%0 Journal Article
%T Earworms, Daydreams and Cognitive Capitalism
%A Eldritch Priest
%J Theory, Culture & Society
%@ 1460-3616
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/0263276416667200
%X Although the cognitive neurosciences are currently conducting research to determine the brain networks that are implicated in the production of ¡®earworms¡¯, my project seeks to address the technical nature of these abstract parasites that hears their spontaneous irruption in thought as both a product and source of contemporary capitalism¡¯s aim to draw value from involuntary nervous activities. In this respect, I approach the earworm from a deliberately speculative perspective in order to conceptualize its appearance as a technical matter expressive of the way historically ¡®useless thinking¡¯ (daydreaming, mind-wandering) is being imaginatively recuperated as a passive technology of the self. However, the earworm is a peculiar case of useless thinking, for its redundancy not only implicates it in the broader process of recuperation, but seems to realize a fatal tendency in sonic technics in ways that at once rely on, advance and disturb contemporary capitalism¡¯s encroachment on human cognitive capacities
%K abstraction
%K cognitive capitalism
%K distraction
%K earworm
%K listening
%K sound
%K technics
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0263276416667200