How political is music?

An approach through Adorno and Rancire

Joo Pedro Cachopo

In a certain sense, to ask: how political is music? is likely to be a misleading question. Not because it immediately assumes that music is actually political a hypothesis I would be rather keen on admitting but because it may suggest the idea that there is only one possible way of answering it. The first point I would like to emphasize is that no answer to the question how political is music? can be exclusive. For example, it would be simplistic to reduce the political character of music to the social context of its practice. If we did so to give the most expressive example , it would be scarcely possible to think of opera beyond the concept of distinction (Bourdieu), condemning it to be nothing but an elitist genre. It is not false to say that opera has been, as a social practice, an elitist genre throughout the last four centuries of its existence, but it isnt true either, in the sense that it doesnt tell everything about opera, as well as about the multiple ways different operas can be perceived, experienced, or interpreted even from a political point of view. Given the wide field of problems opened by the initial question, I shall engage myself in this paper with one possible, though not exclusive, way of answering it: I shall adopt the perspective of the immanent logic of music, trying both to elucidate how mediated is the relationship between society and music (within music) and to spell out what it means to speak of a politics of music, which is to be clearly distinguished from the idea of a political music. In order to face all these problems, the concept of mediation [Vermittlung] and the notion of distribution of the sensible [partage du sensible], respectively developed by Adorno and Rancire in their aesthetical writings, turn out to be extremely useful. The hypothesis Ill try to share with you is that these two concepts may constitute together a challenging conceptual frame in order to think the political character of music, without reducing it either to its immediate function as a social practice or to its explicit meaning as a political message.

The outstanding relevance of the concept of mediation is far from being neglected by sociologists of music. Although, considering it as it appears in Adornos aesthetical writings and,

especially, in those he devoted to music, the concept of mediation [Vermittlung] might probably seem surprisingly abstract not to say incomprehensible to someone acquainted with media studies, for example. To avoid the risk of misunderstandings I shall summarize it, first and foremost, as follows. As a concept originated from Hegel, developed by Adorno in a materialistic way, and applied by him in the field of sociology of music, mediation is meant to grasp the relationship between music and society, as a complex interaction between two distinct spheres, linked to each other through their constitutive opposition.
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In plain terms, the concept of mediation sheds light not only on the social function of music, but also and mainly on how society has penetrated music since the beginning of its history, on how the social inescapably stands, throughout the centuries, within music in its immanent dynamics, in the material, in the technique, in its expressive dimension and not just

around music. On the other hand, the concept of mediation also aims at rendering
understandable how music and art in general can turn into the social antithesis of society
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[gesellschaftlische Antithesis zur Gesellschaft], to the extent that it becomes radically critical of the social order. Considering this second aspect, we now see how different this account of the social character of music actually is, from one, which sees music as a passive reflection of society. If Adorno and those who believe that music may be much more than consumable entertainment or, for symmetrical reasons, more than a purely aesthetical experience with no relation to what stands beyond itself if we are right, then, definitely, music could not be thought of either as a simple reflection of society, or as sheer autonomous realm. The relationship between these two aspects first, the fact that social stands within music and, secondly, that it potentially contains, for this very reason, a critical dimension with respect to society is extremely important. It is probably the key to understand the concept of mediation, and the way in which it may help us to unfold the very idea of a politics of music. One could explain it with a conditional sentence: it is because society inevitably appears within music (yet, without conditioning it in a deterministic way), that music can become socially critical and, subsequently, evinces its political dimension. Mediation has, so to speak, two directions: from society to music, and from music to society. Accordingly the analysis entails two moments, two dimensions, two ways of putting the problem of the social character of music in perspective.

To a comprehensive account of the concept of mediation in Adornos aesthetical thought, see Max PADDISON, Adornos Aesthetics of Music (Cambridge / New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), particularly the third chapter: The problem of mediation (108-148). Theodor W. ADORNO, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 9; Gesammelte Schriften 7:19.
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Before turning our attention to the second dimension (probably the most decisive), in order to clarify the idea of a politics of music, in relation to Rancires thought, I would like to sum up Adornos contribution concerning the first moment of mediation in a quite schematic way. Despite Adornos resistance to a systematic exposition of philosophical arguments and the fact that his thought actually resists synthesizing enumerations, I found it useful, in this case, for the sake of clarity, to identify three levels, according to Adornos thought, in which the mediation between music and society takes place, in order to answer the question how has society made a way into music? I specially based my account on Aesthetic

Theory and on the essay Mediation included in his Introduction to Sociology of Music
1) the first level concerns the social and economical conditions of musical practice (from production and reproduction to distribution and

consumption). It is also at this level that such concepts as cultural industry and mass culture turn out to be unavoidably in Adornos sociology of music. However, for Adorno, this level is also the more superficial one, where the relationship between music and society is seemingly reduced to the social and political conditioning of musical practices. 2) at a second level we come up against one of the most important concepts of Adornos aesthetics, that of material. First of all, it must be brought out that we are dealing with a rather broad concept of material. Let me rely on his own words: Material, by contrast, is what artists work with: It is the sum of all that is available to them, including words, colors, sounds, associations of every sort and every technique ever developed. To this extent, forms too can become material; it is everything that artists encounter about which they must make a decision. (...) Of all the material that is abstractly employable, only the tiniest part does not collide with the condition of spirit and is as such concretely usable. Thus material is not natural even if it appears so to artists; rather it is thoroughly historical. Keeping in view this historical concept of material, it would be impossible to hold it without considering its relationship to society. The material certainly encompasses all those aspects, from some musical forms and genres to some a priori aspects of musical writing, which stood as a background to composition through the history of music. But how they relate to society remains quite blurred. Some examples are here indispensable to make this point clear. With regard to musical forms, it is startling to realize how many musical forms initially
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Theodor W. ADORNO, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 194-5; GS 7:222-3.
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derived from dances, that is to say from a meaningful social practices, even if they eventually turned into pure musical forms. Something similar occurred with the distinction between the notions of solo and tutti, which are thoroughly social (the term solo clearly stands here for the individual, as well as tutti represents society) and, yet, made a way into music, having been crucial to the differentiation of some musical genres (the concerto, for example). More generally we could point out the fact that the musical writing in four voices, which remained a paradigm at least until the beginning of the 20 century, has actually its origin in the liturgical practices during the Middle Ages. As it becomes clear now, the same movement is at stake in all these examples: a social practice turns throughout the centuries into a pure musical configuration a form, a genre, a technique which eventually appears as autonomous. However, despite the increasingly higher independence of music in relation to society, this independence is not to be confounded with a pure autonomy. And this as Adorno permanently stresses for the sake of music itself, where the vestiges of society its contradictory and unreleased tensions accompanied the growing complexity of its immanent logic. 3) at a third level we finally encounter the musician, the composer, the performer. We are dealing with the subjective dimension of mediation. Society, with all its contradictions, gets into music not only objectively, through the musical material, but also subjectively through the social contradictions experienced in the first person by musicians. This is not supposed to mean that the artists consciousness determines the interpretation of his work, but simply that we cant go too far the other way and ignore the fact that the musicians consciousness exists always together with his work as an artist. Either through expression, or through construction, the work of the composer turns out to be where an immanent critic of material and, thereby, of the contradictions it entails, is found. As expression, the act of composing absorbs gestures, where
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Although I distinguish here, for the sake of a synthetic exposition, a subjective dimension of mediation, the entanglement of both aspects subjective and objective in both dimensions of mediation must be emphasized. Very briefly, two notes must be added: (1) on the one hand, the musical material composers come up against, became once objective only through subjective appropriation by former composers; (2) on the other, this subjective work of material is not only mediated by social (objective) contradictions, but also conditioned by the current (objective) situation of musical material. This close and inescapable intertwining of subjective and objective dimensions becomes clear when we encounter the (subjective) work of (objective) material as the inner core of mediation. In other words the objective realisation of music is always already subjective and, in the last analysis, it is only to this extent, according to Adorno, that the work of material could stand for an objective/subjective (and immanent) critic of society.
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the mimetic dimension of music appears crystallized. In expression music becomes critic in the sense that it simultaneously denounces and expresses social contradictions, which appear as problems at the level of composition. As construction music appears as the anticipation of the resolution of these very contradictions, insofar as the possibility of a form developed under the principle of a non-violent synthesis emerges. The idea of an informal music is very close to this. In both cases, the critical dimension of music (which we could link with Adornos conception of truths content and with Rancires notion of politics) bears witness to the reversible character of the mediation between music and society. Society does not make a way into music without being at the same time polemically criticized by it. While focusing on these three levels I have subtly shifted the analysis from the point of view of the first dimension of mediation to the second one. At the end, I was considering how music becomes critical of society, rather than the ways in which society gets into music. This certainly happens because both dimensions are actually entangled. Indeed the fact that society stands within music and, at once, inside musical material, appears as a sort of condition of its becoming critical. I shall now turn my attention to Rancires thought, developing the very hint underlying this shift of perspective in order to develop the notion of a politics of music. As we can see now, this very notion is nothing but a concept meant to grasp what is at stake in the immanent becoming critical of music. In other words, the concept of politics of music tries to make clear how music becomes the social antithesis of society, even in the field of its immanent logic. Putting the objective of this paper in perspective, I would say in a summarizing way that to bring the concept of distribution of the sensible together with that of mediation and, in particular, with its second dimension is an attempt to render concrete and to enlarge our understanding of what is at stake in the critical dimension of music underlying the concept of a

politics of music.

Indeed, while considering Adornos account of the critical dimension of music, it is hard to avoid dealing with a sort of symbolic reading of musical works. For example, the critic of the whole (e.g. the form) for the sake of the particular (e.g. a motif), which several musical works entail according to Adorno in their immanent logic, is only understandable as critical, from a political point of view, since one takes into account the metaphor, according to which the musical whole stands for the society, as the musical particular represents the individual. As such, this immanent process may have critical/political consequences, to the extent that it challenges the listeners consciousness. However, in order to develop the idea of a politics of music, it is important to broaden and, simultaneously, to overcome this symbolic reading of music (relating it with other levels of social decryption) and to conceive new strategies in order to link a micro and a macro-logical account of the critical character of music.
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Rancire set forth the concept of distribution of the sensible in his book

Disagreement: politics and philosophy (La msentente. Politique et philosophie, 1995), and has
developed it since then in order to think the relationship between art and critic, and, more generally, between politics and aesthetics. The best way to introduce this concept to you, I reckon, is to rely on Rancires own words. As he puts it in Politics and Aesthetics. The

distribution of the sensible (Le partage du sensible, 1998): I call the distribution of the sensible
the system of self-evident facts of sense perception that simultaneously discloses the existence of something in common and the delimitations that define the respective parts and positions within it. A distribution of the sensible therefore establishes at one and the same time something common that is shared and exclusive parts. This apportioment of parts and positions is based on a distribution of spaces, times, and forms of activity that determines the very manner in which something in common lends itself to participation and in what way various individuals have a part in this distribution. (...) If the reader is fond of analogy, aesthetics can be understood in a kantian sense re-examined perhaps by Foucault as the system of a priori forms determining what presents itself to sense experience. It is a delimitation of spaces and times, of the visible and the invisible, of speech and noise, that simultaneously determines the place and the stakes of politics as a form of experience. Politics revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time.
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Before going further, let me say that stressing the visible and the sayable, Rancire immediately prepares an understanding of his concept, where politics and aesthetics are inevitably entangled. We are now very close to the theories developed by Rancire in

Disagreement [La msentente] where he is about to define politics as dissension. To cast a

glance at some of his main ideas on the subject seems to me indispensable to properly approach Rancires concept of distribution of the sensible and to clarify how it becomes useful concerning our departure question and the idea of a politics of music. As a matter of fact, Rancire defines politics in a rather unusual way, as certain distribution of the sensible, which opposes the prevailing one. In this sense, politics is not brought under the concept of power but, on the contrary, as a radical way of opposing it, to

Jacques RANCIRE, Politics and Aesthetics. The distribution of the sensible, trans. Gabriel Rockhill (London: Continuum, 2006), 12-13. This allusion to Kant and to his concept of aesthetics related to the notion of a field of a priori forms determining what presents itself to sense experience (that is to say, the transcendental problem of the field of the conditions of experience) is clearly meaningful in this context. In fact, it makes clear that the notion of distribution of the sensible on the one hand, and the problem of the conditions of experience on the other, are simultaneously at stake, belonging to the same conceptual frame. In other words, a distribution of the sensible is nothing but the system of forms (historical a priori) which distribute the space and the time of human experience, determining what is visible, sayable, intelligible, reasonable, and so on. In fact, one must keep in mind that the distribution of the sensible is not only about molar hierarchies, opposing, for example, those who take part in the government and those who are governed, but also about molecular distributions, as those between the visible and the invisible, the audible and the unaudible, or the sayable and the unsayable.
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resist its dominating logic with all its hierarchies. Rancire calls the prevailing distribution of the sensible police. It is against its oppressing background that politics happens, as a subversive action coming up against the police regime and all its sensible boundaries or hierarchies. It renders visible the previously invisible, sayable the previously unsayable; it counts the part of those who had no part. This is the reason why he claims politics [...] is that activity which turns on equality as its principle. At a macro-logical level, police and politics represent two antagonist distributions of the sensible (two different fields of the possible experience), the former being the rule, the last the exception. With these two global notions in mind, we can now resume work on the connection between politics and aesthetics.
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To the extent that the police regime encompasses, according to Rancire, all the levels of the field of possible experience reaching as far as the sensitive one, politics, defined by its opposition to police, may appear, as stated in the seventh thesis on politics, as an intervention upon the visible and the sayable. First of all, we must agree that such a concept of politics certainly broadens the field of what might be understood under the concept of politics and provides a key to how can art participate in it. In other words, Rancire postulates the political dimension of art without reducing it to the concept of political commitment. This is quite clear in Rancires accounts of literature, cinema and plastic arts. His general hypothesis seems to be that art is precisely political insofar as it disturbs the existing circuits of words, meanings and places of enunciation, in one word, the hierarchical background of police, as a dominating distribution of the sensible. It is this very entanglement between politics and aesthetics in the core of the concept of distribution of the sensible that renders it conceptually useful, as far as the political dimension of music is concerned. In general, the main point in common between Adornos and Rancires writings on art is probably that both think of the relationship between art and society as an irreducible tension. Art is certainly a social practice. However it stands up to the dominating logic of society. They both try to emphasize the critical potential of art, while avoiding the traditional figure of
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Jacques RANCIRE, Disagreemen: politics and philosophy, trans. Julie Rose (University of Minnesota Press, 1998), ix. Globally seen, Rancires focus on the relationship between aesthetics and politics (and, consequently, his critical account of traditional political philosophy), stems from, develops and deepens Foucaults microphysics of power (cf. Disciple and Punishment [Surveiller et punir, 1975]) and Deleuze/Guattaris micropolitics (cf. A thousand Plateaus [Mille Plateaux, 1980]). Definitely, according to all these authors, power is not to be analysed and critically understood from the point of view of the concept of sovereignty, but rather as a disseminated strategy, determining peoples ways of perceiving, thinking and acting. Politics is at stake when this overwhelming frame of power (called police by Rancire) comes to be critically challenged (by gestures, discourses, actions...). In this sense, the concept of distribution of the sensible is meant to grasp the aesthetical dimension of both power and resistance, as an allencompassing field which, however, may be criticized from within and from no matter who. A transcendent perspective of critic in the tradition of Althusser, with whom Rancire initially collaborated (cf. Reading Capital [Lire Le Capital, 1965]) is abandoned in favour of a more affirmative way of conceiving the social surface of both critical discourses and practices. Jacques RANCIRE, Ten Theses on Politics, Theory & Event, 5 (3), 2001, 9.
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commitment (engagement). It is now possible to reformulate our initial hypothesis with regard to alleged affinity between the concepts of mediation and distribution of the sensible, drawing a parallel between two symmetrical ways of unfolding these two concepts. Let me start with Rancire: for him, it is only insofar as either politics or police (as distributions of the sensible) have immediately aesthetical consequences (they determine a certain organization of the spatiotemporal experience), that art, unfolding these spatiotemporal categories in a rather subversive way, is potentially political (and, thereby, stands for the possibility of an immanent critic of society). As well as according to Adorno: for him the social is present not just around but

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within music and, absolutely not at odds with Rancire, it is insofar as society, I repeat, stands
within music (we are here dealing with the first moment of mediation) that music may, as it were, retroact on society, criticizing through expression or construction its dominating logic, as well as the reified consciousness underlying it. It is in this sense that it finally becomes the social antithesis of society and may be polemically understood as containing a truth content [Wahrheitsgehalt]. At this point, one could retort: ok, Im seeing the conceptual connection between the two concepts, but, anyway: what about music? How does the concept of distribution of the sensible actually apply to it? Ill try to sketch out an answer to these more than legitimate questions, with some remarks on Coro a composition to orchestra and chorus written by Luciano Berio in 1975-76. In this composition the Italian composer clearly sets out a dialectics between mass and individual, which becomes audible, both at the level of musical writing and of the formal organization of the musical discourse. With about 50 minutes, Coro combines a chorus of 40 voices with an orchestra of the same size (more a piano, an electric organ and two percussionists). The peculiarity lies in that the two groups are never treated as separate blocks. The instrumentalists and singers sit together, with each voice paired with an instrument of the same register, forming 40 pairs voice-instrument. The text was compiled by Berio himself and includes several folk-songs from around the world (from north America, from Peru, from Polynesia, just to mention a few). In addition we find some lines from Pablo Nerudas poem

Residencia en la Tierra in the end of the composition. The very last one, however, appears
throughout the composition as a refrain, binding the collage together. It consists of an

For a critical account, by Adorno, of the concept of commitment and, first of all, of the very duality between art for arts sake and committed art , see the essay included in Notes to Literature, On commitment (Engagement, Gesammelte Schriften 11:409-430).
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exhortation: Come and see the blood in the streets. [Before going further, I would like to share a excerpt with you.] Berio once described Coro as follows: Coro is therefore also an anthology of different modes of 'setting to music', hence to be listened to as an "open project", in the sense that it could continue to generate ever-different situations and relations. It is like the plan for an imaginary city which is realized on different levels, which produces, assembles and unifies different things and persons, revealing their collective and individual characters, their distance, their relationships and conflicts within real and ideal borders. What strikes one while reading Berios description and, more accurately, while listening to his Coro is how useful the concept of distribution of the sensible turns out to be in order to deepen our understanding of what happens in this composition. It enables us to read the association between voice and instruments as a questioning of the frontier between nature and civilization, for example. Something similar happens with regard to the dialectics between mass and individual: the fact that the words of a single man have been assigned to the mass of the orchestra and the chorus on the one hand and, on the other, the popular texts have been distributed by orchestral ensembles may be read as if the boundaries between the collective and the individual enunciation had become blurred. Even more significant is probably the fact that the words of a poet and those of anonym people from various continents and different periods have been brought together in the same musical work. The exhortation of a single man becomes the universal expression of the people who adopt the words of a poet as their own.

In this paper, we have dealt with the hypothesis that the concept of mediation and the notion of distribution of the sensible may actually be thought together in order to develop the idea of a politics of music. They provide a conceptual key to grasp what happens in certain musical works in their immanent logic as an intervention in a given distribution of the sensible (a given configuration of the visible and the sayable), which represents the very possibility of a mediated relationship between music and society which is not just a social determination of music, but rather a subversive intervention of music in the political and sensible conditions of social experience. This very hypothesis, I eventually claim, enables us to draw a link between a micro and a macro-politics of music, in other words, to conceive a

continuum between a micro-logical analysis releasing the political core of the symbolical

consequences or the physiological effects of the most esoteric musical works, and a macrological inquiry analyzing the political significance of some musical practices or forms of expression, as well as of musicological, historical or analytical discourses held about music. In this sense, even if I have probably taken the risk of appearing as if I exclusively privilege a micro-logical perspective at the expense of a macro-logical one, the ultimate attempt of this paper would be rather to bring together the conceptual conditions to abolish a strict distinction between them, as well as to overcome an analysis based on an axiomatic distinction between popular and classical music which, by the way, Adorno clearly regretted, not less than Rancire does. Not to separate in the theory what in reality stands together turns out to be one of most important demands, as far as a politics of music and an answer to the question how political is music? are concerned. [If I succeeded in shedding some light on this subject, its up the audience to decide.]

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