Peter Szendy's 'Membres fantômes des corps musiciens' explores phantom limbs of musicians

In 'Membres fantômes des corps musiciens' (Éditions de Minuit), philosopher Peter Szendy examines the transformation of a musician's body during performance. He argues that when playing, a musician's body escapes itself, giving rise to phantom limbs—fictive yet effective organs that the musical exercise fabricates. Szendy coins the term 'effiction' to describe these surnumerary organs: a fiction with real effects. The book traces historical and musicological evidence of these phenomena through stories of fingers, feet, musical telegraphy, and electrical conduction. Szendy contends that music produces bodies, invalidating the classical opposition between nature and technique. Every sonorous body, organic or instrumental, is fictive, fabricated, and 'aréalisé' (unrealized). Music is originally disseminating, disarticulating the musician's body to create resonance space, and the instrumental body is designed for this purpose. What music composes is not notes or sounds but the unbinding of bodies, raising the question of how to remake a body from scattered limbs. The review by Bastien Gallet in artpress highlights Szendy's thesis that music always recomposes bodies.