The notion of silence in John Cage and Toru Takemitsu under the post-human theory

Abstract

This paper argues on two types of silence, one positive and one negative, respectively, in John Cage and Toru Takemitsu, under the light of Rosi Braidotti's post-human theory. We notice that while Cage approaches Eastern philosophies to reach his definition of silence as absence of intention and detachment from the ego, Takemitsu presents conceptions closer to Western culture, where silence is a confrontation with the self and a representation of the ephemerality of human life. Thus, we argue, based on Braidotti, that silence in Takemitsu is linked to anthropocentric humanism, silence being a negative silence, representing the definitive end. On the other hand, we defend that Cagean silence is posthuman as it introduces a paradigm shift that equates the sounds produced by the human species with the other sounds of the world, in a geocentric view of man as part of a whole greater than and equal to them.