Music and Torture: The Stigmata of Sound and Sense
Author(s):
Peter Szendy
Publication Year:
2012
Type:
book section
Journal/Book Title
Speaking about Torture
Publisher
Fordham University Press
Editor(s):
Julie A. Carlson
Elisabeth Weber
Pages:
Volume:
Issue:
Abstract:
While there are now numerous accounts of the use of music as a means of torture, this chapter sets recent practices in the context of a larger history of sonorous violence. After having sketched the general outline of such a reflection, it pursues a detailed reading of Stanley Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange and proposes the following hypothesis: violence begins when one tries to rivet, to nail, music to a meaning. It finds useful Lacan's concept of "button ties" (points de capiton) as a way of characterizing the sonorous stigmata of the wounded subject.
Citation (Chicago Author-Date):
Szendy, Peter. 2012. “Music and Torture: The Stigmata of Sound and Sense.” In Speaking about Torture, edited by Julie A. Carlson and Elisabeth Weber. Fordham University Press. https://academic.oup.com/fordham-scholarship-online/book/20961/chapter-abstract/180490422?redirectedFrom=fulltext.