Ghosts of the Gristleized
Ghosts of the Gristleized
This chapter reflects on music and the gothic body in terms of the contemporary discourses of sonic hauntology. Sonic hauntology posits the conjuration of the ghost of musics past as critique of the zombie state of the present, its pre-emptive suppression of antagonism and abandonment of the future. The post-punk band, Throbbing Gristle (TG), working interstitially in the ‘time out of joint’ of the late 1970s, seized available technologies in order to wage ‘sonic warfare’ (Steve Goodman) through acoustically vibrating and ‘decomposing’ subjectivities and bodies. TG's ‘metabolic music’ mapped new forces in the post-industrial which would eventually be actualized in the form of what Deleuze dubbed the ‘society of control’. Conjoining rock and roll with the acoustics of the ‘death factory’, they sought to sonically disorganize – to ‘gristleize’ – the disciplined body and to diagram a monstrous becoming-other. So, if current hauntologies tend to cleave to the vengeful energies of nihilation and destitution, this chapter argues rather for a Deleuzian, fertilizing hauntology that springs from affirmation, that asks ghosts what a (vibratory) body can do.
Keywords: Music, Gothic music, Hauntology, Gothic body, Throbbing Gristle, Deleuze, societies of control, Post-punk
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