Stop Making Sense

Reviews / Votes

'If the problematic distinction between music and noise has already been fought over in much recent work in the philosophy of music, with this book Scott Wilson enters the arena wearing the colours of psychoanalysis. In adopting this mode of attack and taking as a given the non-categorical distinction and imbricated relations between music, noise, and voice, Wilson's book helps us understand the bipolar psychic force of music, its ability to be both the tie that binds and that which tears us apart. Read it for this reason, and to appreciate his point more fully, follow his opening provocation and play the deliciously sadistic parlour game that, by his account, gave birth to his core idea.'- Greg Hainge, University of Queensland; author of Noise Matters: Towards an Ontology of Noise'Stop Making Sense launches a series of deep probes into the contemporary cultural condition. Music stands in for an order that is both imposed and resisted, and when music turns wrong, or is heard as something outside of musical order, its amusia makes it a privileged auscultatory device. This book has achieved the rare task of successfully bringing Lacan's thought to bear on the formal structures of music and its rejection, and represents an impressive incursion into musical disturbance.'- Paul Hegarty, University College Cork; author of Rumour and Radiation: Sound in Video Art