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In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition
In his controversial essay on white jazz musician Burton Greene, Amiri Baraka asserted that jazz was exclusively an African American art form and explicitly fused the idea of a black aesthetic with radical political traditions of the African diaspora. In the Break is an extended riff on “The Burton Greene Affair,” exploring the tangled relationship between black avant-garde in music and literature in the 1950s and 1960s, the emergence of a distinct form of black cultural nationalism, and the complex engagement with and disavowal of homoeroticism that bridges the two. Fred Moten focuses in particular on the brilliant improvisatory jazz of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, and others, arguing that all black performance—culture, politics, sexuality, identity, and blackness itself—is improvisation.
For Moten, improvisation provides a unique epistemological standpoint from which to investigate the provocative connections between black aesthetics and Western philosophy. He engages in a strenuous critical analysis of Western philosophy (Heidegger, Kant, Husserl, Wittgenstein, and Derrida) through the prism of radical black thought and culture. As the critical, lyrical, and disruptive performance of the human, Moten’s concept of blackness also brings such figures as Frederick Douglass and Karl Marx, Cecil Taylor and Samuel R. Delany, Billie Holiday and William Shakespeare into conversation with each other.
Stylistically brilliant and challenging, much like the music he writes about, Moten’s wide-ranging discussion embraces a variety of disciplines—semiotics, deconstruction, genre theory, social history, and psychoanalysis—to understand the politicized sexuality, particularly homoeroticism, underpinning black radicalism. In the Break is the inaugural volume in Moten’s ambitious intellectual project-to establish an aesthetic genealogy of the black radical tradition.
For Moten, improvisation provides a unique epistemological standpoint from which to investigate the provocative connections between black aesthetics and Western philosophy. He engages in a strenuous critical analysis of Western philosophy (Heidegger, Kant, Husserl, Wittgenstein, and Derrida) through the prism of radical black thought and culture. As the critical, lyrical, and disruptive performance of the human, Moten’s concept of blackness also brings such figures as Frederick Douglass and Karl Marx, Cecil Taylor and Samuel R. Delany, Billie Holiday and William Shakespeare into conversation with each other.
Stylistically brilliant and challenging, much like the music he writes about, Moten’s wide-ranging discussion embraces a variety of disciplines—semiotics, deconstruction, genre theory, social history, and psychoanalysis—to understand the politicized sexuality, particularly homoeroticism, underpinning black radicalism. In the Break is the inaugural volume in Moten’s ambitious intellectual project-to establish an aesthetic genealogy of the black radical tradition.
332 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
74 people are currently reading
1940 people want to read
About the author
Fred Moten
62 books336 followersFred Moten is author of In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (University of Minnesota Press), Hughson’s Tavern (Leon Works), B. Jenkins (Duke University Press), The Feel Trio (Letter Machine Editions) and co-author, with Stefano Harney, of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (Minor Compositions/Autonomedia). His current projects include two critical texts, consent not to be a single being (forthcoming from Duke University Press) and Animechanical Flesh, which extend his study of black art and social life, and a new collection of poems, The Little Edges.
In 2009 Moten was Critic-in-Residence at In Transit 09: Resistance of the Object, The Performing Arts Festival at the House of World Cultures, Berlin and was also recognized as one of ten “New American Poets” by the Poetry Society of America; in 2011 he was a Visiting Scholar and Artist-in-Residence at Pratt Institute; in 2012, he was Whitney J. Oates Fellow in the Humanities Council and the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University and a member of the writing faculty of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College; and in 2013 he was a Guest Faculty Member in the Summer Writers Program at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Naropa Institute. He was also a member of the Critical Theory Institute at the University of California, Irvine from 2002 to 2004 and a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City University of New York from 2001 to 2002.
Moten served as a member of the Board of Managing Editors of American Quarterly and has been a member of the Editorial Collectives of Social Text and Callaloo, and of the Editorial Board of South Atlantic Quarterly. He is also co-founder and co-publisher (with Joseph Donahue) of a small literary press called Three Count Pour.
In 2009 Moten was Critic-in-Residence at In Transit 09: Resistance of the Object, The Performing Arts Festival at the House of World Cultures, Berlin and was also recognized as one of ten “New American Poets” by the Poetry Society of America; in 2011 he was a Visiting Scholar and Artist-in-Residence at Pratt Institute; in 2012, he was Whitney J. Oates Fellow in the Humanities Council and the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University and a member of the writing faculty of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College; and in 2013 he was a Guest Faculty Member in the Summer Writers Program at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Naropa Institute. He was also a member of the Critical Theory Institute at the University of California, Irvine from 2002 to 2004 and a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City University of New York from 2001 to 2002.
Moten served as a member of the Board of Managing Editors of American Quarterly and has been a member of the Editorial Collectives of Social Text and Callaloo, and of the Editorial Board of South Atlantic Quarterly. He is also co-founder and co-publisher (with Joseph Donahue) of a small literary press called Three Count Pour.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
December 5, 2011
Since the death of Jacques Derrida in 2004, there has been a subtle but unmistakable shift away from the project of deconstruction in the more radical quarters of the humanities. The rise of Badiou and the titan of Ljubljana have pushed the problems of writing and differance further from current debates. The decades-long argument between Badiou and Derrida -- both heirs to the earlier generation of structuralists, specifically, Lacan and Althusser -- seems a thing of the past as English-translations of Badiou's books seem to crowd bookstore shelves once laden with Derrida's copious output. Elsewhere, favor towards the ideas of Deleuze and Guattari continues to expand where Derrida's recedes. It is somewhat ironic and a testament to a fundamental misunderstanding, that as Deleuzean scholarship makes phenomenology something of a hot-topic these days, that resurgence of interest has had little impact on Derrida's standing. Leonard Lawlor's recent excellent study, Derrida and Husserl, offered a compelling and radical argument for reading the totality of Derrida's work (even/especially his work on Marx) as a loyal engagement with phenomenology.
Published a year before Derrida's death, Fred Moten's In The Break clearly draws upon the problems and analytical strategies of the philosopher most associated with deconstruction. But whereas many of Derrida's followers lose themselves in the cleverness and pomposity of their own play with ideas and words, Moten draws upon a very concrete and urgent set of concerns in writing his book. On the one hand, he finds himself writing and theorizing about the Black radical aesthetic at the precise moment when the signposts of that tradition have greatly receded from the horizon. The ideas of collective struggle, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, and anti-imperialism seem to have lost much of the hold on the Black imaginary they once possessed during the heyday of Free Jazz and experimental Black writing. On the other hand, Moten is equally aware of the legacy of masculinism that typified much of that tradition. Even today when some in the community call for the necessity of a new Black leadership, the masculinity of the imagined response remains firmly in place. Too often forgotten are the wise words of Ella Baker; "A great people doesn't need great leaders."
Between these modernday concerns, Moten assembles a cast of characters through which to channel his reflections on the meanings and practices of a Black radical aesthetic. He begins with Frederick Douglas's iconic origin narrative of his Aunt Hester's beating at the hands of the plantation owner. This narrative becomes the basis for Moten to articulate a different basis of aesthetics, not on the ground of the image or the word, but on the basis of sound and listening. In this sense, In The Break is first and foremost a book of sound theory. And as such, he draws together his cast of characters -- Abby Lincoln, Cecil Taylor, Amiri Baraka, James Baldwin, Samuel Delaney, and Adrian Piper -- to develop the argument that sound is not merely the other to vision. Rather, as the other, sound functions within a re-organization, a coordination of the sensorium. This sensorium Moten describes as, an ensemble. Thus, for Moten, the Black radical aesthetic plays with the conventional binaries of self and other, or individual and collective, by embodying a play with the senses; a looking that listens and a listening that looks. This leads to Moten's central formulation about improvisation as an activity of description, not in a prophetic sense but rather one of foresight. Ensemble is the site and means of that activity.
I have to be honest that much of the book rests just on the other side of understanding for me. This is usually the case of much of the continental philosophy I have read. However, there are moments in Moten's text of such extraordinary clarity and/or beauty, that I found myself deliciously savoring the read like one would very difficult but beautiful poetry. This is not an accident. In addition to being a theorist of philosophy and art, Moten is also an incredible poet and experimental writer. There are large sections of the book that just read like poetry with a kind of risk-filled working through of language that, as Audre Lorde reminded us years ago, remembers the importance of experience. For this reason, when Moten locates improvisation within a practice of description (versus the more familiar formulations that relate it to interpretation or expression), he is not advocating a return to Husserl. The fact that the book ends with a quiet but earnest reclamation of the promise of communism, suggests a descriptive act that anticipates a radically different future, a future we can feel on the soles of our feet as we walk this road together.
In some alternative universe of sound theory and practice, Moten's In The Break is required reading and discussion. The challenges of revolutionary poets is considered sound art. And improvisation is the manner in which the ensemble investigates how it moves in time. I am grateful to Moten for having the foresight to describe and embody such an alternative universe.
Published a year before Derrida's death, Fred Moten's In The Break clearly draws upon the problems and analytical strategies of the philosopher most associated with deconstruction. But whereas many of Derrida's followers lose themselves in the cleverness and pomposity of their own play with ideas and words, Moten draws upon a very concrete and urgent set of concerns in writing his book. On the one hand, he finds himself writing and theorizing about the Black radical aesthetic at the precise moment when the signposts of that tradition have greatly receded from the horizon. The ideas of collective struggle, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, and anti-imperialism seem to have lost much of the hold on the Black imaginary they once possessed during the heyday of Free Jazz and experimental Black writing. On the other hand, Moten is equally aware of the legacy of masculinism that typified much of that tradition. Even today when some in the community call for the necessity of a new Black leadership, the masculinity of the imagined response remains firmly in place. Too often forgotten are the wise words of Ella Baker; "A great people doesn't need great leaders."
Between these modernday concerns, Moten assembles a cast of characters through which to channel his reflections on the meanings and practices of a Black radical aesthetic. He begins with Frederick Douglas's iconic origin narrative of his Aunt Hester's beating at the hands of the plantation owner. This narrative becomes the basis for Moten to articulate a different basis of aesthetics, not on the ground of the image or the word, but on the basis of sound and listening. In this sense, In The Break is first and foremost a book of sound theory. And as such, he draws together his cast of characters -- Abby Lincoln, Cecil Taylor, Amiri Baraka, James Baldwin, Samuel Delaney, and Adrian Piper -- to develop the argument that sound is not merely the other to vision. Rather, as the other, sound functions within a re-organization, a coordination of the sensorium. This sensorium Moten describes as, an ensemble. Thus, for Moten, the Black radical aesthetic plays with the conventional binaries of self and other, or individual and collective, by embodying a play with the senses; a looking that listens and a listening that looks. This leads to Moten's central formulation about improvisation as an activity of description, not in a prophetic sense but rather one of foresight. Ensemble is the site and means of that activity.
I have to be honest that much of the book rests just on the other side of understanding for me. This is usually the case of much of the continental philosophy I have read. However, there are moments in Moten's text of such extraordinary clarity and/or beauty, that I found myself deliciously savoring the read like one would very difficult but beautiful poetry. This is not an accident. In addition to being a theorist of philosophy and art, Moten is also an incredible poet and experimental writer. There are large sections of the book that just read like poetry with a kind of risk-filled working through of language that, as Audre Lorde reminded us years ago, remembers the importance of experience. For this reason, when Moten locates improvisation within a practice of description (versus the more familiar formulations that relate it to interpretation or expression), he is not advocating a return to Husserl. The fact that the book ends with a quiet but earnest reclamation of the promise of communism, suggests a descriptive act that anticipates a radically different future, a future we can feel on the soles of our feet as we walk this road together.
In some alternative universe of sound theory and practice, Moten's In The Break is required reading and discussion. The challenges of revolutionary poets is considered sound art. And improvisation is the manner in which the ensemble investigates how it moves in time. I am grateful to Moten for having the foresight to describe and embody such an alternative universe.
September 15, 2008
This was the hardest, most satisfying, most enlightening/ensounding text I've ever encountered. The beautiful yet purely improvisational nature of the text really illuminated the importance of the sonic in afro-modern culture, and comfortably alluded to the most uncomfortable shrieks of history. Moten's grasp of the woman's core involvement in the complicated formation of the modern (by engaging with Hortense Spillers) is highly courageous and productive. He reconfigures what you think you know into what you now know you don't know at all...and then from what you don't know at all to a fluid framework of understanding changes in knowledge. Highly recommended for those who don't mind dying several times while they read.
October 24, 2016
In the Break (2003) is, by design, a profoundly difficult text to get a grasp on. I found myself listening to Kind of Blue and Lady in Satin and opening my dog-eared copies of Philosophical Investigations and Écrits. Moten’s text is referential and at times confoundingly so. And yet what the text achieves is a simultaneous enactment of a form, style of reading, style of writing, and style of thinking it announces in its pages. In the Break does not have the same analytical points of contact of texts like Scenes of Subjection or Demonic Grounds. Rather than containing an argument that is organized around a particular theoretical innovation or constellation of concerns, In the Break reads like the works of art it cites and analyzes. Reading in the mode of analytic philosophy, to distill formulations, was fruitless for me. I began to come into contact with the text when I began to read it differently, in a more literary mode.
That is not to say there are not complex formulations that are evident here. Moten writes at length about improvisation and ensemble, two of his overriding concerns throughout the text. The text revealed a dimension of itself to me in Moten’s brief evocation of drag. He writes:
The ongoing refusal of adjustment or assimilation at the same time as a movement emerges, one that seems as if it’s all about the desire to adjust and assimilate, the paradoxical inexorableness of what we now know to have been an impossible inclusion. The avant-garde is always subject to inclusion’s injunction to pass. This is what Paul Taylor, businessman, teaches us. (This is a lesson also taught and retaught at various drag balls, as if in contrast to such a scene’s other interventions, as if to signify Harlem’s ongoing prefigurative recapitulation of the whole downtown scene.) This is the political limit of realness. (Moten 166-7)
Moten includes the reference to drag and the idea of “realness” within two different registers as something like an “easter egg.” In the context of the drag ball, to have one’s “realness” (the extent to which one is passing as a particular gender, social class or presenting an overridingly recognizable pop-cultural image) judged disavows the possibility of the “reality” (in the hetero-masculinist-modernist-Enlightenment sense) of that “realness.” Moten’s text, too, passes freely through the registers of aesthetic and philosophical (false binary though it is) and seems to hold any disciplinary loyalty in contempt. It disavows the reality of the philosophical and aesthetic realness it doubly serves. This mode of thinking and writing is necessary, according to Moten, in the insurgence against anti-Blackness. To put A Tribe Called Quest in conversation with Shakespeare and Wittgenstein in conversation with Baraka is a delightfully satisfying transgression.
October 23, 2018
This book probably has better ideas than I can give it credit for - it's assigned reading for a class that will not actually have anything to do with the black radical tradition, so a lot of what it was discussing and referencing was unknown to me. Even still, the writing is so terrible that I can't give it a better rating. Academic writing is generally awful but this one has some of the worst.
May 9, 2019
Read the intro. Blackness as identity and subjectivity. Gates uses term Black Matrix and black vernacular, Moten uses performance with black identity. Concept of Object is compl diff in moten than it is elsewhere. He’s seeing how these things work with value/use value Foundation of black radical movement. Hartman, hypervisibilty. Performance is inseparable from experience for black identity. He uses the Douglass narrative to crystallize that.
This was my first experience with the work of Fred Moten, and I was simultaneously struck by the clearness of his thoughts and the cleverness of his words. Not necessarily in an evaluative way in either direction. “Resistance of the Object” seems to be continuing the Dubois notion of double consciousness in important ways. There was so much happening, both in terms of content and delivery (ante/anti? Phono-photo-porno), in this chapter that I’m hard-pressed to focus on one aspect. I will, however, mention Moten’s comment on the withholding of information as being just as important as the topic withheld, if I’m understanding it correctly. I’m thinking especially of Hartman’s choice “not to reproduce Douglass’s account of the beating of Aunt Hester in order to…” as being illusory. In that any return to an archive and dwelling on the history of violence seems to in turn reify that violence. I don’t have the language for this, but his use of the scene at the end, his quote of Douglass’s description seems to skirt around the issue he brings up with Hartman. The juxtaposition of the violence with the sound/song seems to work in his favor to locate some sort of beauty. I would continue tracing that idea in relation to the inability to “turn off” black identity or black performance. I also think of a recent article by Billy Stratton on the peoplehood matrix of Native Americans and would like to put that idea in conversation with some of Moten’s ideas that we did not read for today. Or, consider whether that sort of conversation or pairing is inappropriate/useful.
This was my first experience with the work of Fred Moten, and I was simultaneously struck by the clearness of his thoughts and the cleverness of his words. Not necessarily in an evaluative way in either direction. “Resistance of the Object” seems to be continuing the Dubois notion of double consciousness in important ways. There was so much happening, both in terms of content and delivery (ante/anti? Phono-photo-porno), in this chapter that I’m hard-pressed to focus on one aspect. I will, however, mention Moten’s comment on the withholding of information as being just as important as the topic withheld, if I’m understanding it correctly. I’m thinking especially of Hartman’s choice “not to reproduce Douglass’s account of the beating of Aunt Hester in order to…” as being illusory. In that any return to an archive and dwelling on the history of violence seems to in turn reify that violence. I don’t have the language for this, but his use of the scene at the end, his quote of Douglass’s description seems to skirt around the issue he brings up with Hartman. The juxtaposition of the violence with the sound/song seems to work in his favor to locate some sort of beauty. I would continue tracing that idea in relation to the inability to “turn off” black identity or black performance. I also think of a recent article by Billy Stratton on the peoplehood matrix of Native Americans and would like to put that idea in conversation with some of Moten’s ideas that we did not read for today. Or, consider whether that sort of conversation or pairing is inappropriate/useful.
Read
February 25, 2023Not a fan. But I'm giving a positive score because there's an intriguing scope and library of sources to support the project's vision. This book, for me, has a lot more to say and impact with the offerings of Marx, Derrida, Heidegger, and Barthes (amongst others) than any insightful articulations (well, there are some cool quotes here and there) on a Black radical tradition. The most concrete engagement with the tradition Moten offers here is criticism and reflection on a hypermasculine strain within the the movement's past and he mostly gets here by way of Amiri Baraka. Which is disappointing, or at least not all that productive, to me, because nobody would disagree that Baraka or the Black radical tradition (figured in a general scope) had masculinist streaks.
It's worth saying, I think, that Moten does have some good taste in music. But that taste only goes so far, because most of Moten's statements on music and affect seem to revolve around what he personally hears and is impacted by in a record. It oftentimes becomes very incredibly subjective and hard to respond to one way or another. How is one going to agree or disagree with what somebody hears in a jazz recording? Especially when they're talking about 'ghostly presences' and 'material traces' like, it sounds cool, but.. Also, just wanted to point out that there is a literal additional essay-as-endnote included (63 in chapter 3)- which I think speaks to how messy and indulgent this text is. But others will disagree, such is life.
It's worth saying, I think, that Moten does have some good taste in music. But that taste only goes so far, because most of Moten's statements on music and affect seem to revolve around what he personally hears and is impacted by in a record. It oftentimes becomes very incredibly subjective and hard to respond to one way or another. How is one going to agree or disagree with what somebody hears in a jazz recording? Especially when they're talking about 'ghostly presences' and 'material traces' like, it sounds cool, but.. Also, just wanted to point out that there is a literal additional essay-as-endnote included (63 in chapter 3)- which I think speaks to how messy and indulgent this text is. But others will disagree, such is life.
November 22, 2015
Reading Fred Moten, for me, is always a fascinating and challenging experience, In the Break is no exception. It is worth noting that I orient myself quite differently to Moten's text than others. Much like Lorde's poetic stylistic prose, I often intuitively understand the theoretical and philosophical concepts Moten is acknowledging before he states them clearly. I understand that most individuals who read theory do not appreciate this tactic because it can, on occasion, obfuscate the denseness/complexity of his philosophy on Blackness, which is an understanding that all readers could benefit from. I can not do justice to Moten's prose here for it goes beyond comprehending the text, it is definitely a feeling. Published in 2003 before the "affective turn," I would dare state that Moten's prose is an exercise in philosophical affective Blackness. For as Moten states in the introduction that Blackness is resistance, it is always orienting oneself in resistance to the object, which can be read as white humanity (p. 8). Many people will find that this books resists the reader. I think that rather to be frustrated by the resistance one should give in to it. It's through resistance and struggle to the object that Blackness both as a philosophy and lived experience can be made mildly comprehensible to the reader.
Read
December 7, 2007I started this book in grad. school and abruptly stopped. This is extra dense and extra convoluted but apparently could offer me some insights if I would plod through it. I'm all about accessibility though, so I might not return to this book on principle.
May 22, 2018
Derridean critique by hypererudite, esoteric poet - good luck, mortal readers - Being mostly mortal, I could only catch glimpses of what seem to be earth-shattering insights - though unable to unpack what he's saying, I can say he says it with uncommon verve and intensity
January 3, 2019
Chapter one is so intense. And the rest of the book is really a rollercoaster, in a good way. Its incredible the way Moten weaves music and philosophy together to come up with something entirely unforeseen.
April 2, 2008
i don't think i'm capable of rating this book
January 4, 2018
Amazing!
Want to read
April 27, 2016a plea: someone gift me this totally erotic text - or we can trade books!
July 20, 2025
The parts I understand are brilliant, especially his critique of Marx and Saussure. Similar to Lacan, when he moves from abstraction to readings of/through things I don't really know what he's saying. They are similar insofar as their methodologies are reflected in their rhetorical style. While Lacan's stylistic digressions seem to emphasize language's metonym and the looping circularity of his arguments reflects the elliptical movement of the drive around lack, Moten's stylistic digressions seem to emphasize the sounding of language, the accent, rhythm, assonance, consonance, and even aspiration. Both have this kind of virtuosic relation to language that I simply don't have (or really aspire to tbh) that is really remarkable, but also very frustrating because sometimes you can just attempt to communicate what you mean in a more formal argument in a way that prevents your work from being taken up in ways that are totally antithetical to your project (i.e. zizek's lacanian real...IMO) .
July 24, 2025
Oooh boy this was a tough one. Definitely going to need to revisit this one and reread sections even more and yet again.
The portions about music(ians) were more familiar to me and easier to navigate as I am more familiar with Cecil Taylor and Nina Simone than the poets and writers in Nathaniel Mackey and Amiri Baraka.
The weaving through blackness, aesthetics, sex(ual cut), sexuality, divinity, and such were fascinating and amazingly subtle in the navigation and construction of argument.
The irruptions in the narrative voice/text with the parenthetical distinctly shifted the temporality of the writing away from a set and reified analytic.
Thoughts on the book are still processing and forming. Definitely going to reread at least portions if not the whole eventually.
The portions about music(ians) were more familiar to me and easier to navigate as I am more familiar with Cecil Taylor and Nina Simone than the poets and writers in Nathaniel Mackey and Amiri Baraka.
The weaving through blackness, aesthetics, sex(ual cut), sexuality, divinity, and such were fascinating and amazingly subtle in the navigation and construction of argument.
The irruptions in the narrative voice/text with the parenthetical distinctly shifted the temporality of the writing away from a set and reified analytic.
Thoughts on the book are still processing and forming. Definitely going to reread at least portions if not the whole eventually.
May 7, 2021
Very mixed feelings about this book, which I found rewarding and frustrating to read in almost equal measure. It's admirable how Moten embraces the improvisatory style and ethic in his own writing, but I also found it very hard to follow at least half the time. As a reader who values clarity and accessibility very strongly, I often found this heavy going in spite of (or perhaps because of) Moten's obvious brilliance as a thinker.
February 16, 2021
I would give this book 4.5 stars. Moten is voracious in his consumption of scholars, but he’s hard to follow closely. Much like avant-garde improvisational style he writes about, he assembles an argument in ensemble.
March 24, 2025
very difficult, opaque, a lot of it went over my head. what i did grasp (specially the chapter on douglass, marx and the phonic materiality —sound— of blackness as proof that the object can and does resist) was quite gripping.
July 19, 2019
I didn't understand it all, but what a tour de force. A truly singular reading experience.
August 22, 2024
brain hurt
January 1, 2020
Only read the introduction and second chapter so far. Usually I'm a near-obsessice close reader, eager to really "get" a page before going to the next, but sometimes it's fun to try and read something you know you can't completely comprehend.
In a matter of 10 pages (100-110) this man goes from a Wittgensteinian analysis of Amiri Baraka to Billie Holiday to Shakespeare's sonnets seen through Sergei Eisenstein lens...
It's insane, extremely dense. An academic approach, but formally inspired by jazz (one of the main subjects of inquiry). I read this just like I listened to Bitches Brew the first time, in the full knowledge that I'm not even close to ready for it, but fascinated, inspired enough that I'm excited to come back to it once I've acquired some more contextual knowledge. Though I am highly interested in all these references and have started to approach a more in-depth understanding of them, I've really only just started.
In a matter of 10 pages (100-110) this man goes from a Wittgensteinian analysis of Amiri Baraka to Billie Holiday to Shakespeare's sonnets seen through Sergei Eisenstein lens...
It's insane, extremely dense. An academic approach, but formally inspired by jazz (one of the main subjects of inquiry). I read this just like I listened to Bitches Brew the first time, in the full knowledge that I'm not even close to ready for it, but fascinated, inspired enough that I'm excited to come back to it once I've acquired some more contextual knowledge. Though I am highly interested in all these references and have started to approach a more in-depth understanding of them, I've really only just started.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews