In this article, I explore the auditory technopolitics of prenatal sound systems, asking what kinds of futures, listeners and temporalities they seek to produce. With patents for prenatal audio apparatus dating back to the late 1980s, there are now a range of devices available to expectant parents. These sound technologies offer multiple benefits: from soothing away stress to increasing the efficiency of ultrasonic scans. However, one common point of emphasis is their capacity to accelerate foetal ‘learning’ and cognitive development. Taking as exemplary the Babypod and BabyPlus devices, I argue that prenatal sound systems make audible a particular figuration of pregnancy and gestational labour that combines divergent notions of responsibility and passivity. Contra the equation of neoliberalism with self-control and individualism, I argue that prenatal sound systems amplify neoliberal capitalism’s elision of personal, maternal and familial responsibility. As reproductive sound technologies, prenatal sound systems facilitate maternal–familial investment in the pre-born as future-child. Consequently, financialised notions of inheritance are substituted for biological inheritance. Drawing attention to the common rhetorical figuration of the sonic as womb-like, furthermore, I argue that prenatal sound systems exemplify what I refer to as uterine audiophilia. By treating the womb as ‘the perfect classroom’, prenatal sound systems imply an intense maternal obligation to invest in and impress upon the future-child, while also envisioning the pregnant person’s body as an occupied, resonant space. Cohering with a fidelity discourse that posits the reproductive medium as passive container and a source of noise that is to be overcome, uterine audiophilia relies upon politically regressive conceptualisations of pregnancy. I thus argue that these devices mark the hitherto under-theorised convergence of auditory culture, technology and reproductive politics.

中文翻译：

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“你的子宫，完美的教室”：产前音响系统和子宫发烧

在这篇文章中，我探讨了产前音响系统的听觉技术政治，询问他们寻求产生什么样的未来、听众和时间。产前音频设备的专利可以追溯到 1980 年代后期，现在有一系列设备可供准父母使用。这些声音技术提供多种好处：从缓解压力到提高超声波扫描效率。然而，一个共同的重点是它们加速胎儿“学习”和认知发展的能力。以 Babypod 和 BabyPlus 设备为例，我认为产前音响系统使人们可以听到一种结合了责任和被动的不同概念的怀孕和妊娠分娩的特殊形象。与新自由主义与自我控制和个人主义的等式相反，我认为产前音响系统放大了新自由主义资本主义对个人、母亲和家庭责任的省略。作为生殖声音技术，产前声音系统促进母家庭对未出生婴儿作为未来孩子的投资。因此，遗传的金融化概念被生物遗传所取代。提请注意声音像子宫一样的常见修辞形象，此外，我认为产前声音系统体现了我所说的子宫发烧友。通过将子宫视为“完美的教室”，产前音响系统意味着母亲有强烈的义务投资于未来的孩子并给未来的孩子留下深刻印象，同时还将孕妇的身体想象成一个被占用的共振空间。与将生殖媒介假定为被动容器和有待克服的噪音源的保真话语相一致，子宫发烧友依赖于政治上倒退的怀孕概念。因此，我认为这些设备标志着迄今为止理论不足的听觉文化、技术和生殖政治的融合。