Nietzsche, Wagner, Biopolitics, Race, & Music

“Wagner makes music sick” (Nietzsche Contra Wagner, 664). “Life itself has become a problem” (Nietzsche Contra Wagner, 681). To mark Wagner’s bicentennial, the Guardian published this essay on the connection many of his contemporaries made between his music and mental…

Why does Plato hate the flute/aulos? And what does this have to do with women?

Why does Plato hate the flute/aulos? And what does this have to do with women?

These people, largely uneducated and unable to entertain themselves over their wine by using their own voices to generate conversation, pay premium prices for flute-girls and rely on the extraneous voice of the reed flute as background music for their…

On Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Languages: unless you realize this is about the overtone series, you probably misread Rousseau’s argument

So, this post is really rough and sorely in need of editing, but I need to get it up and running for my Phil of Music course, which starts Monday. In some ways it’s a tl;dr of one of the…

Bodies & affect but no feminist/queer/critical race theorists? Must be a philosophy conference.

I think it’s relatively uncontroversial to claim that feminist philosophy, feminist theory (which is basically feminist philosophy done outside philosophy departments, so this includes lots of continental feminists), queer theory, the critical philosophy of race, and postcolonial theory are responsible…

Music Making & Bodily Discipline

I’ve been prepping for my summer Philosophy of Music course, and this includes developing some basic music/sound-making exercises. The course is almost entirely philosophy students, and I’m not assuming any familiarity with music practice or theory. But, because it’s important…

More outtakes from my article on Attali, music, & neoliberalism

I’m editing down an article on Jacques Attali, Foucault, music, & neoliberalism. I’ve posted some outtakes before, and here are some more. They’re somewhat disjointed, as outtakes tend to be, but they’re generally about Attali’s theory of subjectivity. “Composer” as…