15 research outputs found
âASMRâ autobiographies and the (life-)writing of digital subjectivity
For years now, a growing online subculture has been exchanging videos designed to induce âautonomous sensory meridian responseâ (ASMR), a mysterious, blissfully relaxing tingling sensation held to alleviate anxiety, pain, insomnia and depression. Emerging from online health forums, ASMR culture today centres on YouTube, where âASMRtistsâ have used the feedback mechanisms built into social media platforms to refine a repertoire of âtriggerâ techniques. Exemplifying a wider trend for using âambient mediaâ as mood modulators and task facilitators (Roquet, 2016 Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self. London: University of Minnesota Press.), ASMR cultureâs use of the word âtriggerâ is telling, gesturing towards what Halberstam ((2014) You Are Triggering Me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma. Bully Bloggers. Available at: https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-of-harm-danger-and-trauma/ (accessed 8 August 2018)) sees as a shift away from the Freudian notion of âmemory as a palimpsestâ towards one of memory as âa live wire sitting in the psyche waiting for a sparkâ, whereby digital subjects become black-boxed nodes in a cybernetic circuit. This shift has serious implications for the humanities and is particularly resonant for scholars of life-writing. As McNeill ((2012) There is no âIâ in network: Social networks sites and posthuman auto/biography. Biography 35(1): 65â82.) argues, digital technologies âcomplicate[] definitions of the self and its boundaries, both dismantling and sustaining the humanist subject in practices of personal narrativeâ (p. 65). The resulting friction is highlighted in âASMR autobiographiesâ: texts narrating the authorâs experiences of ASMR and their discovery of online ASMR communities. Echoing familiar auto/biographical forms, from medical case histories and coming out narratives to tales of religious conversion, these texts show that the models of subjectivity we have inherited from Enlightenment philosophy, religion, psychology and Romantic literature retain some cultural purchase. But they also suggest digital media are fostering new understandings of personhood informed by cybernetics, evolutionary psychology, behaviourism and neuroscience. Focusing on works by Andrew MacMuiris, Andrea Seigel and Jon Kersey while also addressing a range of other texts, this article asks what ASMR autobiographies can tell us about digital subjectivity
Scandinavian society for the study of diabetes Abstracts Seventh Meeting
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/46039/1/125_2005_Article_BF01219478.pd