Abstract

This thesis argues that utopia is negatively articulated through akairological rupture, and engendered by an individual through particular musical creation. Akairological rupture is a qualitative state of incompatibility, where the contradictions in rational articulation are rendered apparent. This rupture is juxtaposed against a reading of utopia as the teleological result of chronological and collectively plotted out reform. The introduction provides a contextual justification for the argument, and a history of the key concepts: utopia and kairos. Chapter one focuses upon Friedrich W. Nietzsche’s conceptions of self-overcoming, transvaluation and perspectivism, and how these relate in an essential way to Dionysian music as engendering ruptures that may be deemed akairological, and that correspond with a negative articulation of utopia. Chapter two examines Ernst Bloch’s response to Nietzsche’s Dionysian aesthetic theory through a historical materialist reading of utopia as concrete and kairological. Chapter three presents Theodor W. Adorno’s inversion of Bloch’s positive dialectic, and a development of Nietzsche’s aesthetic theory, to render a negative utopia in line with akairos. Discussed by the three primary thinkers, music is a strand that runs throughout the argument, insofar as it may express the contradictions of rational articulation, and is therefore central to the discussion of utopia as akairological rupture.