Introduction

Abstract

What new problematics does a turn to music animate in Rancière’s political-aesthetic thought? What existing problematics can be newly attended to, and what new deployments can be imagined? What musicalities are revealed in his thought and writings by such a turn? What, in short, is the role of music, of the musical, of musicking for Rancière, either explicitly or implicitly? And backing up slightly, what is the role of sound? Is sound the medium in which the art of the muses is inextricably embedded? Or can music reach beyond the sonic sphere in the course of its various metamorphoses? Music is overtly present in Rancière’s writing only very rarely; indeed, it has become a truism that Rancière does not have much to say about music. But music is often tacitly – mutely – present in his thought, and we can see how it rises to the surface as a point of intersection and resonance between the arts, through or as musicality.