Off Beat

Book excerpt: Off Beat: Pluralizing Rhythm draws attention to rhythm as a tool for analyzing various cultural objects. In fields as diverse as music, culture, nature, and economy, rhythm can be seen as a phenomenon that both connects and divides. It suggests a certain measure with which people, practices, and cultures may comply. Yet, for this very reason rhythm can also function as a field of exclusion, contestation, and debate. In that respect, rhythm possesses an underestimated meaning-creating potential. Whereas its connecting force is often accentuated in the aesthetic, political, and commercial usage of the term, the divisive aspect of rhythm is at least as important. This volume wants to rid rhythm of its harmless, nearly esoteric, reputation as a cosmic unifier by understanding it in the light of the contemporary medial turn. In the present collection of essays, we have encouraged approaches that combine political, aesthetic, musical, and theoretical dimensions of rhythm. Jan Hein Hoogstad is Assistant Professor in Comparative Literature and Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Birgitte Stougaard Pedersen is Associate Professor in the Section for Aesthetics and Culture, Department of Aesthetics and Communication, Aarhus University, Denmark.