The Auditory Dimension of the Technologically Mediated Self

Abstract

In this article, I aim to clarify some of the ways in which the auditory dimension of the self is constituted through the mediation of technology. I show that by excluding our immediate surroundings with mobile personalized and private auditory technologies, we are increasingly laying down a personal, inner spatial grid of acoustic memories that get integrated into our narrative identity and co-constitutes the space of familiarity and belonging that gives us a sense of who we are. To do so, I first lay out a clear ontological ground. Next, I outline how the auditory dimension of the self is constituted and subsequently mediated technologically. Finally, I bring to bear Erving Goffman’s theatrical framework of performative self-constitution as a useful framework to illustrate how, on one hand, the culturally available repertoire on which the imagination draws to constitute the self has augmented thanks to the contributions of other people in distal spatiotemporal contexts; on the other, the reconfiguration of how we listen to the world and the other people in it entails muting or blocking out of other voices. This can stunt how we conceive of ourselves, producing an epistemic bubble involving a tunnel “vision” or echo-chamber effect. In addition, due to the coupling of bodily and cognitive structures with mobile, privatized auditory technologies that thereby become transparent in experience, others, by listening in on us, acquire the ability to privilege certain types of behavior while suppressing others. Thus, there is a danger that the individual autonomous agency so important to self-constitution can be compromised.