The Phonocentric Politics of the French Revolution

Abstract

This article reexamines the songs of the French Revolution as a case study in the history of music as politics. Exploring the ways in which the act of singing in public eclipsed a more conventional semiotics of signs and signifiers, it offers a revised vision of how the matrix of sound, song, word, and meaning worked at the end of the eighteenth century. More specifically, it argues that late eighteenth century society was ideologically phonocentric: replete with both theoretical and practical examples of voices, sounds, and songs holding an assumed position of privilege in social and political life. In such a context, group singing was, de facto, a political act. During the French Revolution, specifically between 1789 and 1794, many opponents of the ancien régime capitalized on the privileged position of song in this phonocentric society, turning to music to unite disparate political factions in a common cause, albeit with varying degrees of success. Seeking the resonances of Rousseau’s philosophy of voice in eighteenth-century musical discourse and practices, and reexamining Derrida’s deconstructive reading of that philosophy, this article seeks to clarify the significance of the differences between the revolutionary era and our own.