Contradiction Studies

In the psychology of music and basic auditory research, there is talk of “paradoxes of hearing” or “musical paradoxies” (Deutsch 1986, 275-280; Utz 2015, 22-52; Deutsch 1995). But can auditory impressions really be paradoxical? What exactly should it mean what exactly should it mean to “hear paradoxes” or even to “hear paradoxically”? We will pursue this question in the following and in doing so, we will first define the concept of paradoxia for the present context – namely in the sense of ambiguity and discrepancy ambiguity and a discrepancy. We will then develop a typology, which at the same time shows the fundamental significance that ambiguities have for music – or more precisely: for the enduring appeal of pieces of music.


Paradoxien des Auditiven? Ambiguitäten und Diskrepanzen beim Hören und in der Musik. In Catherine Herbin (ed.), Paradoxien: Grenzdenken und Denkgrenzen von A(llwissen) bis Z(eit), 177–201. Paderborn: Brill mentis.

print
ISBN: 978-3-95743-251-3

ebook
ISBN: 978-3-96975-251-7

Back to overview
driver

“Contradictions are an important driver of scientific practice and knowledge.”

Norman Sieroka
prison of difference

“‘Contradiction is the prison of difference‘ writes the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Worlds of Contradiction asks: how can we explain and describe the world without making it more coherent and systematic than it is?”

Michi Knecht
Afterlife of colonialism

“Contradiction comes in many different forms. None is so debilitating than when the coloniser transitions, textually not politically, to decoloniality without taking the responsibility for the afterlife of colonialism, which they continue to benefit from. Self-examination and self-interrogation of the relations of coloniality, a necessity, seem nearly impossible for the coloniser who continues to act as beneficiary, masked in the new-found language of White fragility, devoid of an ethical responsibility of the very system of White domination they claim to be against.” (Black Consciousness and the Politics of the Flesh)

Rozena Maart
articulate

“Contradictions need to be articulated in order to exist.”

Martin Nonhoff
every day

“Living in contradictions is what we experience every day. Why do we know so little about it?”

Gisela Febel