Prieto Lacoue-Labarthe

7/30/2019 Prieto Lacoue-Labarthe

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/prieto-lacoue-labarthe 1/17

Musical Imprints and Mimetic Echoes in Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

Prieto, Eric, 1966-

L'Esprit CrÃ©ateur, Volume 47, Number 2, Summer 2007, pp. 17-32 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/esp.2007.0039

For additional information about this article

Access Provided by University of California , Santa Barbara at 08/26/11 5:34AM GMT

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/esp/summary/v047/47.2prieto.html





Musical Imprints and Mimetic Echoes

in Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

Eric Prieto

O DDLY, PHILIPPE LACOUE-LABARTHE’S SOLE BOOK devotedentirely to a musical subject opens with what appears to be an egre-gious error, its title, which is explained in the following way:

Depuis la fin de la Renaissance [...] la musique occidentale, pour trois siècles au moins, se sera

principalement définie comme musica ficta. Et même l’École de Vienne, mis à part peut-êtreWebern, ne remettra pas en cause cette détermination. Admettons pour simplifier, comme on lefait généralement, que cette nouveauté soit plutôt circonscrite à l’art du chant et que tout com-mence avec l’invention du stile rappresentativo et de ce que Monteverdi appellera la seconda

prattica.1

This description of the evolution of modern music is, historically speaking,accurate enough, but Lacoue-Labarthe’s definition of the term musica ficta—

as representative, imitative, figural music—is misleadingly presented as

being widely accepted when in fact it is nothing of the sort. The standard def-inition of the term comes from medieval music theory (and not the post-Renaissance world, as Lacoue-Labarthe suggests) and has nothing to do withthe role of mimesis in musical expression. It concerns, rather, a question of performance practice central to medieval music: the need for performers toinfer correctly the presence of unnotated modifications to the notes in thescore (accidentals, to use the modern term, which were not notated inmedieval music).2 This is an important topic of study in its own right, but

Lacoue-Labarthe makes no mention of it and, indeed, seems completely igno-rant of this use of the term. Instead he justifies his usage through a kind of ety-mological fantasy.

Le fingere auquel renvoie ficta, dans musica ficta, est l’équivalent latin du plassein/plattein grec:façonner, modeler, sculpter—figurer donc. Mais aussi, la nuance existe déjà en grec, feindre etsimuler, ou forger par l’imagination. On a là l’un des maîtres mots du lexique mimétologique: fic-tion, figure, etc. qu’on verra constamment reparaître dans les pages qui suivent. Il s’agissait devouer la musique à l’imitation. (14)

Fingere is the pivotal term of this etymology, since it serves as an invitationto move onto the terrain of fiction, imitation, and the metaphysics of mimesis,which, following Derrida, he calls mimetologism. This in turn enables

© L’Esprit Créateur, Vol. 47, No. 2 (2007), pp. 17–32



Lacoue-Labarthe to mobilize one of the central tenets of his entire philosoph-ical enterprise: the paradoxical notion that representation is originary, a con-

dition for, not a result of, the existence of models to imitate, even, and perhapsespecially, when mimesis does not seem to be a primary concern.This theoretical parti pris helps to understand, but not necessarily to jus-

tify, Lacoue-Labarthe’s failure to mention the primary definition of the termmusica ficta. The English translation of Musica Ficta seems tacitly to recog-nize this problem, since it adds a second justification of this usage, in a brief parenthetical remark referring us to the authority of Theodor Adorno.3 NowAdorno has indeed used the term in this way, as, for example, in Composing

for the Films,4 and Philosophy of New Music.5 But whereas Adorno introduces

this term in passing, presumably with a wink to those aware of the standarddefinition, Lacoue-Labarthe maintains the secondary connotation of the termin first (and only) position. For Adorno, as for Lacoue-Labarthe, the empha-sis on figurality in post-renaissance music is a problem. But for Adorno it is ahistorical problem, whereas for Lacoue-Labarthe music, all music, is subjecta priori to the principle of mimetic imitation.6 It is this presupposition, nodoubt, that makes him so bold in his appropriation of the term.

It might seem like quibbling to take Lacoue-Labarthe to task on such a

minor point, and I don’t intend to disparage his argument on the grounds thathe misuses musical terms, especially since his redefinition of the term is per-fectly coherent in its own way, and provides more of a rhetorical embellish-ment than a critical cornerstone of his argument. Nonetheless, I insist on theprimary definition here—and will return to it in my conclusion—for three rea-sons. First, I think it actually provides a more interesting alternative to theconclusions he draws from his analyses in Musica Ficta. Second, the standarddefinition of musica ficta may also help resolve some of the larger issues left

hanging in his major essays, including “Typographie” and “L’Écho du sujet.”7

Third, I believe that his reliance on what one might call the etymologicalunconscious of concepts suggests a potential failing of the deconstructionistmethodology favored by Lacoue-Labarthe, which is to underestimate theimportance of more traditionally recognized (i.e. direct or ‘conscious’) formsof historical causality and logical progression, even when they provide moresatisfying answers to the questions posed.

Rather than asking, then, if Lacoue-Labarthe’s appropriation of the termmusica ficta suggests sloppiness or musical ignorance, I will ask if it mightnot be more productive to think of it as a case of repression in the Freudiansense, i.e. as a case of active forgetting that—conscious or not—led him todisregard possibilities that he was either unready, unwilling or unable to

18 SUMMER 2007

L’ESPRIT CRÉATEUR



envisage. Lacoue-Labarthe is so convinced of the centrality of music’s figuraldimension, it seems, that he either forgets or suppresses the more obvious and

arguably more important question of performance practice brought into playby his title. In order to understand what this conception of music contributesto his larger philosophical project, we will first need to understand the rolesattributed to mimesis in that project.

Mimetologism

The central themes of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe’s œuvre have grown outof a deconstructive analysis of the concept of mimesis in the history of phi-losophy. An important part of his work focuses on the place of mimetic rep-

resentation in the arts, but that part is itself situated within a broader infra-structural analysis of mimesis in its psycho-social dimension, that is, mimesisin the sense of individual or collective subjects imitating preexisting models(for example one’s ancestors, leaders, heroes, etc.). Starting with the basicobservation that both individuals and communities construct their identitiesthrough the imitation of models, Lacoue-Labarthe focuses on the complexdynamic between the imitator and the models imitated.

Learning through imitation is, no doubt, a universal and unobjectionable

feature of human societies. But Lacoue-Labarthe emphasizes that imitationalso tends to violence, for at least two reasons. First, we tend to idealize ourmodels, thinking of them as the best or only legitimate ones, and denigratingothers as inferior or as dangerous competitors. Second, as Lacoue-Labartheputs it in “Typographie,” “la hantise du désir est l’originalité, le désir veut lanégation de son origine et l’oubli de son essence” (231, emphasis in original).We tend, in other words, to want to usurp the place of our models, to becomeoriginals ourselves. Whether on the individual or collective level, the very

models we imitate come to be seen as rivals that must be suppressed, as inFreud’s account of the Oedipus complex and René Girard’s account of scape-goating and sacrificial rituals.

In the public sphere, then, we tend to overvalue our models, to the detri-ment of others; in private though we tend to undervalue our models, as a con-sequence of the narcissistic drive to assert our own originality. How can weovercome this dual threat of mimetic violence? We must first recognize,Lacoue-Labarthe affirms, that there is no such thing as a truly original orabsolutely originary model. Any model we could conceivably encounter in thephenomenal world is itself the product of a mimetic process of development,a copy that might appear original because its model is hidden from view.What is originary, then—and this is the crux of Lacoue-Labarthe’s philosoph-

VOL. 47, NO. 2 19

ERIC PRIETO



ical doctrine—is mimesis itself. If we have been so reluctant to recognize thisfact, Lacoue-Labarthe believes, it is because mimesis has itself been subjected

to the Oedipal, Girardian logic of mimetic rivalry.This is where artistic mimesis (as representation of reality) comes intoplay for Lacoue-Labarthe. In a sense, a Girardian sense, the arts provide thealtar upon which psycho-social mimesis is sacrificed, the foreign land towhich conscious knowledge of the infinite reach of mimesis is banished. Forif we seek to situate our psycho-social models on the level of absolute reality(one that is not itself a representation of something prior), then we absolutelymust circumscribe the reach of representation. The practice of relegatingmimesis to the arts—sometimes with honor, but often with disdain and out-

right condemnation, as in Plato—has served reliably as a way to preserve theillusion that we retain access to a beyond of mimesis. Lacoue-Labarthe seesevidence of this throughout the Western philosophical tradition, and he goesto great lengths to show how such influential theorists of mimesis as Plato,Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Girard are themselves engaged in a mimetic rivalrywith mimesis, always seeking to limit its scope. But for every layer they stripaway they discover new ones, and the only way they are ever able to claimsuccess is to blind themselves, more or less innocently, to the infinite reach of

mimesis. This is what Lacoue-Labarthe and Derrida call mimetologism, aterm that denotes the logic governing both mimesis and anti-mimetic dis-course. Mimetologism is metaphysical in the sense that it is inescapable, acondition for thinking rather than a product of thought. This implies, of course, that all deconstructions of mimetologism are subject to the same law.So, in order to avoid simply reproducing the gestures of mimetological para-noia on another level, Lacoue-Labarthe embraces the paradox of “originaryrepresentation” and revels in the sublime vista of reality conceived as imita-

tions of imitations of imitations....At this point, we can begin to suggest the complex strategic role that musicis called upon to play in Lacoue-Labarthe’s thinking. Like the philosophers hecritiques, Lacoue-Labarthe is interested in identifying modes of self-knowl-edge able to escape from the limitations of mimesis. Music, which operates pri-marily in the aural domain, and which has no codified relationship betweensignifier and signified, seems to provide a ready-made alternative to the textualand scopic modes of thought that underlie all traditional theories of mimesisand, more generally, of mimetologism. Lacoue-Labarthe is perfectly aware thatmusic too has a mimetological dimension—his use of the term musica ficta

assumes as much—but his goal is not to do away with mimesis or vanquishmimetologism (since that is impossible) so much as to rehabilitate mimesis by

20 SUMMER 2007




postulating alternative models for it. He seeks to find a way to work produc-tively with mimesis, first by revealing the mystifications resulting from uncrit-

ical reliance on the traditional (scopic, textual) models, then by suggestingalternatives, notably through reference to musical semiotics.

Musical fictions in Musica Ficta

What, then, does music contribute to Lacoue-Labarthe’s critique of mime-tology? And how might it help to overcome the latter’s shortcomings? Themost obvious place to look for answers to these questions is Musica Ficta.Published in 1991, more than ten years after “L’Écho du sujet” and fifteenafter “Typographie,” it nonetheless revisits many of the same questions. It

consists in a series of four case studies (on Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Nietzsche/ Heidegger, and Schoenberg/Adorno) that consider how the encounter withWagner’s music helped to shape the aesthetic and identitarian theories of theartists and thinkers studied. In each case, the basic significance of Wagner’smusic is tied to its role in bringing the romantic debate over absolute and pro-grammatic music to a head, and evaluated in light of that debate’s repercus-sions on the practice of philosophy and literature. Wagner’s aesthetic theoryseems to pose a fundamental threat to the aesthetic theories of each of his test

subjects, whether to poetry as the highest form of artistic expression (the“Baudelaire” and “Mallarmé” essays), to philosophy’s understanding of thenature of truth (“Heidegger”) or to music conceived as a medium that is (orshould be) beyond mimesis (“Schoenberg”).8 Following his theoretical pro-clivities, Lacoue-Labarthe frames these relations in terms of mimetic rival-ries, in which philosophy and literature either envy music’s expressive powerand putative semiotic purity or, conversely, condemn unabashedly mimeticmusic like Wagner’s for its apparent impurity. Either way, the mimetic impe-

tus and expressive power of Wagner’s music are understood to make of it afearsome rival.The first essay presents Baudelaire as a poet so overwhelmed by the expe-

rience of Wagner’s music that he abandons all hope of competing with musicin the domains of expressivity and lyricism, a crisis that leads him to redirecthis efforts away from the sublime poetic effects he had previously sought andtowards a more properly deconstructive mode of poetry. This shift coincideswith Baudelaire’s move from verse in Les Fleurs du mal to the desacralizingaesthetic of the prose poems of Le Spleen de Paris. In this way, Wagner’smusic is implicated in one of the major turning points in the history of lyricalsubjectivity, effectively putting an end to lyric poetry’s commitment to docu-menting the effusions of a unified subject and unleashing a new poetics, com-

VOL. 47, NO. 2 21

ERIC PRIETO



mitted to “l’idée d’un sujet divisé, déchiré ou même, plus justement, écartelé,et par là sans réconciliation possible avec soi” (85). It is, according to Lacoue-

Labarthe, Baudelaire’s (poetic) prose essay on Wagner that marks, textually aswell as theoretically, the decisive moment of this transformation.Apart from the central role attributed to Wagner’s influence, this reading of

Baudelaire’s career seems familiar enough. But the main thrust of Lacoue-Labarthe’s essay is elsewhere. For if he asserts that “au bout du compte sonWagner n’est pas Wagner” (77), it is because he believes that Baudelaire has,no doubt unwittingly, confused Wagner’s music with a paradoxical form of textuality. This argument turns, somewhat precariously, on Baudelaire’s dis-cussion of the Wagnerian leitmotif, which happens to use the verb “blasonner,”

and which leads Lacoue-Labarthe into another of his etymological fantasies.

Ainsi peut-il [Baudelaire] écrire que “chaque personnage est pour ainsi dire blasonné par lamélodie qui représente son caractère moral et le rôle qu’il est appelé à jouer dans la fable.” Lamusique n’est donc langage, elle ne signifie, que pour autant qu’elle a le pouvoir de “blasonner”ou d’emblématiser. J’aimerais plutôt dire: de typer, au sens où ce mot, en grec, désigne l’empreinte,la marque imprimée par un sceau, la frappe. L’allemand traduit par prägen (Prägung), et l’on saitque ce terme, dans la tradition de l’idéalisme spéculatif, sert à désigner le mode d’apparition etde production de la figure, de la Gestalt . (88)

Readers of Lacoue-Labarthe’s work will recognize this theme of the type,most fully developed in the “Typographie” essay (to which a footnote refersus in the above text). For Lacoue-Labarthe, the logic of mimesis (mimetolo-gism) goes hand in hand with what he calls “onto-typology”: the idea of thehuman subject as a preexisting “type” or “character” or “seal” that is pre-imprinted on the mind/soul/consciousness of the individual. Just as traditionaltheories of artistic mimesis assume the existence of a preexisting model or

figure that is imitated in the work, traditional notions of subjectivity assumethe existence of a pre-existing “type” or “character” whose example guides usin our own thoughts and actions (even those assumed to be most spontaneousor free). This is precisely what begins to be called into question as Baudelaire,in his rivalry with Wagner’s musical expressionism, shifts from verse to prosepoetry and to the disconcertingly de-centered, urbanized modes of subjectiv-ity explored in Le Spleen de Paris. But whereas Baudelaire seems at times tohave experienced this shift as a defeat (a splenetic retreat before superiorforce), Lacoue-Labarthe emphasizes its importance as a major step forward inthe history of subjectivity.

The onto-typological dimension of this argument depends entirely on anetymologically justified shift (supplied by Lacoue-Labarthe, although pro-

22 SUMMER 2007




jected onto Baudelaire) from: 1) the theatrical characters or “types” on stagein Wagner’s operas, whose personalities are “emblazoned” upon them by their

respective leitmotive; to 2) typographical characters and textual imprints inthe print-setter’s sense; to 3) the more general psychological, moral or spiri-tual character, figure or Gestalt that has been traditionally taken to define theessence of the human subject. One might ask—I will do so later in thisessay—how justifiable it is to link music to writing and subjectivity on thebasis of this primarily etymological argument, but for now I will turn to theMallarmé chapter of Musica Ficta, which develops the political implicationsof this “typographical” reading of Baudelaire, extending it to the formation of collective subjects.

In Mallarmé, Lacoue-Labarthe sees a poet reacting to the same challengeas Baudelaire, but seeking to turn it to his advantage—to “reprendre à lamusique son bien”—by redefining the essential nature of artistic expression.Instead of despairing about his inability to compete directly with the over-whelming expressive force of Wagner’s music (understood in the most literalsense as the sheer material volume and intensity of the musical performance,its technological superiority, with which poetry could never compete on itsown), Mallarmé decides to shift the field of combat. The true material of the

arts, he argues, is not to be sought in their physicality (whether visual,sonorous or otherwise) but in the abstract, ideal realm of thought: the Idea. Byreframing the debate in these terms, Mallarmé is able to suggest that themateriality of the musical performance is actually a liability, a distractionfrom the purely ideational content of art (i.e. “l’absente de tous bouquets”).

The shift from a physical stage to a mental one leads Lacoue-Labarthe intoanother extended discussion of onto-typology, but this time articulated insociological terms touching on religion, politics, and nationalism rather than

in the individual terms of consciousness and self-expression of the Baudelaireessay. Why, Lacoue-Labarthe asks, does Mallarmé pick up this onto-typolog-ical discourse, according to which

il revient à l’art, dans l’âge où défaille et se défait la transcendance, de retrouver son antique des-tination et d’ériger le type, ou si l’on préfère la figure mythique, où l’humanité, ou peut-être une

humanité (un peuple, par exemple), puisse se reconnaître et se saisir dans son essence et sa pro-priété constitutive, moins par “identification,” du reste, que sous l’action directe—sous l’impres-

sion ou la frappe— du sceau historial qu’est le type? (122)

One answer to this question might be that there is no way to avoid it. It isaxiomatic for Lacoue-Labarthe that no matter how hard one tries, there is noescaping onto-typology, any more than mimetologism. Lacoue-Labarthe uses

VOL. 47, NO. 2 23

ERIC PRIETO



this axiom to argue that Mallarmé’s aesthetic—despite its withdrawal fromthe physical stage and its subordination of actual music and performance to

the “archi-musical” performance on the inner stage of thought (“L’Idée”) andversification—can in no way be taken for a withdrawal from politics and com-munal identification. Lacoue-Labarthe is careful to distinguish between themeans employed by Mallarmé and Wagner, but he suggests that the ultimateobjectives are very closely related, if not identical: a communal ideal con-ceived in terms of a quasi-religious fusion of the populace.

Il y a bien, c’est vrai, une destination éminemment politique du théâtre. C’est affaire, toujours, dereligion, comme chez Wagner. Mais “politique” est à prendre au sens strict. Le grand art auquel

songe Mallarmé est un art d’état, un art civique, sans aucune tentation démagogique. On s’en faitl’idée nette lorsqu’il proteste avec la dernière énergie, c’est-à-dire une violence certaine, contrele peu de grandeur, justement, et l’affligeante “laïcité” de l’état moderne dégradé, au nom de laconception proprement religieuse qu’il se fait de la Cité. (107)

Lacoue-Labarthe is discreet about the conclusions we should draw from thiscomparison, but he makes it clear that Mallarmé’s preoccupation with theBabel of national languages, with the words of the tribe and so forth, is closelyrelated to the more explicit nationalist mythology on display in Wagner’s

operas. Does the indictment of onto-typologism in Mallarmé’s thought, then,combined with the idea of a mimetic rivalry between music and poetry, sug-gest that we should think of him as a kind of Gallic champion of the Idea,wading into combat against the myth and bombast of German musical drama?Or even, pushing things to the absurd, that the desire to “reprendre à lamusique son bien” might have some connection with the nationalist goal of taking back Alsace-Lorraine? This, no doubt, would be taking things too far.Still, it is certain that Lacoue-Labarthe’s insistence on the onto-typological

dimension of Mallarmé’s thought is meant to prove that no matter how rare-fied his aesthetic might be, it invites the same kind of nationalist appropria-tion Wagner’s music was subjected to: where there is onto-typologism thereis always the danger of falling back into archaic, violent (because mimetic inGirard’s sense) notions of the self and the community. It is no mere editorialaccident, then, that the Mallarmé essay leads right into an essay about Hei-degger, whose critique of Wagner’s aesthetic serves as a proxy for his ownphilosophical defense, a way to inoculate his philosophical system against thepersonal taint that he bore because of his decision to cooperate with the Nazisafter 1933.

Lacoue-Labarthe’s essay takes as its starting point Heidegger’s admit-tedly brief, veiled, and apparently offhand allusions to Nietzsche’s critique

24 SUMMER 2007




of Wagner. That critique, as Lacoue-Labarthe reminds us—to be found inNietzsche’s post-Schopenhauerian, virulently anti-Wagnerian late texts such

as The Case of Wagner— describes Wagner’s musical dramas as lulling lis-teners into a “feminized” state of passivity, like a drug that lowers the audi-ence’s critical resistance. In this way, Lacoue-Labarthe extrapolates, themusic enabled the Germanic or Nordic “remythologizing” of identity towork its way into the belief system of susceptible (or “impressionable,” tofollow the typographical metaphor) audience members, eventually makingpossible the aestheticization of politics characteristic of National Socialism.In his attempt to distance himself from his earlier ties with Nazism, Hei-degger seconds Nietzsche’s critique, praising him for escaping from the pas-

sive mentality supposedly encouraged by Wagner’s music and embracingthe “task of questioning” that he sees as necessary if we are to free ourselvesfrom outdated (mimetic) conceptions of truth as homoiosis (adequation) andtowards the more properly active quest for truth as aletheia (unveiling). Thereception of Wagner’s music, in other words, is held forth as a powerfulexample of the dangers of aesthetic passivity typically attributed to mime-sis by its critics.

Like Heidegger and Nietzsche before him, Lacoue-Labarthe emphasizes

the importance of this opposition between passivity and activity. But whereHeidegger uses the notion of aletheia to criticize traditional mimetic theoriesof truth-as-homoiosis, Lacoue-Labarthe argues that aletheia itself has amimetic dimension, and he attempts to use that mimetically inflected defini-tion of aletheia as part of a revisionist rehabilitation of mimesis. The critics of representation from Plato on, Lacoue-Labarthe reminds us, tend to assume apassive definition of mimesis, construing it as mere imitation, as copying or(to borrow from Deleuze) tracing, in which the artist more or less mechani-

cally copies objects from the real world. But the proponents of mimesis,among them Aristotle and Diderot, characterize mimesis as an active supple-ment to nature, a way to achieve ever greater levels of truth and aesthetic per-fection. This active mode of mimesis as supplement is what Lacoue-Labarthecalls “general mimesis” (also characterizing it as “good mimesis”). In anearlier article on Diderot’s Paradoxe sur le comédien, “Le Paradoxe et lamimésis,” he defines general mimesis as that which

ne reproduit rien de donné (qui ne re-produit donc rien du tout), mais qui supplée à un certain

défaut de la nature, à son incapacité à tout faire, tout organiser, tout œuvrer—tout produire. C’estune mimésis productive, c’est-à-dire une imitation de la phusis comme force productrice ou, sil’on préfère, comme poïèsis. Et qui accomplit, comme telle, et mène à terme, finit la productionnaturelle. La ‘perfectionne’, comme le dit Diderot.9

VOL. 47, NO. 2 25

ERIC PRIETO



We should notice here the subtle but important shift in the object of mimesisas theorized by Lacoue-Labarthe. Properly conceived, mimesis does not imi-

tate objects or events found in the natural world but the productive force of nature itself. It is in this sense that artistic mimesis can be said to imitate “riende donné”; it is itself a creative force, a kind of lesser nature that engages inproductive rather than merely reproductive exercises.

With this we reach what is no doubt the heart of the matter for Lacoue-Labarthe: the possibility of finding an escape from the menace of mimeticviolence in its psycho-social sense, an escape that can recuperate mimesis by“converting” it from its passive to its active mode. Musica Ficta does notattempt to carry out this project, however, but confines itself to mapping out

that part of the critique of onto-typology and mimetologism elucidated by therivalry between music, philosophy, and literature. In order to find Lacoue-Labarthe’s most complete attempt to use music as the model of an escapefrom onto-typologism we must return to an earlier essay, “L’Écho du sujet.”

From Narcissus to Echo

How might a post-onto-typological subject be theorized? And what mightmusic contribute to this project? This is what Lacoue-Labarthe sets out to

show in “L’Écho du sujet,” using as his point of departure the autobiographi-cal writings of the psychoanalyst Theodor Reik, in particular The Haunting

Melody: Psychoanalytic Experiences in Life and Music.10 As Reik suggests byhis title, music played an important role in his life, notably in providing himwith the central insight of the “third ear,” his major contribution to psychoan-alytic theory.11 The finding that analysts needed to listen to the vocal patternsof their patients as well as to the semantic content of their words was whatenabled Reik, by his own account, to develop his distinctive identity as a psy-

choanalyst, putting an end to his Oedipal dependency on Sigmund Freud.Reik provides the central case study in Lacoue-Labarthe’s argument, but it isin fact only a stepping-stone to a much more ambitious goal involving a possibleessential link between music and identity. Could there be, Lacoue-Labarthe asks,

quelque chose de nécessaire—une contrainte inhérente à l’être et à la structure mêmes du sujet,à son désir de s’atteindre, de se représenter, de se concevoir, à l’impossibilité où il se trouve, aussibien, de se capter ou même de s’entre-voir, etc.—[qui] lie ensemble, effectivement, compulsionautobiographique et hantise musicale? (227)

The entire essay implies at least the possibility of an affirmative response tothis question. But, as we shall see, his attempt to provide that response suffersa surprising, one might even say suicidal, fate.

26 SUMMER 2007




In “L’Écho du sujet,” as in “Typographie,” Lacoue-Labarthe sets out tocontest or deconstruct onto-typological paradigms of the self, which theorize

subjective and collective identity in the typographical terms of immutableimprints, universal types, and essential character traits. To a certain extent, inLacoue-Labarthe’s view, psychoanalysis had already sought to do this. Buteven psychoanalysis was unable to escape entirely from the logic of onto-typologism, with its linguistic bias (the talking cure), its specular model of theself based on metaphors of vision and mirroring, and its reliance onimmutable archetypes and heroic models (such as Oedipus, Moses, andLeonardo). These biases of onto-typological thought, which, according toLacoue-Labarthe, permeate the history of Western thought “from Plato to

Lacan,” are what prevent even the most sophisticated identitarian theoriesfrom ever fully leaving behind naïve mimetological assumptions about thenature of subjectivity. The overarching goal of “L’Écho du sujet,” then,announced on page 227, is to overcome the limitations of onto-typologicalthought by re-imagining “la théorie du sujet” in terms borrowed from theacoustic domain, with music, and within music rhythm, playing a central role.This, Lacoue-Labarthe tells us, will entail moving “from Narcissus to Echo,”which is to say, from the specular, reproductive gaze to the production of sub-

jectivity through a kind of rhythmic repetition of projected selves, analogousto the way motifs are deployed in musical composition.

Reik’s initial theory of haunting melodies (i.e. those obsessive melodiesthat get ‘stuck in your head’) is strictly Freudian: he argues that they arecaused by “an analogy of situation” between present and past, and reveal thepresence of unconscious impulses. But deciding that he lacks the expertisenecessary to explain the specifically musical associations that make certainmelodies more suggestive than others (as opposed to verbal associations in the

lyrics, which is what Freud emphasized in his efforts to explain this phe-nomenon), Reik cuts short his exploration, “dissatisfied, even disgusted withmyself” ( Haunting Melody, 250). It is at this point that Lacoue-Labarthe takesover, in an attempt to complete Reik’s theory of music and subjectivity. Hisargument is a complex, multi-fronted one, much too involved to reproducehere. But summarizing brutally, we can abstract from it three primary pointsof contact between musical rhythm and the constitution of the subject, all of which are hypothesized initially by Reik and then elaborated in deconstruc-tive fashion by Lacoue-Labarthe.

1) Repetition as organization. Whether on the psychic or the musical plane, rep-etition plays a crucial role in the production of meaning. Psychically, it helps

VOL. 47, NO. 2 27

ERIC PRIETO



to “bind” or “discharge” disruptive elements of incongruity (as in Freud’stheories of trauma, mourning, and the repetition compulsion in Beyond the

Pleasure Principle). Musically, it organizes potentially disruptive thematicmaterials into productive signifying structures. In both cases, it creates pat-terns that reveal underlying structures and deeper levels of meaning.

2) Pattern as revelatory of meaning. In both song and psychoanalysis, it isnecessary for the audience/analyst to extrapolate meaning not only fromthe verbal content of the discourse (the lyrics/the confession) but alsofrom non-verbal patterns and inflections. This is an obvious point inmusic, but it counts as one of Reik’s main contributions to psychoanalytictheory. (His theory of the “third ear,” as mentioned previously, stresses the

importance of interpreting vocal inflections and patterns of patients aswell as the semantic content of their words.)

3) Rhythm as ethos. According to Reik, all individuals, like all musical works,have a characteristic rhythmic profile, which reveals their fundamentalcharacter or ethos. In other words the large-scale behavioral patterns of anindividual can be analyzed in much the same way as the patterns of repeti-tion and variation in musical works. Lacoue-Labarthe concurs, invoking thePlatonic and Aristotelian association between rhythmic modes in music,

lexis in oratory, and the ethos of the speaker as support for this argument.

If these analogies between music and subjectivity seem tenuous here, it isbecause they are. Despite fifty pages of dense analysis, and efforts to groundthem in theories ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Heidegger and Lacan,Lacoue-Labarthe finds himself constrained to admit (in the climactic sectionof the essay titled “Le Rythme, le type, le caractère”) that “il faudrait probable-ment désolidariser, autant qu’il est possible de le faire, la question du rythme

... de toute problématique musicale” (289, emphasis and ellipsis in text).Actual music, it seems, was not so crucial after all.This negative conclusion, as he somewhat litotically admits, might “sur-

prendre un peu au terme [...] de cette longue traversée” (289). Apparentlyunable to go further in the search for a demonstrably literal link between auto-biography and music, he pulls up short, abandoning the quest, much as Reikhad done before him. But whereas Reik had at least left open the possibilityof pursuing the issue further, Lacoue-Labarthe forecloses debate entirely,deciding in a surprising about-face that it is now necessary to deconstruct theterm rhythm itself, along with all the theoretical possibilities for the relation-ship between music and autobiography it had seemed to suggest. This rever-sal is triggered by the discovery or recollection of Émile Benveniste’s essay

28 SUMMER 2007




on the etymological derivation of the word rhythm, “La Notion de ‘rythme’dans son expression linguistique.”12 What he retains from Benveniste is that

the Greek term ruthmos and its derivates may have at their origin a typo-graphical sense, emphasizing not the temporal flux of water (and, by exten-sion, music, consciousness, etc.) but rhythm as a visual, alphabetical concept:rhythm as form, figure or schema. What had initially appeared to be a domainsafely insulated from all “typographical” conceptions of mimesis and the self turns out to be nothing more than a primitive instance of onto-typologicalthought. In fact, he contends, the etymological history of the term “rhythm”suggests that the origins of the typographical logic he studies go back muchfurther than even he had suspected. Thus, having set out promising a new

musical or rhythmic theory of the subject, one able to escape from the con-fines of onto-typology, he concludes by merely emphasizing the extent towhich the concept of rhythm (and by extension music) is itself shaped by thespecular, optic logic of onto-typology.

Gone, then, is the attempt to find an essential link between music andautobiography. Gone too the attempt to overcome the constraints of onto-typological models of the self through music. From the point of view of thetheory of typography, this is perhaps good news—confirmation from an unex-

pected source. But for those of us seeking new insights into the constructionof the self, this is a disappointing way to conclude, especially when we con-sider that Lacoue-Labarthe, like Reik before him, feels obscurely that there issomething there, something vital in the relationship between music and subjectivity, although he is unable to put his finger on it. Could we have imag-ined a different outcome? I think so, and I would like to conclude by sug-gesting a way this might have been done.

Musica Fictarevisited: from etymology to performativityIt is the etymological analysis of the word rhythm that seems to Lacoue-

Labarthe to offer the decisive proof of its onto-typological implications, justas it did with the term musica ficta and Baudelaire’s use of the verb blason-

ner . In all three cases though, the derivations seem forced—too perfect, trop

beau— since they let him slip conveniently back to his master thesis. More-over, his interpretations of the given etymologies are not the only ones possi-ble. Indeed, in the case of rhythm, even if we accept his argument for empha-sizing the alphabetical origins of the term (and the much more tenuous claimthat this connotation has remained active throughout the historical trajectoryof the word and its derivates), this need not imply a negative retreat to the pas-sivity of pre-existing characters and fixed types. On the contrary, to the extent

VOL. 47, NO. 2 29

ERIC PRIETO



that rhythm in music involves clear demarcations within amorphous soundstreams, and that it is characterized by percussive moments—like the type-

head striking the writing surface—there may be good non-etymological rea-sons to adopt an active, rather than a passive, conception of the analogybetween typography and musical rhythm. Given this, the term could just aseasily lead in the more active, analytic direction evoked in the Heidegger andDiderot essays discussed above.

The argument here would be somewhat analogous to the old distinctionbetween line and color in painting: rhythm, like line in painting, provides uswith a powerful analytic principle (from the Greek analyein, to break up), away to make sense out of phenomena by dividing up what might otherwise be

perceived only as amorphous masses of material into discreet, intelligibleunits. In this respect Lacoue-Labarthe seems to have misunderstood one of hisown epigraphs, Schlegel’s assertion that “Le rythme est l’idée de la musique”(quoted in “L’Écho du sujet,” 285). Lacoue-Labarthe interprets Schlegel’s useof the word “idea” as implying a reversion to the optic model implicit in thegreek eidos. But we could understand Schlegel with equal plausibility as argu-ing that rhythm is what makes musical sounds intelligible. Rhythm is to pitch,we could say, what idea is to feeling, or linguistic articulations to “thought-

sound” in Saussure’s well-known wave analogy.13 And of course to this list wewould have to add the distinction between active mimesis and passive mime-sis in Diderot, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. In each case, what is involved is aprinciple that enables us to draw clarity and significance out of relativelyundifferentiated blocks of information.

What is most significant about this more active understanding of the termrhythm (as essentially a synonym of analysis) is that it might help to resolve theproblem of post-mimetological subjectivity explored by Lacoue-Labarthe.

From this angle the typographical theory of the subject (the character, theimprint) would describe a secondary stage of subject formation, one extracted(actively) from a pre-analytic mass of disorganized, and therefore unintelligible,marks. Indeed, in his Diderot essay Lacoue-Labarthe makes a decisive move inthis direction.14 In that essay Lacoue-Labarthe, following Diderot, argues thatthe competent actor is not, cannot be, an “homme sensible,” who (passively)experiences the emotions evoked in the script. Such an actor would lack the crit-ical acuity, technical discipline, and presence of mind necessary to execute therole. Nor can he be one who mechanically re-produces a stock set of charactertraits (or he would be a mere caricaturist). Rather, he focuses all of his analyticskills and technical abilities on the task of creating in his audience a mimeticillusion that he does not himself experience. The actor is simultaneously

30 SUMMER 2007




immersed in and alienated by his role.15 It is, moreover, from this operation thathe derives his own (public or at least professional) identity. In a sense, I am

never more myself than when I am playing a role, projecting myself out of myself and into the (imaginatively imitated) personality of another. Re-produc-ing another character, I also produce my own—not by trying actually to assumethat identity (i.e. modeling my own personality uncritically on that of the char-acter), but by performing the analytic work required to bring the character to lifefor others, by working to produce the illusion that I have become that character.Crucially, this image of the performer marks the point at which the two maintypes of mimesis studied by Lacoue-Labarthe converge. The performer issimultaneously engaged in an act of psycho-social mimesis (putting to work all

the skills learned imitatively from teachers and other exemplary models) and of mimesis in its aesthetic sense, as representation (re-presenting such referents ascharacters, passions, states of mind, etc.).

If we consider how a character like Rameau’s nephew in Diderot’s Le

Neveu de Rameau makes use of the interplay between theatrical performance,musical performance, and the performance of self, we can already sense howthis theory of mimetic subjectivity might be applied. We are also in a place tounderstand what the term musica ficta— in its primary, performative, sense—

could contribute to Lacoue-Labarthe’s theory of subjectivity. Musica ficta— inthe sense of inferring unnotated accidentals—presupposes the need for a subject, the musician, who is able to interpret correctly the incomplete symbolsin the score. Like Diderot’s actor, such a musician is engaged in an immersivemimetic task—the (re)presentation of a (partially) pre-inscribed intention toan audience. As with Diderot’s actor, it is not the musician’s character or sen-sitivity that makes possible the correct interpretation of the score, but a com-bination of expertise, analytic ability, training, long experience, thorough

preparation, mastery of tonal syntax, and musical intelligence. Thus con-ceived, the performer is a subject neither in the passive, imitative mode nor inthe naïve romantic mode of the fully autonomous, self-created subject, but ina more properly postmodern mode: the subject is always an intermediary,transitive figure, a product of social forces who passes along a discourse whileimprinting it with the kind of personal authority that comes, not from adher-ence to some idealized model, but through a long record of successful per-formances. In this sense, the image of the medieval musician before a crypticscore might well be the most suitable emblem for the nexus of music, mime-sis, and subjectivity that Lacoue-Labarthe explores. And the term musica ficta

would be revealed to imply, not a limiting subordination of musical expres-sion to the constraints of imitative representation, but the liberation of the per-

VOL. 47, NO. 2 31

ERIC PRIETO



forming subject from the (literally) typographical constraint of having to pas-sively reproduce what is printed in a score.

University of California, Santa Barbara

Notes

1. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Musica Ficta (figures de Wagner) (Paris: Christian Bourgois,1991), 12-13.

2. See the entry “Music Ficta” in the Grove Encyclopedia of Music. Neither the Grove nor anyof the standard reference works I have consulted make the slightest gesture in the directionof Lacoue-Labarthe’s usage. From a music history standpoint, then, Lacoue-Labarthe’s def-inition is simply wrong.

3. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Musica Ficta: Figures of Wagner (Stanford: Stanford U P,1994), xvi.4. Theodor Adorno and Hanns Eisler, Composing for the Films (London: The Athlone P,

1994), 85.5. Theodor Adorno, Philosophy of New Music (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2006), 35.

Many thanks to Rose Rosengard Subotnik and Derek Katz for bringing these references tomy attention.

6. For a probing account of the differing attitudes towards mimesis in Lacoue-Labarthe andAdorno, see Martin Jay, “Mimesis and Mimetology: Adorno and Lacoue-Labarthe” in The

Semblance of Subjectivity, Lambert Zuiderhaart and Tom Huhn, eds. (Cambridge: MIT P,1997), 29-53.

7. “Typographie,” in Sylviane Agacinski, ed., Mimesis: des articulations (Paris: Flammarion,

1975), 166-275. “L’Écho du sujet,” Le Sujet de la philosophie (Paris: Aubier-Flammarion,1979). These essays, which announce the major programmatic goals of Lacoue-Labarthe’sentire career, are available in English translation in Typography (Stanford: Stanford U P,1989).

8. Due to space limitations, I will deal only with the first three of these essays here. My studyof the fourth, on Adorno and Schoenberg, is currently in preparation and will be publishedseparately.

9. “Le Paradoxe et la mimésis,” L’Imitation des modernes: typographies II (Paris: Galilée,1986), 24.

10. Theodor Reik, The Haunting Melody: Psychoanalytic Experiences in Life and Music (NewYork: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1953).

11. Theodor Reik, Listening with the Third Ear (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1948).

12. Émile Benveniste, “La Notion de ‘rythme’ dans son expression linguistique,” Problèmes delinguistique générale, I (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), 327-35.

13. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court,1983), 111.

14. The Diderot essay (1980), it should be noted, was originally published one year after“L’Écho du sujet” (1979). In this sense it signals an important new development in Lacoue-Labarthe’s theory of the subject. Curiously though, the musical implications of Diderot’stheory are left unexplored in Musica Ficta, although, as I try to suggest in the followingpages, these considerations might have strengthened the book considerably. Once again,Lacoue-Labarthe’s philosophical investment in the theory of onto-typology seems to haveblinded him to other possibilities.

15. In “Typographie,” Lacoue-Labarthe quotes Nietzsche to make a similar point: “Qu’est-ce

que la capacité d’improviser à partir d’un caractère étranger? Il n’est pourtant pas questiond’une imitation, car ce n’est pas la réflexion qui est à l’origine de telles improvisations [...].C’est d’abord la libération de sa propre individualité, donc l’acte de se plonger dans unereprésentation [...]. Chaque caractère est une représentation intérieure” (245).

32 SUMMER 2007


Documents

Prieto Lacoue-Labarthe