“… A Power of Sonorous Paradoxes …”: Passivity, Singularity, and Indifference in Jean-François Lyotard's Readings of John Cage

This article sketches the development of Jean-François Lyotard's musical thinking through the lens of the composer with whom he was most often associated, John Cage. I contend that the affinity Lyotard felt for Cage's work came about on the basis of two shared concerns: first, an interest in creative strategies hinging on passivity and indifference and, second, a related desire to approach singular events free from the interference incurred by human cognition. In Lyotard's “libidinal” phase, as well as his later Kant-centered work, his investigations indicate that Cage's artistic practice is founded upon a series of logical paradoxes. However, it can be argued that Lyotard's revision of Cage's aesthetic theories in post-Freudian terms more openly faces up to these paradoxes than Cage's own sunny Jungianism does.