Abstract

This paper attempts on one hand to understand the place and function of music within Bernard Stiegler’s theoretical framework rooted in the concept of tertiary retention and general organology, and on the other to articulate the notion of sublimation as the symbolic space of the aesthetic war for the control of sublimation, which appears as a central component of modern and contemporary political economy and geopolitics. Hence, it is questioned whether the notion of tertiary retention may exhaust the phenomenon of music. Tertiary retentions are at the heart of Stiegler’s theory of anthropogenesis, thereby this essay pin-points a crucial moment of anthropogenesis, drawing from Marcel Mauss, Freudian psychoanalysis and musical anthropology, which may be considered pre-symbolic and as such anterior to the tertiarization of retentions. It is the case indeed of body-techniques, where one may claim that the body itself is the first form of prothesis, the first tool and mediation between the organism and its environment. The interrelations between superego, ideal and enjoyment at the core of sublimation are investigated by arguing for the necessity to elaborate in analogy with the scopic drive a theory of a phonetic drive to better grasp the intricate dynamics between superego, ideal and enjoyment that we find expressed in musical objects. Finally, the notion of sublimation and its political implications are explored.