The Managerial Avant-Garde: John Cage’s Natural Authority

This chapter reads the classical avant-gardism of John Cage against the emergence of a new figure in the US political economy and imaginary: the manager. After first charting the arrival of white-collar hegemony, managerialism and the figure of the entrepreneur, I turn to Cage’s conception of authority. Here I read Cage’s paratexts and pronouncements against his practice, concluding that Cage’s renunciations of authority are fig-leafs for a removal of this authority to a higher ground. The context of management and managerialism highlights the nature of Cage’s authority because it is likewise contingent on the mystification of that authority, especially as a fact of nature (an indispensable word in Cage’s vocabulary). Through this juxtaposition, I hope to shed light on the often-observed contradictions of Cage’s thought, and the bad faith of post-war recapitulated avant-gardism.