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Neoliberal Reason, Contemporary Music, and Proximal Critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2024

SAMUEL J. WILSON Open the ORCID record for SAMUEL J. WILSON [Opens in a new window]
SAMUEL J. WILSON*
Affiliation:
Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, and London Contemporary Dance School, London
*
Email: s.wilson@gsmd.ac.uk
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Abstract

Theodor W. Adorno suggested that music is mediated by socially derived forms of reason, a provocation here considered with respect to neoliberalism. Drawing on a Foucauldian understanding of neoliberalism, which in Wendy Brown's summary takes neoliberalism as ‘a specific and normative mode of reason’, I consider what this means for immanent features of music and processes of its composition. This critical attention to music's formal, aesthetic register enables me to go beyond the more well-established (although nonetheless valuable) frameworks for discussing music and neoliberalism, which focus on music's relation to labour conditions and creative industries. A range of music and sonic art is discussed, work by Chino Amobi, Brian Eno, Bryn Harrison, Sarah Hennies, Johannes Kreidler, Wolfgang Rihm, Marina Rosenfeld, and John Zorn. I ultimately argue that some core features of Adorno's conception of critical art and music need reformulating for the neoliberal age.

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Article
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Twentieth-Century Music , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , October 2024 , pp. 329 - 362
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Christine Dysers for her thoughtful comments on a draft version of this article, and for sharing a prepublication version of her article, ‘Wild Inside Itself’. Thanks too to the TCM peer-reviewers for their constructive suggestions about my draft manuscript.

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