Music and Postmodernity

Abstract

Translated by David Bennett I When there are no more rules at all, the time of atonalism has come. Of what precedes it, absolutely nothing remains. Yet, the sound remains ... And the sound leaves immense remains. I would like to start with this simultaneously melancholy and joyful observation of Pierre Schaeffer's, written ten years ago, to identify, once again, the nature of the postmodern question. In The Postmodern Condition, which is a Report written some twelve years ago for a Canadian institution, I tried to understand, and to make understood, an event. (2) To lend an ear to an event is the most difficult thing in the world. An event is not what occupies the front page of newspapers. It is something that supervenes, that comes out of nowhere. As such, this thing is still nothing: we don't know how to explain it or even to name it. We are not ready for it, we don't have what is needed to welcome or to account for it in a system of signification, what is needed to identify it. And yet, if it occurs, it must touch some 'surface' where it leaves its trace: a consciousness, an unconsciousness, individual or collective. Perhaps it even had to invent this surface in order to leave such a trace. This trace is not comprehensible immediately. It is a strange trace, a trace of strangeness, awaiting its identification, although the event has already occurred. This is why it is difficult to 'lend an ear' to the event: it has already passed even before it is clear what it is. The Report thus attempted to articulate what event touched developed societies (for this was the object of the study, as specified by the commission) at the end of the 1970s. I thought of this event as western. The West is the part of the human world that 'invents' the Idea of emancipation, of the self-constitution of communities by themselves, and that tries to realise this Idea. The realisation of this idea rests on the principle that history is the record of the progress of freedom in human space and time. The first expression of this principle is Christian, the latest Marxist. The Postmodern Condition referred to the discourse of these philosophies of history by the shorthand name of 'grand narrative'. There are several grand narratives co-existing in western thought. The postmodern condition is the result of these grand narratives ceasing to be credible. They are no longer able to legitimate, in the name of progress, the benefits and detriments that the West has bestowed upon itself and the world throughout the centuries. I will not explain here the grounds that may be found to justify this diagnosis. They are obviously open to debate, and the diagnosis is itself too vast not to be questioned. Nevertheless, the recent implosion of the states founded on the Marxist grand narrative brings a sort of plausibility to the hypothesis formulated ten years earlier. It will be objected that the fall of the Soviet Union proves, rather, the vitality of the capitalist grand narrative. I shall respond that there is no capitalist grand narrative. Capitalism develops everything, but this development is not necessarily the progress of freedom. This development complicates the relations between the elements of a system in such a way that that system finds itself performing better. Most often, this occurs at the expense of another system, which will be condemned to disappear if it does not improve its performance. This is a process objectively governed by a law of increasing differentiation (negative entropy). It operates without finality. It is indifferent to good and bad, right and wrong, or, if we prefer, the only good that it recognises is the improvement of performances. We can only influence it, give it directions, or moderate it by working in its way, or within its terms. This is obvious in matters concerning economics or in techno-scientific research. The postmodern condition is that of human beings when they are caught in this process, which simultaneously develops their powers and demands their enslavement. …