Disavowal, the Musical Subject, and a Politics of Silence: John Cage Between Buckminster Fuller and Mao Tse-Tung in the 1960s and 1970s

Abstract This article analyses John Cage’s surprising embrace of Maoism between 1971 and 1974, in the context of his turn to politics in the 1960s and 1970s as well as his philosophy of silence. It considers a central, albeit overlooked, project Cage proclaimed in the early 1970s: ‘reconcile’ the ‘irreconcilable’ social philosophy of US architect Buckminster Fuller and politics of Chinese revolutionary Mao Tse-Tung by ‘listening to both’. Through a critical tracing of the tangled Maoist sources buried within Cage’s writings on the Cultural Revolution, in addition to his presentation of them alongside Fuller’s thought, the article argues that this political project marks an impasse for Cage – specifically indicating key limitations to his philosophy of silence. Framed by the fraught US–China twentieth-century cultural politics and the Lacanian concept of disavowal, it suggests Cage’s impasse points to a deeper block within, and possible rethinking of, the post-war avant-garde’s relation to politics.