Lyon, Rhythmanalysis, Introduction

 

Dawn Lyon, (2022) Introduction: Rhythm, Rhythmanalysis, and Urban Life. In Rhythmanalysis: Place, Mobility, Disruption, and Performance. Emerald Publishing, Bingsley, UK.

Summary

Dawn Lyon, author of What Is Rhythmanalysis (2018), introduces this edited volume on rhythmanalysis by situating its contributions in  relation to the development of the concept by Lefebvre and Régulier, as well as to other recent volumes and works. She discusses L’s focus on the interaction of linear and cyclical time, and the factors of repetition and difference in any rhythm, which introduce “cracks” which contain “the potential for social transformation” (3). In conversation with recent volumes by Edensor, Smith and Hetherington, and Crespi and Manghani, and others, she raises the relation of Lefebvre’s concept of dressage to Simmel’s blasé metropolitan inhabitants. She notes that, while drawing on Lefebvre and Régulier’s work, many contemporary invocations of rhythmanalysis go beyond what they had outlined; Lyon lists five “possibilities of rhythmanalysis” explored in this volume, among other recent works. These are rhythmanalysis 1) as analytical tool (separating out and interrelating various rhythms and types of rhythms), 2) as conceptual tool (as mid-range concept connecting sensed and unsensed, or immediate and distant rhythms; and as critique), 3) as a method, or research strategy orchestrating a range of methods, 4) as “embodied and sensory practice,” and 5) as “urban poetics” (7-11). She then introduces the rest of the chapters organized along themes of place, mobility, disruption, and performance.