Beyond Lacoue-Labarthe's Alma Mater: Mus(e)ic, myth and modernity

This article addresses the question of the role of music in Lacoue-Labarthe’s oeuvre, from the well-known 1979 essay “L’Écho du sujet” through to the succinct but lucid transcript of a talk given through the “Petites conférences” series at the Nouveau Théâtre de Montreuil: Le chant des Muses: petite conférence sur la musique (2005). Aimed, as it is, at a young and non-specialist audience, the style and register of the latter are apposite to the context, and thus the absolute opposite of the rigorously academic and exceedingly technically and philosophically dense “L’Écho du sujet”; and yet very little, theoretically, is found in one that isn’t in the other. Indeed, both focus on several clear themes: the (essential) relationship between music and philosophy; the fundamental link between music and language; and most obviously, both apparently reach the same conclusion: that the specifically musical aspects of the “catacoustic” subject – the subject that is given to “itself” pre-specularly through echo, rather than through reflection – are profoundly and inescapably linked to the maternal. Between these two texts which frame the musical considerations at hand there are a number of other texts – most obviously Musica ficta, which is without doubt Lacoue-Labarthe’s best-known work concerning the question of music. This article, however, considers Lacoue-Labarthe’s engagement with music primarily, though not entirely, as it occurs in texts other than Musica ficta – though many of the central commitments of Musica ficta resonate with the perspectives advanced elsewhere. In particular, the focus will be on two texts from the recently published edited collection by Aristide Bianchi and Leonid Kharlamov, Pour n’en pas finir: écrits sur la musique: “Pour n’en pas finir” and “Une lettre sur la musique”