Harmony as Habermasian Critique of Postmodernity in Laurie Anderson’s O Superman

            Theodor W. Adorno begins his Aesthetic Theory like this:  “Today it goes without saying that nothing concerning art goes without saying, much less without thinking.  Everything about art has become problematic: its inner life, its relation to society, even its right to exist.”[1]  A semester spent discussing the nuanced topics of women, performance, and the avant-garde make Adorno’s statement all the more acceptable.  It is not surprising, then, that Laurie Anderson’s crossover success, O Superman, requires approach from this take nothing for granted perspective.  McClary certainly recognizes the broad range of interpretation: “Depending on your point of view, then, Anderson’s strategy of simultaneously evoking and denying classic structural dichotomies is nihilistic, transgressive, or exuberant.”[2]

            Earlier in that work McClary offers a harmonic analysis of O Superman:  “Two alternating chords inflect the pedal [middle C] harmonically: an Aᵇ major triad in first inversion and a root-position C minor triad.”  This strikingly simple harmonic structure can reveal a larger and certainly more complex statement (if one refuses to take it for granted).  Anderson’s middle-C pendulum is commenting on the historical movements that influenced 20^th-century culture.  She is, in fact, offering a Habermasian critique of modernity versus post-modernity.  Habermas has suggested “that instead of giving up modernity and its project as a lost cause, we should learn from the mistakes of those extravagant programs [earlier he mentions various avant-garde approaches to art] which have tried to negate modernity.”[3]  How does the cycling of two chords reveal any critique in line with these words, particularly when the piece as a whole addresses issues of gender, technology, the body, and American politics?[4]  McClary’s analysis of this harmony as a comment “about the premise of Western musical discourse and our own postmodern condition,” proves supportive and applicable to a Habermasian critique.

            If we, as is the tradition of the Western binary thought process, divide tonality into semiotic dichotomies, then major/minor might equal happy/sad.[5]  Major/minor in this piece actually equal postmodernity/modernity.  McClary comments:  “the fact that the major alternative is always unstable (because it is in inversion) and the minor always stable suggests that the security lies in the negative option.”[6]  She continues, “Thus although the major triad was established first (and has some claim to the status of “tonic”) it is increasingly hear as an inflection poised to resolve to C minor.”[7] 

            It is possible then to read Anderson in terms of the statement made by Habermas above.  The postmodern tendency to remove questions of right, or objectivity, allow the artist to effectively destroy history, thus forgetting where they are in the stream of time.  The major chord of O Superman, then, gets accepted as tonic initially just because it is heard first.  Postmodernity has tried so hard to destroy modernity that it has positioned itself in the same manner as that Aᵇ triad.  Because the difference of one tone is such a drastic one, Anderson can use the minor chord to bring the postmodern back to consciousness and the listener realizes that temporality is often perceived.  The C-minor triad is actually the tonic, despite its flaws, just as, for Habermas, flawed modernity is where solid enough ground can be found to offer art “a way out.”[8]

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[1] Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, International Library of Phenomenology and Moral Sciences. (London ; Boston: Routledge & K. Paul, 1983), 1.

[2] Susan McClary, "This Is Not a Story My People Tell: Musical Time and Space According to Laurie Anderson," in Feminine Endings : Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 145.

[3] J Habermas and S Ben-Habib, "Modernity Versus Postmodernity," New German Critique (1981): 11.

[4] McClary, "This Is Not a Story My People Tell: Musical Time and Space According to Laurie Anderson," 141.

[5] Ibid., 142.

[6] Ibid., 142.

[7] Ibid., 142.

[8] Habermas and Ben-Habib, "Modernity Versus Postmodernity," 11.