As outlined in the introduction to this book, and traced in detail in Pascal Michon's Elements of Rhythmology (2017–19), rhythm as a critical, philosophical concept has a long history. Yet equally, it is still not easy to define and is only rarely worked through explicitly. In response to this problem, a series of source materials are presented here with the aim of helping to unpack and map various connections and differences across the critical literatures. Offered as a supplement to the main introduction and Michon's essay on rhythm as a new paradigm within the humanities, the idea here is to aid familiarity with key texts and to consider various ‘genealogies’ of critical thought on rhythm. At a general level, we might identify three main perspectives or routes through which to consider the concept of rhythm, which we can label as materialism, phenomenology and language (or semiotics broadly defined). However, crucially, there are no simple lineages, and there is certainly plenty of crossover. The diagram shown here, ‘A Genealogy of Rhythm’ (Figure I.1), along with the selected texts, should in no way be taken as definitive or exhaustive. Rather the materials are presented in the form of a heuristic, as a means to prompt further thought, discussion and research.

There are various points at which we might wish to start a critical, historical account of rhythm. Prior to the industrial revolution, René Descartes formulated his thoughts on the animal as machine, as a non-thinking entity. La Mettrice later picks this up as a critique of the human. Such thinking – as well as, for example, Bentham’s notion of the panopticon – works upon the discourse of the industrial revolution. The Cartesian split allies with the new ways of thinking about efficiencies in production. The ability to rationalise our bodily movements, and to command these movements, is epitomised by Taylorism, as developed through the mass production and assembly lines of the second phase of the industrial revolution. All of this goes on to define a particular ‘rhythm of life’, which we still negotiate to this day. The analysis of movement and rhythms that led to ideas about efficiency and productivity in factories and commerce more generally is situated within the perspective of materialism (which in turn relates to writings on new materialism, even where the emphasis is placed upon a discontinuity with the rhythms of modernity).