Genre

Worked through in 21 videos · 31 passages.

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Summary

Dominique Pagani uses the term in several registers. In the logical sense, he opposes genus to species: refusing to rise to the genus means finding only apples or pears, never "fruit"1. For him, man is a genus and not a species. The animal is tied to a biotope, whereas man adapts the environment to the indeterminacy of his desire2. In art, he defines genre by external constraints, such as purpose or instrument. He distinguishes it from form, which organizes the work from within: the concerto is a genre invested in sonata form3. He links the separation of genres to classicism and to an almost caste-based society, and their fusion to romanticism and to the modernity that came out of the French Revolution4. This fusion, which Wagner practises, opens up new perspectives, but it is also a danger that haunts Hölderlin, Nerval and Nietzsche5. He adds that one does not choose the genre in which one writes, any more than one chooses one's sex or one's class6.

Summary produced automatically from 31 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Cycle 13 · 25 Jul 2025Naturalist ideology: answers to questions

54:26The animal is specific, bound to a biotope; man is not a species, he is general: an anthropological sphere is superimposed on the zoological sphere.

Talks · 23 Mar 2024Sahelian Africa and imperialism: Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger

7:23In philosophical jargon, colonialism is a species whose genus is imperialism.

Cycle 11 · 29 Jun 2023Worldliness in Clouscard: Aragon and the positivity of the negative

1:10:24Man is a genus, not a species: no biotope determines him; he adapts his environment to the indeterminacy of his desire.

Cycle 11 · 12 Dec 2022Hesitation fascinated by hearing and by sight: Siegfried and Perceval

7:44Cultures begin with the epic, then come the lyric and the dramatic, following an order of interiorization.
1:01:35Opera buffa, Singspiel, opera seria; Wagner replaces them with lyric drama, and Parsifal is a sacred festival stage play, almost an oratorio.

Series · 6 Jul 2022Tipsy Beethoven!

0:45Musical genres are numerous, but forms, which are the way of organizing musical discourse, are few.

Series · 15 Jun 2022Tchaikovsky: from the steppes to the Midwest

0:23The concerto is a precise genre: a solo instrument against an orchestral background, a solo opposed to a tutti.
3:46Within a single genre, different styles can be distinguished.

Series · 6 Feb 2022The feminism of the privileged, puritanical censorship of femininity: Molière, Clouscard, Wagner

13:21Belonging to the female gender is as old as the human species; going back from woman to female, one goes back before the appearance of man.

Cycle 9.2 · 14 Apr 2021#9.19 Twilight of the Gods, or from repetition to liberation (part 2)

20:50Wagner plays on genders and sexes: Siegfried only knows fear on discovering that he faces a woman.

Series · 10 Mar 2021#16 Programme music, pure music

20:16Classicism separates the genres, a Hellenic inheritance; Romanticism mixes them.
1:00:19Confusion or separation of genres: separation reassures; their union brings threats and new perspectives.

Series · 2 Feb 2021#13 Mozart restored

12:49Genre distinguishes one category of works from others; form organizes it from within; the concerto is a genre embodied in sonata form.

Series · 11 Jan 2021#8 Happiness and unhappiness in music

35:16Since romanticism, modernity must irreversibly deal with the mixing of genres and eras.

Series · 17 Dec 2020#7 The Greeks, myth and music

33:40Prematuration defines the human genus: its greatness comes from a lack, like surplus value from unpaid labor.
39:07Eating belongs to the species, shared with animals; restraint toward drive belongs to the genus.

Series · 15 Dec 2020#6 The jazz variation… by Beethoven

9:28A criterion external to music: its destination, the extra-musical circumstances of its production (requiem, Te Deum, military music).
19:17The addressee can be an instrument: sonata for piano and violin defines a genre, an external constraint.
1:11:57It is constraints that define genres.

Cycle 9.1 · 13 Nov 2020#4 Benefits and harms of amnesia…

56:19The animal is hyperspecialized; what is proper to man is to be a specialist only of the general and to produce the object of his desire.

Talks · 6 Dec 2019“The Brass Band's Journey”, by Dominique Memmi

4:21The book fits into the novel genre but overflows it: it also has something of a multiple biography.

Cycle 5.1 · 2 Nov 2018#5.1 bis Questions (Facebook Live)

37:02Classicism favors the separation of genres, romanticism their fusion.
42:51The separation of genres is characteristic of an era in which social spheres are almost caste-like.

Cycle 4 · 14 Jun 2018#4.9 Angélique (by Nerval)

1:25:20We believe we have a choice of genre, we develop the genre of choice: to write is always to inscribe oneself within a genre, as within a sex or a class.

Cycle 4 · 11 Dec 2017#4.3 Angélique (by Nerval)

1:12Distinction of literary genres (tragedy, comedy, poetry): he is interested in both their fusion and their separation.

Cycle 4 · 18 Oct 2017#4.1 Angélique (by Nerval)

1:08:18The Riancey amendment raises the problem of knowing where history ends and fiction begins; the first historians, Pharaoh's scribes, were not paid to tell reality.

Talks · 18 Jun 2016At the bistro (part 1)

43:04The old world separates genres as it separates classes; modernity, since the French Revolution, fuses them.
50:55Wagner fuses recitative and aria into endless melody.
1:01:10The fusion of genres is a mortal danger: it haunts the three madmen of modernity, Hölderlin, Nerval, Nietzsche.

Series · 1 Feb 2016Hegel on the Beach 2/5

1:01:16To refuse to rise to the genre and cry amalgam is to find "the fruit" nowhere, but only apples or pears.
1:57:04One has no choice of literary genre: every piece of writing belongs to a genre depending on whom it addresses.