The Soundscape of Withdrawal: Noise-Cancelling Technologies and the Privatisation of Listening

In my paper, I study the role noise-cancellation technologies play in forming our response to the affective pressures of modern life. These technologies are often advertised as tools that boost our focus and mental well-being. But their everyday incorporation into our lives raises a critical question: what is at stake when our response to conditions of sensory overload is to reform our listening practices instead of addressing them as concerns to be heard, investigated, and socially dealt with? Drawing on Herbert Marcuse's concept of "technological rationality" and Byung-Chul Han's "neoliberal self-management," I argue that the growing promotion of these instruments signals a shift from collective intervention to individual self-optimisation, where our privatised listening practices are indicative of maladies that surface in the relationship between technology, labour, and subjectivity.