AUDIOFILSKIE FANTAZJE I KONSTRUOWANIE PRAGNIENIA
AUDIOPHILE FANTASIES AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF DESIRE

Summary/Abstract: In the text, I analyze audiophiles’ posts from Internet forums using four different theoretical traditions: Peter Berger’s and Thomas Luckmann’s sociology of knowledge, Slavoj Žižek’s theory of ideology, Social Construction of Technology approach – SCOT (Trevor J. Pinch and Wiebe Bijker) and Actor-Network Theory – ANT (Bruno Latour and John Law). I argue to view audiophile Internet forums as dynamic symbolic universes, borrowing the term from Berger and Luckmann. Although they are self-described as spaces for information exchange, in fact they are key forces in fabrication of audiophile fantasies centered around extraordinary esthetic experiences. In the article, I analyze examples of constructing of the desire and of the fantasies. Following Žižek, I claim that the function of the fantasy is the ordering of the social worlds. I read this literally, not as a epistemological sorting things out according to certain categories, but I view fantasy as a blueprint for heterogenic engineering (in ANT’s sense) done by an audiophile in his or her (these are usually males) direct material environment. The observations are grouped according to three analytical steps offered by the SCOT approach – interpretive flexibility, closure and stabilization and connection to wider context. However, while SCOT was concentrated on single technological artifacts, I suggest to focus on heterogenic assemblage operated by an audiophile. In the end it is argued that such a mechanism of permanent and endlessly renewing fabricating of audiophile fantasies directly contributes to the circulation of consumerist capitalism.

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