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Is Improvisation Present? 142 FRED MOTEN 17. Manthia Diawara, "One World in Relation: Édouard Glissant in Conversation With Manthia Diawara;' trans. Christopher Winks, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art CHAPTER 7 2011(28): 15. 18. Diawara, "One World in Relation;' 5· .......................................................................................................... 19. See Polly Greenberg, The Devil Has Slippery Shoes (London: Macmillan, 1969 ). Hear Head Start: With the Child Development Group ofMississippi, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings FW 02690, 2004. First published by Folkways Records in 1967. IS IMPROVISATION PRESENT? ........................................................................................................ BIBLIOGRAPHY MICHAEL GALLOPE Adorno, Theodor W. "On Jazz:' Translated by Jamie Owen Daniel and Richard Leppert. In Essays on Music, edited by Richard Leppert, with translations by Susan H. Gillespie, Jamie Owen Daniel, and Richard Leppert, 470-95. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Andres en, Julie Te tel. "Historiography's Contribution to Theoretical Linguistics:' In Chomskyan (R)evolutions, edited by Douglas Kibbee, 443-469. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2010. Beckett, Samuel. The Unnamable. In Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable: Three Novels by IN October 2002, Jacques Derrida experienced something very extraordinary: he Samuel Beckett. New York: Grave Press, 1965 (first published in French in 1958). attended two screenings of a film entirely devoted to his life and his philosophy. This Braxton, Anthony. Composition Notes: Book A. Lebanon, NH: Frog Peak Music/Synthesis produced sorne atypical situations for him. In the weeks leading up to the premiere, Music, 1988. a wave of American press attention crested, describing the film as "adoring and ador­ Braxton, Anthony. Liner notes for Donna Lee. America 05 067 863-2, compact dise, 2005. First able" (New York Times), "wise and witty" (New York Post), "complex, and highly ambi­ published in 1972. tious" (New York Daily News), "the cinematic equivalent of a mind-expanding drug" Brown, Richard Maxwell. No Duty to Retreat: Violence and Values in American History and (Los Angeles Times), and, perhaps most idiosyncratically, a portrait of"the Mick Jagger Society. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. of cultural philosophy" (Boston Globe). The film's buzz ran far beyond the circuits of the Chomsky, Noam. "What We Know: On the Universals of Language and Rights:' Boston Review philosopher's academie readers, so much so that Derrida found himself denying a slew 30, nos. 3-4 (Summer 2005): 23-27. Chomsky, No am. Language and Mi nd. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. of interview requests from curious journalists and film critics. Caver, Robert M. "Foreword: Nom os and Narrative:' Harvard Law Review 97, no. 1 (1983): 4-68. So far as I can tell, just one man managed to work around the refusais. Joel Stein, a staff Caver, Robert M. "The Bonds of Constitutional Interpretation: Of the Word, the Deed, and the writer for Time magazine, slipped through the back door of New York City's Film Forum Role:' Georgia Law Review 20 (1986). on the night of the screenings and cornered Derrida with a series of unphilosophical ques­ Diawara, Manthia. "One World in Relation: Édouard Glissant in Conversation with Manthia tions: Do you like this banana bread we're eating? (He loved it.) What are your favorite Diawara;' translated by Christopher Winks. Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art movies? (The Godfather, apparently.) And something like: What is the deal with your 2011(28): 4-19. flowing white hair? (It is something he was understandably anxious about losing. )1 While Greenberg, Polly. The Devil Has Slippery Shoes. London: Macmillan, 1969. Derrida was forthcoming in these answers, ali this real-time interaction about nonaca­ Head Start: With the Child Development Group of Mississippi. Smithsonian Folkways demic topics seems to have annoyed the distinguished French philosopher, who claimed to Recordings FW 02690, 2004. First published by Folkways Records in 1967. find a certain journalistic expectation to drop everything and sound off on whatever topic Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper, 1962. particularly irritating. At least, this is what Stein reported: to the philosopher's chagrin, Lewis, George E. A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. these days "everyone wants [Derrida] to say something brilliant on love or war or death:' Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Certainly it is not always easy to sound responsive, clear, focused, genuine, and con­ Lock, Graham. Forces in Motion: The Music and Thoughts ofAnthony Braxton. New York: Da cise in real-time speech acts. But I wonder if there is a serious philosophical question at Capo, 1988. issue here. For Derrida, we might recall, the anxiety about effective communication in Menand, Louis. The Metaphysical Club: A Story ofIdeas in America. New York: Farrar, Strauss real-time performance reflected the philosoph'er's famous suspicion toward the experi­ and Giroux, 2001. ence ofhearing oneself speak, which, in his view, often harbored a metaphysical aura of Wall, Cheryl A. Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition. "self-presence:' Over banana bread, and likely with a range of deferrais, ramblings, and Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. transferences in mind, Derrida told Stein bluntly: "It's frustrating. Especially when you have to improvise:' 144 MICHAEL GALLOPE IS IMPROVISATION PRESENT? 145 By coïncidence, I too found my way to Derridàs attention that night-not as a journal­ moral philosopher and amateur pianist Vladimir Jankélévitch. While there exist, to ist, of course, but as a young undergraduate curious as to whether or not the philosopher be sure, substantial philosophical differences between the two philosophers, both had anything interesting to say about music. In a Q&A session that followed the screen­ understood the experience of time and the problem of technical mediation to be the ing, I raised my hand from the audience and asked Derrida: "What kind of music do you sources of an exceptional aporia for philosophy. And both issues-time and tech­ listen to and why do you listen to it?"2 Stein described Derridàs response in the pages of nical mediation-seem to be crucial factors for a philosophical account of musical Ti me: "Someone asked Derrida what kind of music he likes, and he revealed his love for free improvisation. jazz and told a really long story about how Omette Coleman once got him to read onstage In order to build the discussion up toward my thesis, allow me to begin by summariz­ during a show:' Indeed, as the philosopher subsequentlyirecounted, five years prior, when ing a few of Jankélévitch's central positions. Taking intellectual eues from his mentor, Coleman was in Paris to perform at the La Villette jazz festival in a duo with pianist Joachim Henri Bergson, Jankélévitch understands the flux oflived time, or durée, as creative in a Kühn, he invited Derrida to join in on stage during one of the performances, in which he sense that stands in excess of all understanding or intellection. But he also emphasizes re ad off a prepared text, "Joue-le prénom:'3 By the philosqpher's own admission, however, that the effects of durée are as destructive as they are creative. For just as time is the key it is equallywell known that the audience did not like it; in fact, we are told, their reaction led axis under which one can understand life to be created, developed, and reproduced, it is him to leave the stage early. 4 As Derrida remembered it, " [Coleman's] fans were so unhappy the equally essential axis for the second law of thermodynamics that ensures the even­ they started booing. It was a very unhappy event. It was a very painful experience .... But it tualloss of every life, the forgetting of moral acts, the transgression oflaws, and the eva­ was in the paper the next day, so it was a happy ending:'5 One could speculate as to why this nescence of every musical event. Given the specter of nihilism suggested by the valueless was so. A jazz festival audience may have just wanted what they hoped would be an unfil­ flux of time, Jankélévitch wonders: why do es a moral act, a musical work, or a life come tered version of Coleman. Or they may have bristled at the ide a of a philosopher explaining to exist and sustain itself at all? music that allegedly should be able to speak for itself. In search of a substantial ground for moral, ethical, and aesthetic virtues, But I wonder: did the collaborative failure on the part of the two men mean that they Jankélévitch's philosophy asks us to turn against scientific or logical forms ofknowing had both misunderstood, or underestimated, a certain incompatibility between phi­ in order to arrive at what he described as virtuous or "innocent" meditations that are losophy and improvised music? In light of how musically inclined thinkers like Ernst attuned to temporally dynamic aspects of real-life experience. Consequently, for him, Bloch, Theodor Adorno, Roland Barthes, and Félix Guattari found ways to bring their as for Bergson, philosophy requires a certain attentive fidelity to lived experience: favorite music into dialogue with their philosophical views, might Derrida, who was an expert in literature and philosophy but had little technical background in music, have [T]he generous mind does not remain confined in a blasé memory; it does not provided Coleman's music with a deconstructive manifesta? Or were the other side's impose a summary solfège on the admirable variety of nature .... Intellectual effort expectations at fault: should free jazz's forays into conceptual justification (reflected in signifies that we have kept a means of conquering the data of experience by testing Coleman's responses to Derridàs pre-festival interview, Anthony Braxton's Tri-Axium the originality of things and the resistance of problems, by conserving intact this sen­ sibility to the unexpected that produces the prize of knowledge.
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