Chance between passivity and control: The post-humanist ethics of Xenakis, Cage, & Lyotard

Though much has already been written on the relationship between Iannis Xenakis and John Cage, in this paper I contribute to this discussion by arguing that their parallel adoptions of chance—whether Zen-cum-“anarchical” as in Cage, or mediated and controlled through the scientific method as in Xenakis—represent a response to a common intellectual phenomenon. This is the apparent exhaustion of humanistic ethics and all of its attendant notions: subject-object dualism, the primacy of the ego and dialectics, and anthropocentrism. A fundamental dissatisfaction with humanistic subjectivity was also the essential preoccupation of philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, a thinker noted for producing some of the most incisive commentaries on contemporary music in recent years. Particularly pertinent in this context is Lyotard’s longstanding focus on the ethical realm, which he saw as more important than ever given recent anti-humanistic philosophy’s rejection of foundationalism. I demonstrate that Cage and Xenakis were unique among composers of their generation in also refusing to lose sight of this same concern. Yet while both composers go very far in dissolving subjectivity and the self-propriety of reason by following what is akin to a Lyotardian aesthetics/ethics of the sublime, each also makes compromises on the extent to which they ask their listeners to passively submit to an Other of reason. From a humanistic perspective, such a move appears little more than “enslavement” to an amorphous, ungovernable “nature”. Lyotard, however, follows Emmanuel Levinas by arguing that this is actually a fundamentally ethical act insofar as it requires an obligation prior to any post facto rationalization. Though Xenakis and Cage both reject traditional political praxis, they remain partially unsatisfied with this extreme “ethical” alternative and its apparent dangers, and in spite of themselves, they ultimately admit of some of the reflective politics which they appear to disdain .