Enchanted Polyphony: Agency and the Musicality of Natural Being

This article seeks to develop a phenomenological model of non-human agency through an account of music. It shows how the denial of agency to non-human entities, which lies at the core of the modern disenchantment of nature, can be both methodologically and ontologically countered through reflection on the practice – what the Greeks termed techné—of music. Through an analysis of sound, rhythm, and melody, the article shows how musical experience discloses a world constituted by dynamic relations unfolding temporally and spatially. Melody and rhythm demonstrate how meaning arises through relational sequences rather than static entities. Furthermore, music gives us a model for understanding the relation of inner/outer being in nature through an account of rhythm and melody. On the basis of such an account, the article brings three, apparently disparate, philosophical voices into play and shows how each can help us understand this implication of agency and (re-)enchantment: the Naturphilosophie of Schelling, the Phenomenology of Nature of Merleau-Ponty and the Agential Realism of Karen Barad. The paper demonstrates how each of these accounts can be understood as re-enchanting, while avoiding both vitalism and mechanism: Schelling with respect to organism, Merleau-Ponty in terms of world and Barad in terms of quantum reality.