From the rhythm of the phantom philosopher to a ruthmanalysis with the dead

Abstract

The traces of Lúcio Pinheiro dos Santos, Portuguese mathematician and philosopher who became known as the ghost philosopher, are faint, mainly because his work has vanished in a bonfire in front of the Municipal Chamber of Lisbon. However, the few vestiges that could be found are forceful, and in them lies the possibility of creating a new scientific field, Rhythmanalysis. The one who suggests it is Henri Lefebvre, who sees rhythm not just as an object of analysis, but as a tool for listening to the temporalities and rhythmic disruptions in which human activities take place. In this article, I will focus on Henri Lefebvre’s proposal and on contributing to add complexity to the conceptualisation and practice of rhythmanalysis. These contributions, resulting both from the uses of the methodology I developed, and from critical theorizations of the Eurocentric conception of modernity, cradle of the rhythmanalitic proposal, are grouped under the designation Rhuthmanalysis. The displacement of the name consists in a linguistic and conceptual detour, thus seeking to expand the analysis of rhythms beyond the human. From the ghost to the dead, what I aim to propose is a “wanderer rhuthmanalysis” and, at the same time, still (and perhaps always) ongoing.