Running with the Devil. Robert Walser

us make sense of the seemingly fragmented modern world; it can help us understand the thoughts and desires of many whose only politics are cultural politics.

Musicological Analysis

      In this section, I want to discuss a few select approaches to musical analysis in order to situate more clearly my own methods and goals. This is in no way a comprehensive or balanced survey; its purpose is illustrative.²⁴ One of the central issues concerns the disabling methodological split between aesthetic and sociological analysis. The continuing prestige and influence of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European aesthetics, which relied upon claims of disinterestedness to mask the ideological agendas of its culture, have obscured the fact that this is not typical of how most people have understood the operation of culture throughout history.²⁵