In the absence of noise, nothing sounds: Blanchot and the performance of harsh noise wall

Hegarty, Paul (2018) In the absence of noise, nothing sounds: Blanchot and the performance of harsh noise wall. Angelaki . ISSN 1469-2899

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Abstract

Blanchot took Mallarmé’s “Book” as the paradigm for an artwork that aspired to such excess it could not exist. And yet it partly did, in the form of the poem Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard. For Blanchot, this ultimate literary work acted as a model for a relentless deconstructing not just of what existed but also of that which did not. His emptying theoretical perspective is ideally suited to analyse the phenomenon that is harsh noise wall music. This type of music aims to be both total and static, an extreme stilling of the music impulse, and even of noise itself. This stilling will of course fail, in the shape of recordings, concerts, recognizable “pieces,” but this failing puts it into the same realm as the Book, as glossed and mobilized by Blanchot, in that it exists but it should not. It cannot happen and yet it unfolds. Rather than failure, then, I argue that this type of noise music is one realization of Blanchot’s thinning, dissipating and disappearing of Mallarmé’s project. This (in)completion, present in these writers and in harsh noise wall, notably in the work of Romain Perrot (Vomir) is not just resemblance but is something that enables a reading, a return (in)completion of Blanchot. This article looks to stage this double reading, a reading that produces nothing. Actually, not even nothing.

Item Type: Article
RIS ID: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/935814
Additional Information: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Angelaki on 31 May 2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/0969725X.2018.1473933
Schools/Departments: University of Nottingham, UK > Faculty of Arts > School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies > Department of French and Francophone Studies
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2018.1473933
Depositing User: Eprints, Support
Date Deposited: 09 Feb 2018 14:16
Last Modified: 04 May 2020 19:39
URI: https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/49702

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