Rhythm-sense-subject, or: The dynamic un/enfolding of sense

Nowell Smith, David ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9840-2507 (2018) Rhythm-sense-subject, or: The dynamic un/enfolding of sense. Comparative Critical Studies, 15 (3). pp. 349-367. ISSN 1744-1854

Preview

PDF (Accepted manuscript) - Accepted Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial. Download (485kB) | Preview

Abstract

This article traces Henri Meschonnic's concerted attempts to grasp the interaction rhythm-sense-subject, and situates this with the broader concerns of his work: the critique of ‘sign-thinking’, the elaboration of rhythm as le continu, his reflection on historical subjectivity. Meschonnic's thinking of rhythm is of an exigency from which he himself often shrinks back, notably through a series of equivocations (between language and sense, between rhythm as such and an individual rhythmic figure, between discourse as activity and an individual's discourse/idiom). The article focuses on these equivocations, and argues that within them we come to see the complexity, and mutability, of the rhythm-sense-subject interaction. It ends by proposing that we think the place of rhythm in this interaction in terms not of continuity/discontinuity, as per Meschonnic, but rather as a ‘dynamic unfolding/enfolding of sense’.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Modern and Contemporary Writing Research Group
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	10 May 2018 14:30
Last Modified:	22 Oct 2022 03:46
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/67024
DOI:	10.3366/ccs.2018.0300

Downloads

Actions (login required)

View Item