{"id":18893,"date":"2014-07-11T05:00:26","date_gmt":"2014-07-11T09:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=18893"},"modified":"2014-07-09T16:27:16","modified_gmt":"2014-07-09T20:27:16","slug":"on-listening-as-metaphor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2014\/07\/11\/on-listening-as-metaphor\/","title":{"rendered":"On “Listening” as metaphor for feminized social media labor"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a cross-post from its her factory<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In A Thousand Plateaus<\/i>, Deleuze and Guattari argue that \u201cmusic is traversed by a becoming-woman\u201d (272). By this they mean that Western systems of musical organization evoke and confront the very phenomena that serve as these systems\u2019 constitutive exclusions. \u00a0For example, while tonal harmony was a hierarchical system of consonances (i.e., chords), it nevertheless relied upon the introduction and resolution of (as the nineteenth century progressed, increasingly jarring and destabilizing) dissonances. Similarly, the abjection\/rejection\/marginalization of \u201cwoman\u201d (or better, \u201cgirl\u201d) is what solidifies and guarantees patriarchal orders: maleness\/masculinity become the \u201cnorm\u201d or the \u201cabsolute\u201d only insofar as femaleness\/femininity are circumscribed as abnormal, unthinkable, and invisible (or, to use Irigaray\u2019s terms, insofar as \u201cwoman\u201d is the sex which \u201cis<\/i> not\u201d). Thus, to claim that \u201cmusical expression is inseparable from a becoming-woman\u201d (Deleuze & Guattari, 299) is to posit that [Western, tonal] music works by \u201cconfronting its own danger, even taking a fall in order to rise again\u201d (Deleuze & Guattari, 299). \u00a0As Susan McClary and Catherine Clement have famously argued, the logic of tonality turns upon the evocation and ultimate containment of \u201cfeminized\u201d musical elements (e.g., chromaticism, actual female characters in operas, etc.). To say that \u201cmusical expression is a \u201cbecoming-woman,\u201d then, means that femininity<\/i> is the danger a musical work confronts, only to rise again. Traditionally, patriarchy has treated femininity as a deterritorializing force, something whose destabilization is necessary and even pleasurable.<\/p>\n

But plenty of feminist and non-feminist scholars have pointed out that neoliberalism co-opts and rebrands traditional (white) femininity: the Young-Girl is the ideal model for human capital, just as feminized work–flexible, care-oriented, informal\/unpaid–is the new model for labor. As Natalia Cecire<\/a> puts it, \u201cneoliberalism operates through hypertrophied forms of femininity.\u201d Femininity isn\u2019t deterritorializing, but the mechanism of reterritorialization.<\/p>\n

So, in the same way that neoliberalism co-opts femininity and has it lead the charge to \u201ccreative destruction,\u201d does it also co-opt \u201csound\u201d or \u201cmusic\u201d as the primary medium of and\/or metaphor for this work?<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Why might we think this? Kate Crawford\u2019s paper<\/a> on listening and online interaction, which I really like, argues that listening is a better conceptual resource for metaphors to describe the kinds of attention, relation, and interaction naturalized in more-or-less contemporary social media. There, she cites Nick Couldry\u2019s argument that the \u201c\u2018reciprocal, embodied nature of listening; its embeddedness always in an intersubjective space of perception\u2019\u201d (cited in KC 525) is what makes it particularly appropriate to describe online environments. But think about it: reciprocity, embodiment, embeddedness, intersubjectivity–all these sound a lot like the stereotypical attributes of trad white femininity. It seems like sound\u2019s femininity<\/i> is what makes it so well-suited to theorize and describe digital, socially-mediated life.<\/p>\n

This connection between sound and femininity suggests a connection between hyperemployment<\/a> and communicative capitalism<\/a>. Though Crawford doesn\u2019t explicitly argue this in her article, her analysis easily lends itself to the following interpretation: \u201cbackground listening\u201d is the traditionally feminized work–the un\/under-compensated care work usually tasked to women as both consequence and cause of their marginalization–of the social media economy.<\/p>\n

The kind of attention required for background listening is what we might call, after Sandra Bartky<\/a>, a \u201cfeminine discipline\u201d–the practice of this discipline is what makes one legibly feminine. \u201cBackground listening\u201d is similar to the \u201cdistracted\u201d listening that characterizes radio and\/or ubiquitous music listening, the very kind of listening, she points out, that got Adorno in such a tizzy. But, if you read Adorno more closely, this distracted or \u201cregressed\u201d listening is thoroughly feminized. As I show in this book<\/a>, just about every time he talks about this kind of listener, he makes reference to (sexualized) female body parts shortly before and\/or after. In Adorno, distracted listening is femininized. But, as Crawford shows, this is precisely the skillset one needs to navigate Twitter. Women\u2019s work involves knowing exactly when to tune in and hear everything in full detail, and when to tune out irrelevant noise. For example, isn\u2019t this what moms do with kids? They lurk around, tuning in when needed but also letting kids have space. This is what my mom referred to when she said she, like all moms, had eyes in the back of her head.<\/p>\n

This ability to tune in (and out) is also the same skillset that we require of care workers: they must be intimately and personally attentive to the unique and distinctive needs of others. Just as it\u2019s difficult to outsource the work of a babysitter, a housekeeper, or a nurse, \u201cit remains dif\ufb01cult,\u201d Crawford notes, \u201cto outsource the act of listening\u201d (531). Both involve addressing specific, materially-rooted concerns that can\u2019t be uprooted or abstracted from their context. And because of this, such labor is extremely inefficient. And that\u2019s why it is \u201cof low value\u2026[and] difficult for it to be recognized as an important and value-generating form of work\u201d (531). [1] The kinds of listening that are least efficient, the kinds of listening that can\u2019t be made to \u201cLean In,\u201d but are doled out to the least advantaged members of society. They\u2019re the kinds of listening that produce hypo<\/i>trophied, rather than hypertrophied, femininities, femininities that keep you at the margins instead of shooting you to the center.<\/p>\n

A caveat: these are all modernist <\/i>accounts of sound and femininity that neoliberalism appropriates. What was marginal to modernity is central to neoliberalism (in general). This begs the question: so what about neoliberal accounts of sound and femininity? I\u2019ve talked a bit about the latter in my post on the financialized girl. There I argue that patriarchy still feminizes–that is, it structurally produces some kinds of people\/phenomena as women, as neither included nor potentially included in society\/capitalism\/humanity. But what about \u201csound\u201d? What kinds of sonic, acoustic, and auditory phenomena get, perhaps we can say, phased out <\/i>of this normalized and normalizing account of sound? What sonic phenomena don\u2019t sync up with it, produce either dissonances in need of domestication, or sub\/supra auditory frequencies we can\u2019t even hear?
\n<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

[1] \u201cHowever, a commitment to background listening comes at a cost \u2013 the cost of human attention. A senior executive at Dell may underscore the importance of listening to customers, but in practice this means that more than 130 Twitter feeds emanate from Dell Corp., and each is connected back to a staff member who must personally maintain that account while adhering to corporate communication protocols (Soller 2009). This is the labour of listening. But how is this labour to be quanti\ufb01ed? As long as listening is not considered to be an important part of online participation, of \u2018low value\u2019 in the process of online engagement, it is dif\ufb01cult for it be recognized as an important and value-generating form of work\u201d (531)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a cross-post from its her factory.   In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari argue that \u201cmusic is traversed by a becoming-woman\u201d (272). By this they mean that Western systems of musical organization evoke and confront the very phenomena that serve as these systems\u2019 constitutive exclusions. \u00a0For example, while tonal harmony was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1929,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[2721,55,19749,166,732,16042],"class_list":["post-18893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","tag-femininity","tag-gender","tag-kate-crawford","tag-listening","tag-social-media","tag-sound"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1929"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18894,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18893\/revisions\/18894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}