Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic work in the digitising sensorium of the Indian state, and drawing on sound studies, linguistic anthropology and affect theory, this paper describes how the materiality of digital communication platforms produce sonic affects and the presentation of authoritative selves.

Paper long abstract:

In August 2018, a forty-eight old man, who goes by the initials KG, took on the position of a senior bureaucrat in southern India. A few weeks into taking office he introduced a weekly conference call with over 300 of his subordinates, called grptlk (short for group talk) after the name of the mobile phone application (app) that powered these calls. Using a combination of classic leased line telecommunication and the flexibility of control offered by the app, KG used grptlk to speak to his myriad subordinates located in different parts of the district, all at once. Beyond offering an opportunity for making work more efficient, grptlk allowed KG to produce what the anthropologist of media, Brian Larkin calls “modes of affect, desire, fantasy, and devotion”.

Drawing on scholarship in sound studies, linguistic anthropology and affect theory, this paper aims to understand how the materiality of digital communication platforms, that is the techno-social connections between people, technologies, and sensory forms, produced a sonic environment that allowed for the presentation of a bureaucratic self that was unseen in the pre-digital? Through what technopolitics did the voice platform silence 'noisy' offices and in turn produce its own sonic affects among its listeners? These inquiries are made in the context of a general re-emergence of orality in the age of the digital through instances such as podcasts, voice texting, and artificial intelligence.