sensing capitalist space.

whilst we walked the streets of cambridge, kaitlin observed that the 7-11 smells exactly like a 7-11 in hawai`i. bear with me as i briefly comment on the sensory dimensions of capitalism.

capitalism smooths space in the sense of reproducing certain experiences in entirely different contexts; a 7-11 in cambridge offers the same aromatic sensations as that of a 7-11 in hawai`i. two starkly different spatial locales reproduce a certain smell-space.

but that is not all. enter any department store (macy’s, nordstrom, whatever). the absence of windows except at the entrance attempts to entirely partition off department-store space from the rest of the world. ridding of the outside becomes readily apparent when one simply notices that in a department store, one could be in the same department store in any other city without being able to tell much difference. step inside capitalist space and you’re in another world where one’s only worry is “spend!”

a note on dorm space.

the suites in harvard’s dorms publicize private experiences. an entrance leads into kaitlin and kathryn’s room; another door leads into juani’s room; juani’s room opens into wendy’s room; a door in wendy’s room leads outside while another leads to the bathroom; and the bathroom leads into the next suite. the doors without locks include the one between juani’s room and wendy’s room; wendy’s room and the bathroom; and the bathroom and the next suite. routines must coordinate the experiences of public dorm life and intimate activities.

the walls are also incredibly thin. noise easily passes from one room to another. in the absence of stronger inhibitions to the traveling of sound, sonorous publics emerge across the material partitions demarcating ‘private’ spaces. life becomes intimate even as it is separated.

partitions of the audible.

 

noah and i discovered last night that the walls in our hotel, the pod (a name aptly describing the rooms’ sizes), are quite thin. residing at the top floor of ‘the pod’ next to a stairwell leading to the rooftop, we were frequently suffered the noises of loud voices and clattering footsteps throughout the early hours of the morning. and although noah missed it, i twice heard a woman in heat (selective hearing? how is the aural framed?). the private became the public in the transmission of the audibly orgasmic.

sound, it seems, crosses material boundaries and invades our worlds. while riding the subway and pointing out the infiltration of the visual by a swarm of budweiser ads, noah mentioned that in thailand, trams are filled with screens and speakers that play televisual ads (such as trailers of movies). understandably, then, part of the appeal of personal music devices is protecting one’s sensible world in a restricting of the audible range.

but who can afford one’s own audible filters? how does purchasing power condition our encounters with others in the world? and what does this say about capitalism’s relationship with the senses?