The Straight Screen: Begradigungsarbeiten am iPhone

Abstract

Taking cues from Sara Ahmed’s work on queer phenomenology, the article engages with the omnipresent phenomenon of touchscreens and visual interfaces like the iPhone that dominate the contemporary markets of consumer electronics and personal communication. It is shown that the notion of a visual interface both historically (its entanglement with heteronormative phobias of “queer” penetration stemming from the 1980s public discourse on AIDS / HIV) and phenomenologically (its conjuring of a traceless but intimate, a personal but decontextualized touch) is bound up with normalizing interpellations of user subjectivities: the touchscreen user has to align her identity and desires to the possibilities of articulation prescribed by the interface. The touchscreen interface, as I argue, in this way functions as a “straightening device”: it aligns, orientates, and straightens user subjectivities and desires, while simultaneously producing these alignments as moments of arrival and recognition.

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