“Shake It Off” & the post-identity politics of post-genre pop
This started out as an essay about Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” video, but it grew into a larger discussion of post-identity politics and post-genre pop music aesthetics. I’m interested in their common features, values, and practices. Because genre-mixing and…
some initial thoughts on Bennett’s “Vibrant Matter”
Welcome to the next installment of Robin blogs her way through initial research for her new book. As usual, this is all very raw, just me trying to articulate some ideas and think out loud. I’ve made a little headway…
I Can Hear You Watching Me
As citation:obsolete was preparing to start work on Music for Drones, I noticed that police helicopters circled our neighborhood a LOT. So, I started recording the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) choppers as they circled (and sometimes hovered) my neighborhood, often…
Big Data & the ‘Physics’ of Social Harmony (and some stuff on Snowpiercer, JS Mill, & Ranciere)
This is a cross-post from Cyborgology. I want to think about the relationship two recent-ish articles draw between big data and social “harmony.” Why is big data something that we think is well-suited to facilitate a harmonious society? Or, when we think…
On Music, Race, & Nature in Grosz’s Nick of Time
I’ve been working through Grosz’s recent-ish work to try to figure out what she means by “music” and what work it does for her as a thinker of matter and affect. Here I focus on her reading of Darwin’s account…
A few thoughts on Katy Perry’s “This Is How We Do”
“I fought the laws of economic rationality, and I won.” The neoliberal subject is supposed to make economically rational calculations about how she spends her time, her money, and her energy. Do I spend my time working, or would…
Wound Down Inside
My new essay on Lana Del Rey, post-maximalist pop, and gender is now up for free at The New Inquiry. Here’s a sample: Undercutting the sonic impact of a downbeat is not a new thing. In 19th century European…
Blogging my way through Grosz’s “Chaos, Territory, Art”: part 2, more thoughts on ‘music’ and (algo)rhythm
Signal & Noise Why does a chapter nominally about “vibration, animal, music, sex” begin with a long discussion of philosophy, what it is and what it does? Is this evidence that “music” is really just philosophy’s other, its negative? Are…
Sexual Difference, Indeterminacy, & Open Works: a few thoughts on Grosz
I’m starting work on my third book, which I am tentatively calling “Signal & Noise”. This involves a lot of reading; I am going to try to post short reflections on what I’m reading as I work my way through…
Is neoliberalism’s becoming-woman also a becoming-sound? (and some thoughts on listening, social media, and feminized labor)
This will be cross-posted at Cyborgology later this week. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari argue that “music is traversed by a becoming-woman” (272). By this they mean that Western systems of musical organization evoke and confront the very…
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