ИСТИНА

The question of tone or voice as a characteristic of an individual philosophical writing comes up in the works of Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze, as well as the notion of Stimmung in Niezsche, Heidegger and literary theory, for example, Gumbrecht’s call to attention to the semantic field of sound and hearing, or “singability” of poetry pointed out by Gadamer. However, sound in all these examples is mostly treated as a metaphor, without actually involving music theory and/or sound theory. This paper proposes a more materially grounded approach to the role of sound in philosophy. Based on Quentin Meillassoux’s reading of Deleuze (as represented in “Subtraction and Contraction”), and specifically the concept of detour, allows for a more literal application of sound theory to philosophical concepts by closely linking detour to envelope (a curve describing how a sound changes over time, giving it specific timbre, tone and colour, rather than a simple wavelength). Based on interpreting deleuzian concepts of wave and fold as concepts applicable to sound as a form of temporal arrangement, we propose a spectral analysis of concepts (borrowing the name from spectralism in music). It gives us some new instruments of analysing concepts through specific modes of contractions and of time, which can also, as we suggest, open up a mode of creating new concepts via manipulations with detour.