Abstract
Is it even possible to resist or oppose neoliberalism? I consider two responses that translate musical practices into counter-hegemonic political strategies: Jacques Attali's theory of ‘composition’ and the biopolitics of ‘uncool’. Reading Jacques Attali's Noise through Foucault's late work, I argue that Attali's concept of ‘repetition’ is best understood as a theory of neoliberal biopolitics, and his theory composition is actually a model of deregulated subjectivity. Composition is thus not an alternative to neoliberalism but its quintessence. An aesthetics and ethos of ‘uncool’ might be a more viable alternative. If and when they function as bad, unprofitable investments, uncool practices like smoothness (predictable regularity) can undercut neoliberal imperatives to self-capitalisation. I consider both the impact of neoliberalism on music, and how the study of music can advance theories of neoliberalism.
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