Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

experiments made specifically for the medium of radio. The paper is historically contextualised to Dziga
Vertov’s and Paul Hindemith’s experiments in the 1920s on radio art and modes of listening.
Meri Kyto
Grumbling online: Neighbourhood noise, affective listening, and articulations of sonic privacy
This paper deals with the articulations of domesticated sonic space in social media outbursts about
neighbourhood noise. A theoretical starting point for the study is affective listening, which manifests itself in
often late night tweets, status updates and blog posts to an audience possibly present online. The writings
tackle the lack of “normal sonic behaviour” which causes aggressive emotions and the uncomfortable
feelings complying to normative negative solidarity, not being able to intervene with the cause of nuisance.
The paper will also discuss feelings and knowledge of distributed subjectivity in the changing levels of
listening attention in domesticated sonic space. The study is based on Finnish language data collected with
Meltwater Buzz social media measurement software from 2014 to 2016.
Johanna Maksimainen* & Suvi Saarikallio
pictures
Foundations of ambivalence in pleasure evoked by music and
Pleasure is typically considered as a somewhat unproblematic concept referring, for example, to a positively
valenced affective response to something. However, there are indications that the experience of pleasure is
more complicated. The current study explores the constituents of ambivalence intertwined to pleasure
induced by music and visual objects by utilizing approaches from art philosophy, musicology, and emotion
research. Data was collected through a semi-structured online survey (N=464). Both free descriptions and
ratings on structured scales were collected. Subsequently, a mixture of statistical and qualitative methods
was applied in the analysis. Analysis focuses on emotional contents and attitude. The study revealed four
types of ambivalent attitudes to which the emotional experiences of ambivalence were related. Results
provide pioneering interdisciplinary perspectives for understanding the affective experiences induced by the
variety of cultural artifacts surrounding us in our daily life.
8K
Cultural and Reproductive Ageing (Chair, Charlotte Kroløkke)
Lucy van de Wiel
Reproductive Ageing, Egg Freezing and Precarious Fertility
With the 21st century introduction of egg freezing emerges a reconfiguration of the temporal logic of
reproductive ageing. Egg freezing extends a period of what we may call “precarious fertility” during which
infertility is lived prior to its arrival and the onset of age-related infertility need not signal the end of the
reproductive life span. Fertility becomes precarious as egg freezing produces not only more treatment
options, but also an increased sense of agency over and uncertainty about reproductive ageing. The
presentation analyses three reconceptualisations of reproductive ageing in the context of egg freezing based
on selected discourses surrounding egg freezing in media and marketing. First, I address the production of
uncertainty and the need for reproductive self-assessment emerging with egg freezing and contesting
models of measuring fertility based on hormones, egg quantity, egg quality and genetics. Second, I will
examine how the discursive construction of frozen eggs’ fallibility structures the treatment cycle and
produces an understanding of reproductive ageing as distributed within and without the body. Third, I
discuss the new possibilities of post-fertile conception and posthumous motherhood and their implications
for an understanding of reproductive ageing as a confrontation with finitude.
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