ABSTRACT
This chapter develops a framework that understands domestication as layered with processes of mediation to highlight the gendered construction of the “warm expert” as technological. This provides a unique approach to understand the broader patriarchal dimensions of domestication as affected by a politics of the “Broken Machine.” Through a qualitative thematic analysis of smart speaker unboxing videos and audience comments on YouTube, the goal of our study is to explore the resonance between the feminine voice of voice-activated personal assistants (VAPAs) and the politics of voice articulated in relation to women warm experts. We argue that patriarchal control of domestication articulates the taming of technology as layered with the taming of women as technology. We clarify this relationship by discussing what we call a resonant politics of voice in which VAPAs are constructed according to a specific technical function of subordination and historically feminine assistance while women warm experts are concurrently rejected as broken vocalic machines. The study asks: How do women position themselves as warm experts in the fraught context of YouTube? How does the domestication of feminine VAPAs proceed in resonance with the domestication of women’s warm expertise? And how does the gendered assistance afforded by warm expert technology interact with the vocalic affordances and feminine design of VAPAs? We conclude by speculating how the warm expert can be co-opted as a broken machine that weighs in on matters of domestication in line with concerns of feminism, equity, and social justice.
