Post-music: On Jean-François Lyotard's Philosophy of Music

Drawing on Adorno and Benjamin, Cage and Feldman, Jean-François Lyotard explores, in both his early and late work, the singular, event-like and affective nature of music, from which important implications arise for both his philosophy of the subject and his aesthetics. The decentralising effect of music on the traditional, consciousness-philosophical form of the subject provides a central starting point for Lyotard's critical contribution to the philosophy of the subject. Furthermore, an analysis of his writings on the philosophy of music suggests an illuminating shift regarding the significance of the sublime for the interpretation of Lyotard's aesthetics. The title derives from the constant feature of Lyotard's philosophical perspective on music, which can be summarised, on the one hand, as a search for the unconscious in music and the unrepresentable in sound, and, on the other hand, as an exploration of the aesthetic effects of sound that transcend the subject.