Chapter 6 provides a summary of our cross-cultural pragmatic analytic framework. The framework breaks down cross-cultural pragmatic data into three units of analysis, expressions, speech acts and discourse, and provides a systematic approach to disentangle and compare these units across linguacultures.

John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick grappled with the perspectival problem arising from Bentham’s full rejection of the theological justification for the legislative point of view. Mill’s intriguing suggestion that “wrong” refers to that which should be punished by law, public opinion, or private conscience combined with his assumption that all three are open to revision on utilitarian principles leads to the interesting conclusion that our moral statements about right and wrong are tacit legislative proposals. When deciding whether to voice our moral opinions we must think like legislators enacting a rule. This was in tension with the idea that our public expressions of moral judgment should be spontaneous reactions to the poor choices of others. Sidgwick grasped the implications of this issue more clearly and more self-consciously than did Mill, since it meant that there was a potentially deep disjunction between what is right according to utilitarianism and what utilitarianism tells us to publicly state as right. Sidgwick’s defense of an esoteric morality is the final outcome of the attempt to secularize morality as legislation.

Sources of information about Stravinsky’s visits to Spain include the composer’s own comments, few but incisive, to be found in Chroniques de ma vie, Memories and Commentaries and Expositions and Developments. In addition, there are his often noteworthy references to Spanish culture as reported by others, where his strongly worded impressions have been recalled by reliable sources including Romain Rolland, in his vivid memoir,2 and by Robert Craft (and Vera Stravinsky) who described Stravinsky’s first trip to Madrid in 1916 as ‘one of the most exciting months of his life’.3

The impact of The Rite of Spring upon the direction of twentieth-century music is well documented, its repercussions strongly felt ever since its explosive premiere on 29 May 1913. Yet, while audiences revel in this work’s many dynamic and atmospheric qualities, and while composers of all generations since that premiere have engaged with its impressive technical/rhythmical intricacies, The Rite’s impact upon those who are charged with actually delivering the work ‘live’ on the concert platform or in the recording studio, that is, the orchestral musicians, has been relatively neglected. Few, though, would challenge the assertion made by Martyn Brabbins, the current musical director of English National Opera, that The Rite of Spring has ‘single-handedly transformed the role and function of the conductor’.

Stravinsky is a purveyor of shocking comments. Just as he could capture in a single chord the essence of The Rite of Spring, he could frame an aesthetic position with an imminently quotable aperçu: ‘music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all’.1 This remark on the nature of music, published in his 1936 autobiography, is one of his most quoted comments. In fact, it gained enough notoriety to prod Stravinsky to clarify his position some twenty years later, regarding what he called the ‘over-publicized bit about expression (or non-expression)’. Given a chance to repeat himself, he said, he would rephrase the remark; it was not so much that music is ‘powerless to express anything’, he explained, but that ‘music expresses itself’.2 In the first case, music is defined negatively as that which excludes everything but itself; it is not ‘a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature’. In the second case, music is given a positive spin as that which includes itself and nothing else; music is its own expression, ‘beyond verbal meanings and verbal descriptions’. In both cases, the composer is saying the same thing – it just depends whether your aesthetic glass is half full or half empty; music in expressing itself is ‘powerless to express anything’ other than itself. That is why Stravinsky staunchly asserted in 1959 that he still stood by his earlier remark of 1936.

Linda Radzik claims that rebukes can and often should be seen as informal social punishments. In this chapter, Christopher Bennett disagrees. However, because he does not want the dispute to be a merely verbal one, his aim in this response is to draw out what is at issue when we disagree over whether something should be classed as punishment. Having set out the key parts of Radzik’s position and registered some concerns that he has about it, Bennett sets out a taxonomy of things that we can do with blame or social punishment, aiming to show why we might have reason to put different kinds of responses into different categories. Which of these categories we decide to call ‘punishment’ does not matter too much as long as we are clear on the underlying differences between these types of response and the different types of challenge they set us in any attempt to justify or practice them.

What can be done about the relative lack of doctrinal protections for privacy while in public? How can society – and the law – begin to recognize and appreciate that privacy while navigating public space is of critical importance, particularly for marginalized communities, and worthy of doctrinal protection? In this chapter, after first elaborating and deepening extant proffered justifications for a right to public privacy, I bolster these justifications by underscoring what is, perhaps, a more direct constitutional/doctrinal value served by a right to public privacy. In addition to facilitating future speech and attempts to freely associate (as rightly emphasized by many defenders of public privacy), attempts to preserve a degree of privacy or anonymity in public (often undertaken by members of marginalized groups) are frequently a form of performative and expressive opposition to an ever expanding surveillance society and, as explained in Chapter 3, may be protected as symbolic, expressive conduct under the First Amendment.

This chapter turns to the implications, or payoffs, of a theory of performative privacy. There are both doctrinal and discursive benefits to conceptualizing efforts to maintain privacy in public as acts of performative privacy.

Privacy often suffers in courts of law and as a legislative or regulatory priority. Privacy, in effect, is marginalized as a right and frequently ranked below security or law enforcement concerns. Often it is even ranked below administrative, personal, or corporate convenience. At the same time, privacy is of acute significance for members of marginalized communities – queer folk, racial and religious minorities, women, immigrants, people living with disabilities, people living in poverty, workers, and those at the intersections.

Introduces the main argument, that much about the instrumental music of the later eighteenth century can be grasped with reference to the concept of sociability. The concept is defined and placed alongside other rubrics such as expression, language and behaviour. Sociability is separated into affective and technical spheres. Haydn, a market leader both critically and commercially, is the central figure for the study. The modern reception of later eighteenth-century style is discussed with particular reference to Haydn and Mozart, noting the critical tendency to occupy a moral high ground above the image of a ‘shallow sociability’, and concluding with the challenge ‘When else … in Western music history has a whole style been so often understood negatively, as a problem in need of a solution?’. Then I investigate the listener-friendliness of the style: the pronounced orientation of this music towards a listening subject was historically novel. This music both challenges listeners and puts them at their ease.