Rite of Spring."6?

Even if one concedes that Cage was a great admirer of Mao, such pas sages appear grotesque. They are not of course to be understood as

scholarly literature, but as written collages, or as philosophical happen ings. Yet, underneath this "intensive unseriousness," which, as will be

remembered, may well appear funny to us, a tone of resignation can be felt. Lyotard became increasingly doubtful as to whether there was an alternative to capitalism, he said in an interview in 1976;61 he also called this phase in his life "purgatory."62 In the end, the aesthetics of intensi ties reveals deep disappointment, not to say desperation, of an ultra-leftist thinker and political activist at the sight of the failure of Marxism

Leninism, Maoism, and the 1968 movement.

Concluding Thoughts

The cultural-historical context of the aesthetics of intensities goes a good way towards explaining Lyotard's strategies. Some questions, however, still remain open?questions that enable us to push the analysis further:

Was Lyotard really only attracted by certain Cagean concepts to which a

radicalizing discourse could easily be attached? Or did Lyotard respond to something not to be sought on the conceptual surface, but on a more

profound level of Cage's thought? In other words: Is Lyotard's affinity to

Cage merely an externally motivated theoretical construction, or might it

perhaps also be understood as a reaction to some hitherto undetected constituent of Cage's thought?

Surprisingly, Cage's lectures and writings from 1967-1972 are docu ments that also have a tone similar to Lyotard's desperation. A text at the end of A Tear from Monday entitled "Diary: How to Improve the World

(You Will Only Make Matters Worse) Continued 1967"63 shows Cage gravely disturbed about the state of the capitalistic world and about World

War II, the Cold War, and Vietnam. Adopting the style of a news presenter, relating bare facts without any personal comment, Cage trains his attention, for instance, on child prostitution in American army camps. A shocking quotation by Eisenhower on Indo-China is juxtaposed with the sentence: "Tears: a global enterprise."64 The motives of the dissolution of the self and of returning to nature become very strong: "No self-consciousness. Living


like animals, becoming touchable." None of Cage's texts from the 1960s has a more discontinuous texture; "Diary . . . continued 1967" reads as if

Cage had attempted a stylistic mimesis of the state of the modern world. In view of such historical sensitivity on the part of Cage, it would be na?ve to

repudiate the aesthetics of intensities because of its crude strategical disposi tion. For the historical evaluation of Cage's thought?a project currently far from completion?Lyotard's ideas are perhaps not entirely irrelevant.

The analysis put forward in this article might also have serious conse

quences for the conventional view of Lyotard. Lyotard scholars will need to investigate whether Cage's impulse also affects Lyotard's later

theories, whether The Postmodern Condition, The Diff?rend and related texts could be seen as restating the earlier ideas in a more "serious" form?in short: whether indeed Cage must be seen as having kicked off

postmodernism in its peculiar Lyotardian form. These questions cannot even be conjecturally answered here, but they should be studied?

intensively yet seriously.


Notes

This is a revised and expanded version of a paper read at the Royal Musi cal Association Irish Chapter Meeting, Queen's University Belfast, May 2000, and at the International Symposium on "Music and Cultural Iden

tity," Munich University, October 2000. I would like to thank Reinhold

Brinkmann, Brian Brock, Jiirg Stenzl, Bettina Varwig and Martin Wendte for their responses to the original paper.

1. Raymond Federman, "Voices Within Voices," Performance in Post modern Culture, ed. Michel Benamou and Charles Caramello

(Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1977), 159-98.

2. Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard, "Philosophy and Painting in the Age of their

Experimentation: Contribution to an Idea of Postmodernity," The

Lyotard Reader, ed. Andrew Benjamin (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 192.

3. Cf. Michel Benamou, "Preface," Performance in Postmodern Culture.

4. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986).

5. Lyotard, "Sur une figure de discours," Des dispositifs pulsionnels (Paris: ?ditions Galilee, 1994, reprint of Paris: Union g?n?rale d'?di

tions, 1973), 115.

6. Cf. Walter Reese-Sch?fer, Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard (Hamburg: Junius, 1989), 22.

7. Lyotard, Le Diff?rend (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1983); English Translation: The Diff?rend: Phrases in Dispute, tr. Georges Van Den Abbeele (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988).

8. Cf. Wolfgang Welsch, Unsere postmoderne Moderne (Weinheim: VCH, 1987); "Nach welcher Moderne? Kl?rungsversuche im Feld von

Architektur und Philosophie," Moderne oder Postmoderne? Zur

Signatur des gegenw?rtigen Zeitalters, ed. Peter Koslowski, Robert

Spaemann and Reinhard L?w (Weinheim: Acta Humaniora, VCH,

1986), 237-57; Christine Pries and Wolfgang Welsch, "Jean-Fran?ois

Lyotard," Metzler Philosophen-Lexikon: Von den Vorsokratikern bis zu

den neuen Philosophen, ed. Bernd Lutz and Nobert Retlich (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995), 543-6. Some doctoral students of Welsch have made an effort to develop a postmodernist aesthetics. The selection of


Lyotard's writings on which their studies are based is, however, quite tendentious. (Cf. Maria I. P. Aguado, ?sthetik des Erhabenen: Burke,

Kant, Adorno, Lyotard (Vienna: Passagen, 1994); Christine Pries and Klaus Bartels, eds., Das Erhabene: Zwischen Grenzerfahrung und

Gr??enwahn (Weinheim: VCH, 1989)).

9. Visiting Professor, University of California at San Diego and Berkeley, and Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1974-6; Senior Fellow,

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1976; Visiting Professor, Univer

sity of Montreal, 1978-80; Wellek Library Lectures and Distinguished Professor in the French Department, University of California at

Irvine, and Visiting Professor, University of Minnesota, 1986; Visiting Professor, State University of New York, Binghamton, 1989; Visiting Professor, State University of New York, Stony Brook, 1990; Visiting Professor, Yale University, 1992; Visiting Professor, Emory University, Atlanta, 1993-5.

10. Peter Dews, Logics of Disintegration: Post-Structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory (London: Verso, 1987).

11. David Carroll, Paraesthetics: Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida (New York:

Methuen, 1987); Bill Readings, Introducing Lyotard: Art and Poli tics (London: Routledge, 1991); Stuart Sim, Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard (London: Prentice Hall, 1996); James Williams, Lyotard: Towards a

Postmodern Philosophy (Cambridge: Polity, 1998).

12. Andrew Benjamin, ed., The Lyotard Reader.

13. Andrew Benjamin, ed., Judging Lyotard (London: Routledge, 1992).

14. Bill Readings, ed., Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard: Political Writings (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993); Chris Rojek and

Bryan Turner, eds., The Politics of Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard (London: Routledge, 1998).

15. Mark Roberts, Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard: Toward a Libidinal Aesthetic

(Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook,

1987). 16. Fredric Jameson, "Foreword" to Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition,

vii-xxi; Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1991). For a bal anced critique of Jameson cf. Sean Homer, Fredric Jameson: Marxism,

Hermeneutics, Postmodernism (Cambridge: Polity, 1998), 188.


17. Hermann Danuser, "Die Postmodernit?t des John Cage: Der

experimentelle K?nstler in der Sicht Jean-Fran?ois Lyotards," Wiederaneignung und Neubestimmung: Der Fall "Postmoderne" in der Musik, ed. Otto Kolleritsch (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1993), 142-59.

18. Lyotard, Des dispositifs pulsionnels. All translations from Des dispositifs pulsionnels on the aesthetics of intensities are my own. This does not

necessarily imply a criticism of existing translations. They are: "Adorno come diavolo" ("Adorno as the Devil," tr. Robert Hurley, Telos 19

(1974): 127-37); "La dent, la paume" ("The Tooth, the Palm," tr. Anne Knap and Michel Benamou, Sub-Stance 15 (1976): 105-10); "Notes sur le retour et le capital" ("Notes on Return and Kapital" tr. and ed. Roger McKeon, Semiotext(e) 3, no. 1 (1978): 44-53); "Plu sieurs silences" ("Several Silences," tr. Joseph Maier, ed. Roger

McKeon, Driftworks (New York: Semiotext(e), 1984), 91-110). "Sur une figure de discours" has not been translated into English.

19. John Cage, Silence (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1961).

20. Cage, A Tear from Monday: New Lectures and Writings (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1967).

21. Cage, Notations (New York: Something Else, 1969).

22. Cage, "MUREAU," M: Writings >67->72 (Middletown, Conn.:

Wesleyan University Press, 1973), 35-56.

23. This emerges from "Notes sur le retour et le capital," Des dispositifs pulsionnels, 226, and "Plusieurs silences," Des dispositifs pulsionnels, 201. Lyotard might also have known a tape recording of "MUREAU" from 1972 (John Cage, John Cage speaks ?MUREAU" (Hattingen: S

Press, 1972)).

24. Cage, "Preface," Notations, no page numbers.

25. Cage, "History of Experimental Music in the United States," Silence, 67-75.

26. Cage, Silence, 71.

27. Cage, "Mosaic," A Tear from Monday, 43-9.

28. Pierre Boulez, "Sch?nberg is Dead," The Score 6 (1952): 18-22.

29. Cage, "Mosaic," 45-6.


30. Lyotard, "Adorno as the Devil," 131-2.

31. Lyotard, "Adorno as the Devil," 132.

32. St?phane Mallarm?, "A Throw of the Dice," Collected Poems, tr. and comm. Henry Weinfield (Berkeley, California: University of California

Press, 1994), 124-45.

33. Lyotard, ?conomie libidinale (Paris: ?ditions de Minuit, 1974); English translation: Libidinal Economy, tr. Iain Hamilton Grant

(London: Athlone, 1993).

34. Lyotard, "Notes sur le retour et le capital," Des dispositifs pulsionnels, 215-27.

35. Lyotard, "Notes sur le retour et le capital," 224.

36. Cage, "Rhythm etc.," A Tear from Monday, 127. Cf. also Cage, "Forerunners of Modern Music," Silence, 63; "History of Experi

mental Music in the United States," 75; "Mosaic," 43.

37. This is implied in Cage's understanding of Satie's music as "time that's just time" (Cage, "Erik Satie," Silence, 80-1), and in his pos tulate, made with reference to musical structures "allagermanica," to abolish watches or at least the way we use them (Cage, "Rhythm etc.," 128-9). On Lyotard cf. "Adorno as the Devil," 132.

38. "Composer est toujours filtrer et lier, exclure comme bruits des

r?gions enti?res de l'univers sonore" (Lyotard, "Adorno come cha

v?lo," 199).

39. "La pulsion de mort se marque dans des sautes de tension, ce que Klossowski appelle des intensit?s, Cage des events. Dissonances, stri

dences, silences vraiment exag?r?s, laids" (Lyotard, "Adorno come

diavolo," 198).

40. Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, tr. and ed. James

Strachey (New York: Liveright, 1961).

41. "Chez Freud, la probl?matique de la pulsion de mort reste coinc?e dans un m?taphore structurale (le syst?me dit de l'appareil psy

chique), le jeu des pulsions lui-m?me pens? en termes de m?canique quantitative-qualitative" (Lyotard, "Notes sur le retour et le capital," 221).

42. Cf. Lyotard, "Sur une figure de discours," 116-7; "Plusieurs

silences," 197-8.


43. Cf. Lyotard, "Sur une figure de discours," 116-7.

44. "Dans une chambre an?cho?de, le corps de Cage (qui se portait bien) bruit: pulsations sanguines, influx nerveux" (Lyotard, "Plusieurs

silences," 204).

45. "La pulsion de mort est simplement le fait que l'?nergie nya pas d'oreille pour Vunit?, pour le concert de l'organisme (de 'l'appareil psychique"), est sourde ? sa composition, c'est-?-dire au manque, au vide dans lequel les organes, les articuli (les notes) seraient d?coup?s et arrang?s pour faire un cosmos et une musike" (Lyotard, "Plusieurs

silences," 197).

46. Lyotard's black- and-white historiography reminds me of the "high stakes game of philosophical roulette," which Deathridge, referring to Rorty, understands as the historical method of the postmodern ists, or "posties." There are two rules pertaining to the "philosophi cal roulette," the second of which, applied to music, is certainly followed by Lyotard: "you ferret out a basic definition of everything that has so far been called philosophy [in the present context,

music], point to its central flaw, and reject it. Then you simply announce the end of philosophy [or music]" (Cf. John Deathridge, "Wagner and the Postmodern," Cambridge Opera Journal 4, no. 2

(July 1992): 149). 47. "Il y a eu un moment, l'?poque d'Humain, trop humain, o?

Nietzsche a d?sir? cette musique tragique, intellectuelle, anti

wagn?rienne, sobre, critique, voltairienne-paulinienne-mos?ique, . . .

?poque non affirmative. Mais quand Nietzsche enjambe 'l'?poque,' vient occuper son inactuaUt?-intempestivit? propre, ce n'est plus la

critique qu'il lui faut, . . . mais c'est Paffirmatif, c'est la musique de

Cage" (Lyotard, "Plusieurs silences," 211).

48. Cf. Lyotard, "Plusieurs silences," 212-3. Lyotard leaves his source

unmentioned, but presumably refers to Daniel Charles, "Musique et

an-archie," Bulletin de la Soci?t? Fran?aise de Philosophie 65, no. 3

(July-September 1971): 69-112.

49. John Cage, "Where are We Going? And What Are We Doing?," Silence, 195.

50. Cage, "Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) 1965," A Year from Monday, 15.

51. Cage, "Lecture on Commitment," A Tear from Monday, 113.


52. Cage, Notations, no page numbers, printed next to an example from Boulez's lerne Sonate pour Piano.

53. Lyotard, "Adorno as the Devil," 136; "deconstruction," here itali

cized, is spaced out in the original.

54. Lyotard, "Notes sur le retour et le capital," 226.

55. Cf. Arnold Schoenberg, "About Music Criticism," Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Leonard Stein (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), 191-2.

56. Cage, "The Future of Music: Credo," Silence, 3-6.

57. Cage, "Juilliard Lecture," A Tear from Monday, 106.

58. "D?truire l' uvre, mais d?truire aussi l' uvre des uvres et des non uvre^ (Lyotard, "Plusieurs silences," 214).

59. "vaste mouvement souterrain . . . Freinages ? la production, saisies sans contrepartie ? la consommation, refus de 'travailler,' commu naut?s (illusoires?), happenings, mouvement de lib?ration sexuelle, occupations, squattings, production de sons, de mots, de couleur sans 'intention d' uvre.' Voici les 'hommes de surcro?t,' les 'ma?tre?

d'aujourd'hui: marginaux, peintres exp?rimentaux, pop, hippies et

yippies, parasites, fous, intern?s? Il y a plus ??intensit? et moins d'intention dans une heure de leur vie que dans mille mots d'un phil osophe professionel.

. . . Avec eux ?merge une nouvelle figure:

l'inhumain, le surhumain, Dionysos" (Lyotard, "Notes sur le retour et le capital," 226-7).

60. "Quand Mao traverse le Yang-ts?-Kiang ? la nage, son corps fait du

bruit, l'opposition de l'int?rieur et de l'ext?rieur se d?fait. ... ce qui se passe est mouvement et musique sans apparence. Pas domination,

m?tamorphose. Savoir crawler n'est pas un pouvoir-sur, mais puis sances de sonorit?s . . .

Nageant ? cot? d'un ami,. . . nous ne voulons

rien vaincre du tout, nous approprier rien, mais faire de la musique ensemble. . . . tant?t nous sommes au m?me rhythme, tant?t a se

d?croche, et rien que cela est aussi bon que les inventions

polirhythmiques du Sacre du printemps" (Lyotard, "Plusieurs

silences," 205-7).

61. Lyotard, Intensit?ten (Berlin: Merv?, 1978), 9.

62. Cf. appendix to the German edition o? Economie libidinale (Lyotard, ?konomie des Wunschs (Bremen: Impuls-Verlag, 1984), 382).


63. Cage, "Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) Continued 1967," A Tear from Monday, 145-62.

64. Cage, "Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) Continued 1967," 161.

65. Cage, "Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) Continued 1967," 156.

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Lyotard Cage