Radiohead and Philosophy - Brandon W. Forbes [138]
6
The Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge, 2002), p. 475.
7
The philosopher Stanley Cavell used to say that the first impulse opera evokes is to wonder where in the physical singer the immaterial song can be located. In live performance, the striking thing about Thom Yorke is how small a person he is; not only is his voice excessive, beyond human averageness, it is moored to a smaller-than-average body and onstage persona that seem to dramatize the question, in his music, of where voices come from—from individual people or the techniques that surround and overmaster them.
8
This chapter was originally published in the journal n+1, issue 3, 2006, pp. 23-39.
9
For helping me sort through the ideas in this article I would like to thank both my wife, Kim Sylvia, and Steven Smitherman, who helped guide my musical taste as we grew up. Also thanks go to George and Brandon for helping me tighten the focus of the essay.
10
Paul Lansky, “My Radiohead Adventure,” in The Music and Art of Radiohead, edited by J. Tate (Aldershot: Ashgate), p. 175. Also worth looking at is another article in the same book, “Public Schoolboy Music: Debating Radiohead,” by Dai Griffiths.
11
This section of the essay relies on, Tim Footman, Welcome to the Machine: Radiohead and the Death of the Classic Album, Chrome Dreams, 2007, for an analysis of history of the band and the reception of their music. See, also, Martin Clarke, Radiohead: Hysterical and Useless, Plexus, 2006.
12
Allan F. Moore and Anwar Ibrahim, “‘Sounds Like Teen Spirit’: Identifying Radiohead’s Idiolect” in The Music and Art of Radiohead, p. 145.
13
Here I’m drawing on some ideas from Andrew Kania, “The Philosophy of Music,” in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Peter Kivy, Introduction to a Philosophy of Music, Oxford University Press, 2002; and Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Art, Routledge, 1999.
14
Aristotle Poetics 6, translated by Stephen Halliwell (Harvard University Press, 1995).
15
Aristotle actually maintains that the reversal could go in the other direction, though that doesn’t seem to be the paradigm case of tragedy for him, and in certainly isn’t what we would call a “tragedy” today.
16
Aristotle Politics, lines 1340a3-5, 1340b16-17. Music also appeals to some of the other animals as well (and the majority of slaves!).
17
James M. Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad (Duke University Press, 1994), p. 59.
18
Halliwell, Introduction to Aristotle’s Poetics, p. 19.
19
Thanks to Brandon Forbes for discussions of the ideas in this paper. Thanks to Radiohead for such good music. Thanks to Aristotle for such good books.
20
Quoted in “A Head for Figures?” by Jon Pareles in The Scotsman (December 22nd, 2007); http://news.scotsman.com/features/A-head-for-figures.3615062.jp
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Quoted in Nick Kent “Happy Now?” Mojo (June 2001).
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http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/com/com_4_0076.pdf
23
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (Knopf, 1969), p. 122.
24
Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference (University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 74.
25
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/37863-interview-thomyorke
26
Robert B. Stepto, From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative (Univeristy of Illinois Press, 1991), p. 53.
27
Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death (University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 2.
28
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 31.
29
Maurice Blanchot, “From Dread to Language,” in The Gaze of Orpheus and Other Literary Essays, p. 6.
30
George W.S. Trow, Within the Context of No Context (Little, Brown, 1981), p. 19.
31
Craig McLean, “All Messed Up,” http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,1795948,00.html.
32
Jacques Derrida, “Circumfession,” in Jacques Derrida (University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 210.
33
Jacques Derrida, “Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason Alone,” in Religion, edited by Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo (Stanford University Press, 1998),