Cecchetto, D. (2022). Listening in the Afterlife of Data. Aesthetics, Pragmatics, and Incommunication. Duke University Press

Abstract

The arrival of the review copy of David Cecchetto’s Listening in the Afterlife of Data. Aesthetics,
Pragmatics, and Incommunication (2022) in digital format attests to the widespread dissemination of
digital communication technologies. It demonstrates the significance of Cecchetto’s insistence on
listening to the incommunicative, the (in)significant ‘subtones’ spreading throughout the afterlife of
data. The book proposes an expanded view of listening as a methodological approach for
interrogating human-technology couplings at a time when digital technologies are still unreservedly
viewed as enhancing interaction despite a rising suspicion of data validity. Cecchetto’s critical
research practice highlights the agential intertwinement that the distributed attunement of listening
enables for gaining access to these contemporary posthumanist experiences.