our bodies, our self/phones

I’d like to expand upon (or, rather, think creatively and anecdotally with) one of the claims Richard Grusin makes in his chapter on “The Affective Life of Media”: in his discussion of affective networks and environments produced through the ubiquitous presence of, and interactive practices inherent in, media, Grusin gestures toward “the force of the affective relation between individuals and their phones themselves” (115). In my opinion, though he provides interesting case studies to explore the valences of such assemblages, Grusin fails to get at the essence of the phone, or to offer an assessment that does justice to the vital role phones play in our daily lives (granted, his book was published in 2010, during which iPhone generation 3GS was the all the rage… practically a different world).

The phone has become an appendage—an embodied tool. How often have you forgotten or misplaced your phone and felt vulnerable, lost, incomplete? Even this corporeal inclusion has its comforts, for it operates through a sort of reverse abjection. Whereas bodily discards such as fluids and lost hair reside in the uncanny realm of the abject—retaining physical affinity despite having been ejected beyond the borders of the self, thus producing discomfort and even disgust—the phone can inhabit this proximate space without triggering such visceral reactions. In fact, quite the opposite: the phone is safe in that it is safely not abject, for it does not signify biologically and so can be familiarly and unthreateningly incorporated into the self without compromising our fragile sense of the body.

And yet the phone is not a material thing—or at least, its materiality is only circumstantial. The thing for which we cultivate an affective fondness is not the hardware device itself, nor even its software—though that gets us closer—but rather it is the phone as entity or idea—almost, as soul. Case in point: when a phone breaks, it feels like the loss of something vital, but restoring its backup to a new device quickly transfers our affections. The essence of the phone is not tied to its material conditions. The phone, more precisely, is a nexus for multitudinous and multifarious interactions and dynamic processes.

Of course, as Grusin suggests, our ability to customize our phones generates an empathetic identification with them—backgrounds, playlists, favorite contacts and their ring/text tones and photos... But the interactions that, for me at least, evoke the most powerful sense of fondness are those that occur at that happy glitchpoint between the human fumble and the machine failure to correct for it. For instance (and I’d love to hear anecdotes from other personal experience), when you accidentally activate Siri and she registers some sort of absurd end to a sentence and enthusiastically chirps, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you're saying.” Or, when you mistakenly hit the record button in iMessage and send gibberish (or, hopefully, nothing too embarrassing) to a random contact. Or the telltale staticky swishing of a pocket/butt dial. And don’t get me started on autocorrect/typo fails, which—regardless of whether or not I’m in public—reduce me to hysterical, crying laughter. Every. Damn. Time. We experience these sorts of networked intimacies through a very real sense of attachment—if not companionship—with our devices.