Böcker av Pascal Michon

The recent transformations of the world-the new cycle in which capitalism has entered, the globalization of trade, production and consumption, the spreading of new communication technologies, the growing urbanization and the fluidization of our societies and lives-have triggered a search for new critical tools. It is no coincidence that rhythm has become, since the 1990s, both a subject of investigation and a methodological instrument in a growing number of disciplines. Its success is so remarkable that it seems now on the verge of becoming a new scientific paradigm, somewhat like system, structure, individual or difference in the second half of the 20th century. But its history and thus the multiple meanings it has been endowed with are still very badly known. Old models of rhythm are still commonly used, while more recent and efficient ones are left aside. This book is the third installment of a series that aims at providing some of the elements of rhythmology we need to better assess the significance of the current scientific change, as well as the ethical and political empowerment it may involve.

The recent transformations of the world-the new cycle in which capitalism has entered, the globalization of trade, production and consumption, the spreading of new communication technologies, the growing urbanization and the fluidization of our societies and lives-have triggered a search for new critical tools. It is no coincidence that rhythm has become, since the 1990s, both a subject of investigation and a methodological instrument in a growing number of disciplines. Its success is so remarkable that it seems now on the verge of becoming a new scientific paradigm, somewhat like system, structure, individual or difference in the second half of the 20th century. But its history and thus the multiple meanings it has been endowed with are still very badly known. Old models of rhythm are still commonly used while more recent and efficient ones are left aside. This book is the first installment of a series that aims at providing some of the elements of rhythmology we need to better assess the significance of the current scientific change, as well as the ethical and political empowerment it may involve.

During the last fifteen years, rhythmanalysis has been thriving in many disciplines, especially in the English-speaking scientific world. As a result, the figure of Henri Lefebvre has reemerged after a long period of oblivion and has become a kind of totem in rhythmanalytical studies. Giving honor where honor is due, this book begins with a study of Lefebvre's contribution. But, in the 1970s and 1980s, he was by far not the only one important thinker interested in rhythm. In fact, he belonged to a sort of "constellation" of linguists, sociologists, philosophers, specialists in literature and art, all of whom took rhythm as a key subject. Over a very few years, rhythmanalysis passed from the first essays of Lefebvre and Foucault, mainly interested in the rhythms of society, individual and time, to those of Benveniste and Barthes, highlighting the entirely new question of the rhuthmoi of language, subject and self, and finally to those of Serres and Morin, which introduced in turn, on a comparable basis, that of the rhuthmoi of nature, machines and information.This volume is the fourth installment in a series that aims to cover the entire history of the concept of rhythm in Western culture.