The Mixtape as Wishtape: Heterotopia, Translation, and Nostalgia

Abstract

This chapter charts a pattern of repressed wishes surrounding mixtape technologies, from the homespun cassette and the mix CD to more recent technologies and services. I view the mixtape as a heterotopic space capable of constellating music from disparate times and places into configurations that long to disorder the given forms of capitalist music. However, the wish image of the mixtape is also invested in reordering, restoring, and translating the commodified fragments of music back into an unalienated musical whole or totality. While the cultural nostalgia surrounding the mixtape makes it easily soluble into politically regressive and sometimes troubling wishes, the mixtape is ultimately aligned with Bloch’s image of music as a wishful expression of the New and the Not-Yet-Conscious.