Hope and Wish Image in Music Technology

David P. Rando

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9783319340142
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319340159
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Linguistics

This book proposes that new music technologies attract unconscious desires for socialism and collectivity, enabling millions of people living under capitalism to dream of repressed social alternatives. Grounded in the philosophical writings of Ernst Bloch and Walter Benjamin, the book examines file sharing technologies, streaming services, and media players, as well as their historical antecedents, such as the player piano, cassette tape, radio and compact disc, alongside interpretations of fiction, memoir, and albums. Through the concept of wish images—the unconscious hopes and desires for social alternatives that gather around new technologies—the book identifies the repressed pre- and post-capitalist urges that attend our music technologies. While these desires typically remain unconscious and tend to pass away not only unmet but also unrecognized, Hope and Wish Image in Music Technology attempts to bring wishes for social alternatives to the surface at an auspicious moment of technological transition. 

Table of contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Introduction: Audible Hope
• Wish Images and Wishful Images: Benjamin and Bloch
• The Music of Wish Images: Filesharing and Utopia
• The Mixtape as Wishtape: Heterotopia, Translation, and Nostalgia
• The Artist and Technology: William Gaddis’s Agapē Agape, or the World’s Smallest Player Piano Playing Itself Just for You
• “The Enemy Has Never Ceased to Be Victorious”: Anne Frank and Neutral Milk Hotel
• Technology, Everyday Life, and Hope
• Conclusion: The Happy Appearance and the Wishful Tendency in Cultural Criticism
• Bibliography
• Index