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7 - The Configuring of ‘Context’ in Rhythmanalysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2020

Paola Crespi
Affiliation:
Goldsmiths, University of London
Sunil Manghani
Affiliation:
Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton
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Summary

The philosophy of ‘rhythmanalysis’ presupposes ways of attending to cultural phenomena. More critically, it assumes particular methodological attentions and operations for doing cultural historical research. Though there is not an exclusive configuration of rhythmanalysis, this chapter suggests that the concepts of rhythm and practices of rhythmanalysis pertain to, if not rethink, some of the key concerns and configurations of humanities research. For this chapter, I shall articulate my conceptions of ‘rhythm’ and the associated understanding of rhythmanalysis for invigorating existing notions of ‘context’ and ‘contextualisation’. In the disciplinary conventions of the humanities, the necessity of making sense of objects, images, events and ideological movements through contexts has become a vouching methodology so pervasive that often clarifications around the assumptions of what it is that underlies the making of a context elude discussions. Furthermore, the significance of rethinking the notion of context calls forth our attention not least because the work of contextualisation has long seeped into the fabrics of disciplinary conventions (e.g. how the curriculum is set up around identifiable frameworks and the positioning of contextual studies in the education of fine arts and design). In some cases, they have become the very notion which defines the identities of a discipline. For instance, when Lawrence Grossberg claims that cultural studies is defined as a project of radical contextualist practice (Grossberg 2006: 2), he emphasises that the distinct position of cultural studies is premised not only on its thematic interest in ‘culture’ but what it means to look at it in radical ways. Rhythmanalysis, as I shall argue, offers distinct methodological attentions and perspectives for exploring cultural historical experience. Furthermore, rhythmanalysis questions disciplinary boundaries and invites opportunities for doing contextual work that chime with the radical and experimental spirits of cultural studies. Whilst it is not possible in the scope of this chapter to enlist case studies that demonstrate the full extent of how the contextual work of rhythmanalysis is exercised, the aim is to introduce key conceptual tools (e.g. ‘polyrhythmia’) which facilitate explorations of context and contextual analysis. I shall be focusing on defining rhythm as ‘meta-sense’ and ‘time-space’ as forms of cultural experience. Though definitions of rhythm are not restrained by them, this chapter provokes an insistent attention on how affective and structural forms of cultural experience may generate new frameworks for cultural historical work.

Type
Chapter
Information
Rhythm and Critique
Technics, Modalities, Practices
, pp. 201 - 217
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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