Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control

Sign, Storage, Transmission

by Mack Hagood

For almost sixty years, media technologies have promised users the ability to create sonic safe spaces for themselves—from bedside white noise machines to Beats by Dre's “Hear What You Want” ad campaign, in which Colin Kaepernick's headphones protect him from taunting crowds. In Hush , Mack Hagood draws evidence from noise-canceling headphones, tinnitus maskers, LPs that play ocean sounds, nature-sound mobile apps, and in-ear smart technologies to argue the true purpose of media is not information transmission, but rather the control of how we engage our environment. These devices, which Hagood calls orphic media, give users the freedom to remain unaffected in the changeable and distracting spaces of contemporary capitalism and reveal how racial, gendered, ableist, and class ideologies shape our desire to block unwanted sounds. In a noisy world of haters, trolls, and information overload, guarded listening can be a necessity for self-care, but Hagood argues our efforts to shield ourselves can also decrease our tolerance for sonic and social difference. Challenging our self-defeating attempts to be free of one another, he rethinks media theory, sound studies, and the very definition of media.

Genres: Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

Published March 22, 2019

Reviews

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I taught sonic media for five years in an MA programme. Sonic media research is one of my favourite areas of scholarship. Theoretical without apology and confrontational to simplistic identity politics, sonic media scholars are the astronauts of silence, finding texture and meaning in the gaps of life.

Mack Hagood has does us all a service. This is an innovative book and moves the debate about the sonic self and its limitations into a new terrain. Working with and through the phrase Orphic media, he takes as his foundation that Orpheus fought the sirens' sound with sound. The book explores how sounds fight, wager, weave and bounce.

Impressively this book started life as a PhD. Once more that old maxim that PhDs do not make great scholarly monographs is found to be absolutely ridiculous.

A fine book and a great contribution to sonic media.

[Cole Gautereaux · Rating 5 out of 5]

hush is a delightful read offering a bounty of pristine syntax, thoroughly informed chapters, and carefully constructed arguments. It's a masterful blend of cornerstone theories - a high-tech trophy case of superbly crafted arguments and rhetorical delicacies all centered around the mediation of sound. hush is broken into four sections: Introduction, Suppression, Masking, and Cancellation. Its introduction is a marvelous display of textual control in which the figures of Orpheus and Collin Kaepernick bear the proverbial torches of exemplification.

Inspired by Orpheus' ability to enshroud his listeners in protective song and by Collin's Beats by Dre audio campaign in which he rises above the cacophony of the crowd, Mack Hagood speaks his own sonic safe-space into existence - a safe-space that seeks to encompass all the rest. The introductory segment of hush dissects the ontology of sound and provides clerical insight into the history of its existence in the broader realm of critical and cultural theory. The subsequent sections discuss sound as object in various cultural realms, while also tracing the evolution of sound theory through a handy history of sonic media devices. Ranging from white noise machines, to mantra aids; from personal listening devices to the broader field of "new media," hush argues that the real essence of media use is not the transmission of information but rather the attempted control of affect, the continually changing states of bodies that condition their abilities to act and be acted upon (Hagood).

"Part 1: Suppression" engages readers with a history of Tinnitus - the most direct negative affectation of sonic media usage, while "Part II: Masking" delivers a more positive and uplifting history of the more soothing repercussions produced by sonic media. It jumps quickly from subject to subject, stitch to stitch - Hagood's needle-tip prose is both informative and fluid, and his anumerous pop. culture references make maneuvering the book's passages much more rewarding. As if the topics weren't enticing enough. Even so, the latter paragraphs are made doubly rewarding through a marked increase in the use of personal anecdote. Although hush takes a more contemporary and stylized approach to critical theory, it hits hard.

Every paragraph is rich with insight, and the text is expertly paced. It gets better as it progresses. In its fourth chapter "A Quiet Storm: Orphic Apps and Infocentrism," sentences like "Over the past three chapters, we have used the filter of orphic media to hear history both dulling and sharpening the senses (Schmidt 2000, 3), generating new aural sensitivities and new means of suppressing and masking sound, as Americans' affectively driven attractions and aversions took shape in new sociomaterialistic environments," and "Today, an informative/noise binary has become one of the contemporary West's central discourses, suffusing our notions and experience of acoustic noise with an informatic sensibility and instilling in us the imperative for sonic self-control" are strewn about as casually as refrigerator magnets.

Lastly, "Part III: Cancellation" exists solely to discuss noise-cancellation technologies and their contribution to sonic self-control ad campaigns (namely, those of Bose and Beats by Dre). This section gets a bit dicey as it utilizes racial differences to contextualize the differance between "white noise," and "black noise;" the stark difference that exists between Bose and Beats by Dre marketing tactics; wanting to hear nothing in order to be left alone and wanting to hear nothing in order to be recognized for it.

Yet setting dicey metaphors aside, it's a necessary read for any scholar interested in the ontologies and epistemologies of the human existence. For such a heady topic, Mack Hagood's hush cuts sound theory down to incredibly simple and understandable terms yet manages to keep it as classy as Foucault. And the best part? It features footnotes and a list of references.

[Cana McGhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hagood explores how personal listening devices/technologies (orphic technologies, as he calls them) enact neoliberal values of controlling fear of otherness, intrusion, etc at the level of the individual rather than at systemic levels. As such, each example reveals how the search for freedom/autonomy through sound technologies has the unintended consequences of other limits and heightened sensitivities. Hagood's conclusion dangles the idea that embracing affective listening practices might be a means of renegotiating boundaries between self and other/inner and outer to actually achieve the freedom from the societal constraints that these orphic experiences claim to provide.

[S. Alberto ⁻⁷ (semi-active, always yearning) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really interesting read, and I have to give credit to the person who presented it in my seminar—they did a great job breaking it down and making it even more engaging. The book dives into the ways we use sound (or silence) to manage our environments, emotions, and even identities, and it had some thought-provoking insights on noise-canceling tech, ASMR, and other ways we control what we hear.

I appreciated how it explored the tension between wanting to tune in and tune out, and the broader implications of that. Some parts were denser than others, but overall, it was a compelling read that made me think about sound in a new way. Definitely glad I read this one!

[Danny · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book actually helped me to manage my tinnitus. Great writing and specific details without overly relying on jargon. Hagood does an amazing job of using a few specific investigations to outline a history of how sound is used to shape our subjectivity and compliance within power structures.

[Catarina Rocha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hagood opened my mind to a brand new world that has always been there: sound. Soundscapes, noise, noise-cancelling, culture, racism, the line between creating a personal space through sound and isolating (or keeping others on the outside) - it's all there and a lot more.

Not a science communication book, it is a rigours academic book, though written in a fairly accessible language.