Mitski, the indie project of Mitski Miyawaki, poses an enigma that resists interpretation. Since her first self-released album Lush created in 2012 as a conservatory student, Mitski has established herself as one of the most captivating musical figures in the following decade, both commercially and critically. Vis-a-vis this phenomenon of Mitski, this thesis asks the following question: what is the origin of her “really visceral” charm that Lucy Dacus described, the charm that also holds true for the forcefulness of her political empowerment and affective responses? In the opening chapters, I argue that this question of charm cannot simply be resolved by a recourse to explanations. My preliminary attempts at thinking about Mitski through critical-theoretical apparatuses—whether it be her ethnic-national-sexual identities within the indie music genres, her apparent complicity with social media and capitalism, or supposed “authenticity” of her expressions—invariably reaches the limit point where language and explanation is confused, revealing its impossibility. It becomes clear to us that Mitski’s charm is ineffable; this is the point of departure for this project. How do we think about this fugitivity? In order to listen to this phenomenon of the ineffable that Mitski poses without flinching, it is necessary to establish a way of listening that preserves her resistance to interpretation. Developing upon the philosophies of the ineffable that Vladimir Jankélévitch and Carolyn Abbate pose, I investigate the ontological status of this happening of the ineffable, problematizing its relation to the realm that runs counter, namely, the sayable. This relationship between the ineffable and the sayable is further interrogated by my critical intervention that brings Martin Heidegger’s philosophy into our view; the happening of a musical event, in which order and disorder coincide without a possible resolution, is the opening up of the impossibility of understanding and interpretation, which amounts to say that this encounter is ineffable. Furthermore, this moment of the resistance against interpretation, paradoxically enough, constitutes the origin of the possibility of speech, including that of musicological research. Crucially, the happening of the ineffable thus understood is also the moment where a possibility of political action is opened up, for this happening is the impossible ground on which any action becomes possible. Through a careful Interpretation of the musical event of the ineffable in Mitski’s hit song “Nobody,” this essay ultimately uncovers the possibility in which a musical happening, by opening up an impossible moment where “because” and “despite” coexists, opens up a possibility of a collective empowerment that does not presuppose any coherent identity beforehand, the possibility of musical politics. To disclose such a possibility for action by listening to the ineffability a musical event poses, I believe, is the task of what I call drastic musicology, a task that must be repeated, again and again, each time, for the first time.
Cho, Hiro,
"Nobody, Nobody, Nobody: Mitski—The Ineffable"
(2023).
Music Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.26300/9c66-f467
