Repetition

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani sees repetition as a two-sided notion. There is a "good" repetition: the regularity and security of the lullaby, without which neither existence nor progress would be possible1. But repetition is also the form of inertia in living beings, the return of the same, frozen, without the call to difference that makes life2. He draws on Freud, for whom repetition belongs to a compulsion (Zwang) and not to a drive (Trieb). War trauma victims, who return again and again to the most unpleasant moment, contradict the pleasure principle3. Ulysses is its figure: from Troy to the suitors, carnage returns at every stage. He links this return of bloodshed to the recurrence of the crises of capitalism4. His cycle of workshops thus goes from repetition (Ulysses) to liberation (Daedalus). In music, he defines pleasure as a repetition that the creator subverts. He prefers Schubert's hypnotic effect, made of small variations, to repetitive music5.

1. 1Leibniz1 Aug 2017 · 1:08:19
2. 2Freud1 Aug 2017 · 34:13
3. 3#6.1-1/2 - Prélude • D.Pagani / Lacan : Fonction et champs de la parole et du langage10 Nov 2019 · 33:58
4. 4#4.0 Dominique Pagani, Présentation de l'atelier 2017-2018 : "Angélique" de Nerval24 Sept 2017 · 11:33
5. 5Musicosophie 2. De Lévi-Strauss à Nerval à propos de la musique3 Dec 2020 · 25:08

Summary produced automatically from 34 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.