Jazz Bodies: In Process, on Trial and Instrumental

Abstract

Fictional narratives commonly stage the ineffability of music while simultaneously constructing located identities and trajectories of meaning in the course of its configuration. This argument concerns a range of these constructions: attempts to configure jazz in discourse through translations across the border between the music and corporeality. The literary embodiment of jazz has historically been embedded in primitivist discourses which reify desire in a racist mode. By applying Kristeva’s explication of the relationship between the semiotic and the symbolic, the article con-siders recent examples of jazz literature – most notably Michael Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter (1984) and Geoff Dyer’s pastiche text, But Beautiful (1991) – which counter this reductive tendency by constructing the imbrication of desire and codes of expression. These renderings of the emergence of the jazz subject allow for productive ruminations on the relations between the somatic body, the body of the instrument and the body of knowledge out of which individual performances arise. The article concludes with the claim that jazz discourses might well be a site for theorising fluid processes of intersubjective becoming and that these theoretical variations might well have application in a range of other knowledge domains.

Opsomming

In fiktiewe narratiewe word daar gewoonlik op die onsegbaarheid van musiek gesinspeel, terwyl die opgespoorde identiteite en bane van betekenis terselfdertyd tydens die konfigurasie gekonstrueer word. Hierdie argument het te make met ‘n reeks soortgelyke konstruksies: pogings om jazz te konfigureer in diskoers deur verplasings oor die grense heen van musiek en korporaliteit. Die letterlike beliggaming van musiek is histories ingebed in primitivistiese diskoerse wat begeerte op ‘n tasbare wyse vergestalt. Deur Kristeva se uiteensetting van die verhouding tussen die semiotiese en die simboliese toe te pas, neem die artikel onlangse voorbeelde van jazz-letterkunde in oënskou – veral Michael Ondaatje se Coming through Slaughter (1984) en Geoff Dyer se pastiche-teks, But Beautiful (1991) – wat hierdie reduktiewe neiging teëwerk deur die konstruksie van ‘n afwisselende oorkoepeling van begeerte met die wyses van ekspressie. Hierdie weergawes van die opkoms van die jazzonderwerp maak voorsiening vir die produktiewe oorpeinsings oor die verhoudings tussen die somatiese liggaam, die liggaam van die instrument as sodanig, asook die liggaam van kennis waaruit individuele opvoerings voortspruit. Die artikel sluit af met die stelling dat jazzdiskoerse wel ‘n terrein kan wees vir die teoretisering oor die wisselende prosesse van intersubjektiewe wording en dat hierdie teoretiese variasies, op hulle beurt, van toepassing kan wees op ‘n hele reeks ander kennisdomeine.