Braidotti is a feminist philosopher, whose theoretical framework of nomadic subjectivity focuses on identities and subjectivities in on-going and non-linear flux. The nomadic subject’s sense of ‘self’ and identity is continuously synthesized in relation to affective encounters with other entities (
2011a, l. 422–343, and
Passim; cf. Massumi
2002, l. 601, 1089). This is not to say that subjectivity is entirely at the ‘mercy’ of external agencies; Braidotti also understands desire as sustaining subject formation, and the meeting of these agencies define the ‘affective encounter.’ She claims: ‘a sense of identity […] rests not on fixity, but on contingency’ and ‘[…] what sustains the entire process of becoming subject is the will to know [and] the desire to speak […]’ (
2011a, l. 422–447). Meaning, subjectivity is a relational flow between inner desire and external or outer affectivity, and that the nomadic subject can willingly enact a desired synthesis of the ‘self’ through encounters it deems as contingent to its identity. This synthesis of the self is only temporary, however, as the nomadic subject is never ‘fixed’ by these syntheses of encounters and desires. How, then, can we relate Braidotti’s notion of nomadic syntheses of identity to intertextual chiptune creativity and, furthermore, chiptune identity?
In a similar process to Braidotti’s nomadic subjectivity, the temporary construction of chiptune listening subjectivity is reliant on an affective encounter—chiptunes and the sonic qualities of microsounds in this case—and thus it can be proposed that chiptune composers can ‘tailor’ or ‘impact’ the encounter and the form that subjectivity may take. So, while chip-musical encounters may be essential for the chiptune fan to feel ‘who’ they are or to which (sub)culture they belong, chiptune composers are capable of tailoring this sensation through compositional choices. I argue that this process takes place through the interaction of two main vectors: the first is the nomadic construction of listening subjectivity through the affective agency of chiptune encounters. The second vector of fannish desire is the influence of the chiptune artist’s self-definition—as how they wish to produce and enact their sense of identity—on their compositional practice.
Three important questions can help demonstrate what I mean here: First, how does chiptune listening subjectivity operate in relation to chiptune fan identity? Second, how is chiptune contingent to the nomadic ‘form’ of subjectivity? And finally, how do chiptune composers influence the construction of their listening subjectivity in relation to their sense of identity? Answering these questions require first theorising chiptune listening subjectivity and how it is formed nomadically through chip-musical networks. Once this is established, the analysis can then focus on how these chip-musical networks, in turn, are influenced by the chiptune fan in compositional choices based on subjective notions of her (sub)cultural identity narratives.
5.1 Chiptune, Listening Subjectivity and Fan Identity
Subjectivity, in Braidotti’s understanding, is an ever-changing amalgam of heterogeneous—but relationally interconnected—levels of experience with other entities and personal desires (
2011a, l. 422–34;
2013, p. 8). It is therefore important to establish that at any given time, subjectivity does not operate at a single level of experience or memory but is instead constructed as an interconnected amalgam of different experiences, memories and emotional connections. Furthermore, subjectivity is comprised of ‘posthuman’ elements, meaning that they can consist of experiences with human and non-human entities (Braidotti
2013, pp. 3–8). Being nomadic, these amalgams of subjectivity are continuously shifting in their collective makeup.
For the context of chiptune fan subjectivity, the amalgam of ‘entities’ referred to here are musical/non-musical, human/non-human ‘actors.’ This notion has been theorised by Isabella van Elferen and Charlie Blake in their application of Latourian actor network theory (ANT) to musical listening (
2015; 2005). Expanding ANT to incorporate musicology, they contend that musical and non-musical actors such as melody, rhythm, timbre, harmony, articulation, and technological mediation all converge in musical encounters, and
all have an impact upon the listener’s subjectivity (
2015, pp. 60–70). The subjectivity of the human listener—as an actor in the network—is demarked by an encounter with
all actors in a musical network, not only musical ones.
For chiptune, we can understand that these actors may include non-human and non-musical 8-bit or 16-bit timbral qualities. Chiptune technology becomes a non-human and non-musical actor in the network; hearing, for example, that a chiptune is composed using a Sega Master System chip also contributes to listening subjectivity formation as an encounter. The listener would encounter the sound-mediating agency of the Master System chip as a non-human actor in the network, allowing for the listener to not only characterise or categorise the chiptune, but also construct subjectivity based upon how they personally relate to this encounter.
It is furthermore necessary to involve non-musical, human and non-human actors as part of subjectivity formation to understand how subjective musical meaning making arises. These can include memories, nostalgia, self-identification, videogaming pleasures and (sub)cultural ‘capital’—
all of these elements are triggered and, moreover, become interconnected through chiptune interaction (cf. Thornton
1995). Any convergence of these heterogeneous actors, musically and culturally intertextual,
all contribute to the ephemeral construction of subjectivity, as the encounter of these musical networks is affective, and the listener relates to the encounter through memory and identification—constructing a subject position through the agency of these relations.
Latourian actor network theory is strikingly akin to Braidotti’s nomadic subjectivity in the understanding that subject demarcation occurs in its relational inter-action with other entities—including posthuman elements (Latour
2005, p. 45; Braidotti
2011a, l. 432–444). While neither of these theories involves music, they can be applied to the construction of subjectivity in the encounter with musical and non-musical actors; we attribute meaning to them based upon how they relate to our sense of ‘self,’ or our own memories and identity narratives. We may approach media from a sense of ‘who we are,’ but we are also ‘changed’ by the encounter (cf. Grossberg
1988 cited in Wolff
1995, p. 119).
Music, as Simon Frith states, may be ‘integral to [producing] identity’ (
2002, p. 110); one may experience ‘I am a goth’ or ‘I am a punk’ through music, or in the case of chiptune ‘I am a chiptune fan and/or artist; I belong to chiptune audio culture and the music I listen to
is me.’ The sound of the Commodore 64, for example, can have a profound meaning for a chiptune fan. The timbral qualities of the SID chip—as musical and non-musical/technological actors—may allow the listener to experience a shift in subjectivity that relates to their own sense of identity and fandom. The agency of these actors then simultaneously ‘change’ the fan as much as they ‘produce’ and ‘root’ them in a sense of identity.
Such musical interaction, which Christopher Small frames as ‘musicking,’ sets up relationships of meaning, and such relationships may include fannish identity narratives (
1998, pp. 3–6,
passim). I extend this notion with the fannish desire ‘to musick,’ proposed by Small as a verb (
1998, p. 3); as musical meaning is
always a social process between musical actor networks and the knowledge of one’s fandom, then to musick is to engage in this posthuman affectivity with the deliberate view to engage in their appropriated meanings and evocations of the ‘self’ (Blake and Van Elferen
2015, p. 65–70; Slobin cited in Frith
2002, p. 110).
Through the music we listen to, we produce and intensify a sense of ‘who’ we are and ‘where’ we belong. However, in addition to the fluidity of fannish senses of ‘self,’ the sense of identity music may engender for the listener is temporary in that it is
never fixed. For example, each song on an album potentially affords a different listening subjectivity—a sense of who we are in relation to that song and its attributed meanings, our subjectivities and even moods and memories consistently shifting as the CD or iPhone runs through a track list, or as we select specific tracks depending on how—or even ‘who’—we feel at the time. Thus, while musical actor-networks have their own transformative agency, the listener in turn transforms them with meaning based upon memory and connotation, as filtered through their fannish and musical ‘literacies’ (see Van Elferen
2016, p. 32; Fritsch
2016, pp. 92–115).
Chiptune fan identity, similarly, is not a stable or singular level of experience, but instead an on-going and fluid gambol of interconnected subjectivities that arise and (re)connect through relationality between musical context, fannish appropriation and creativity. This process is not finite and does not have a static end. Chiptune fan identity has to be understood as continually synthesized, as a temporary and musically informed subjectivity, through encounters with specific chiptune aesthetics and intertextual or intercultural references in musical interaction.
The nomadism of this relationality lies in the simultaneous production of a ‘located’ identity or subject position—always unstable—and the susceptibility to the change in subjectivity through the on-going influence of chiptune’s external, posthuman others (cf. Braidotti
2011a, l. 181; cf. Gedalof
1999, p. 131; cf. Grossberg
1988). Chiptune participants reach
outward towards posthuman relations and not solely inward in their formation of chiptune fan identity—they
need the music for them to temporarily ‘be’ fans, be that an emotional high, nostalgia, or the enjoyment of Blip Fest. To emphasise Braidotti’s notion of identity as resulting through trans/formation, and not fixity, for chiptune fans possess a sense of who they are in relation to what they like, they
need the affective encounters and transformative agency of musical actor-networks. Chiptune listening subjectivity and its identifications are therefore nomadic as not inherent, stable or permanent to the fan, but contingent on musical interaction for the listener to become-fan in relation to the chiptunes they hear.