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Define purpose

Define technological

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Playing cat's cradle with Donna Haraway

On page 268 of "Modest_Witness", Donna Haraway compares the practice of doing feminist technoscience studies to playing a game of cat's cradle - an idea covered in an essay from 1994.
In the article, Haraway uses the game of cat's cradle as what I would like to call a troping device - a term or figure capable of attracting different ideas and meanings that then can be narrated through this figure. I like the image of cat's cradle, and I like what it becomes through Haraway's narration. Also, I think that the figure resembles other of her analytical figures, like her usage of Greimas' semiotic square (mentioned in my previous post).

In the essay, Haraway introduces two strands that structure all the figures. The first strand deals with feminist (multicultural, antiracist) technoscience as an interdisciplinary practice which doesn't aknowledge the boundaries separating knowledge into discrete disciplines. Many feminist scholars have paid close attention to those boundaries, many inspired by another figure of Haraway - the cyborg. Ironically enough, this famous and productive figure has also had the effect that instead of looking at the rich content of each of these artificial categories and allow for remoldings of these materials, a great deal of effort has been spent trying to unmake boundaries which never existed in any real sense in the first place. Thus, Haraway warns:

[But] boundary crossing in itself is not very interesting for feminist, multicultural,antiracist technoscience projects. Technoscience provokes an interest in zones of implosion, more than in boundaries, crossed or not. The most interesting question is, What forms of life survive and flourish in those dense, imploded zones? (page 62)

The second strand of thoughts structuring the cat's cradle is a recognizion that textual rereading is never enough, that reading is too weak a trope. The effect of a re-reading can only be a reproduction of the same, displaced, a phenomenon which Haraway is extremely aware of. Sadly and ironically enough, it seems like one of the most spoiled of her figurative children, the cyborg, has fallen victim of many such reproductions of sameness. The cyborg has been carried on and on, as the same displaced, through a web of research publications. Fortunately, the cyborg takes irony for granted. I believe that this is one of the commonly missed features of this illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism.

Furthermore, in the sentence following the one I paraphrased just before, Haraway reminds us that illegitimate offspring is often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. So hopes are still high that these displaced images of the same will some day start rioting against their ancestors, just as the original Harawayan Cyborg. At least, it reminds me of another teaching of Haraway (I don't remember the source right now) about awareness of categories that we take for granted. And here lies the danger of re-readings. It is very tempting to just adopt the set of taken-for-granted categories brought into attention around the cyborg: nature/culture, gender, organism/machine, human/animal, physical/non-physical, theory/practice... - but as the illegitimate offspring of Donna Haraway and those others whom I was educated into thinking with, I have this tendency of unfaithfulness to my origins. However, unfaithfulness never results in complete separation, my unfaithfulness towards Haraway is blasphemous (see first paragraph of the cyborg manifesto) rather than denying.

Thanks to my scholarly parents, of whom I can't even mention all, the categories that was taken for granted by them and theirs, are in fact contested and diffuse to me. I have learned that nature is such a messed up category that I can hardly find it in my heart to use it, even when it seems fit. The cyborg has been very active in reaching this goal, but as an effect it has itself achieved the status of one such category that is taken for granted. I guess that is why I find it of such importance to weave into the fibers of the cat's cradle the figures of Haraway, meaning also that the game of Harawayan Cat's Cradle will implode and leave a dense, imploded zone. The question then is, as Haraway stated in the citation above, what forms of life will survive and flourish from there.

As often before, I said out to do one thing and ended up doing something else. My intention with this entry was to present the main issues of A Game of Cat's Cradle, but it seemed like I got carried away with the troping of reading and re-reading and ended up with an implosion jamming together the cat's cradle with the cyborg and other tissues from Haraway and her technoscience studying colleagues. To confuse things further, as I was writing about the cyborg as a now taken-for-granted category, the term 'protean' kept popping up in my mind.

To explain the term, the WordNet database of Princeton University draws on a novel by Jack London - the Sea Wolf in which a shipwrecked man is picked up by a ship heading for Japan to hunt seal. Ironically, troping with 'protean' - this quality of being never the same, brought me back in touch with the idea of my previous post, of boarding The Vessel of Knowledge in order to allow for its construction. It did decide, before writing this entry, that I would end up suggesting the cat's cradle as one of the navigational technologies of The Vessel of Knowledge. I wanted to do so because of the metaphor's ability to direct thought. In ended up introducing this idea through a different routes as originally intended. An effect of that is that should I decide to install into The Vessel of Knowledge the game of cat's cradle, it won't be the one that originated in my thoughts. This game of cat's cradle didn't go solely through Haraway's essay; it troped off through the cyborg, the idea of unfaithfulness towards one's origins while at the same time insisting on community - the blasphemous move - and then some thoughts about taken-for-granted categories caused the implosion into a dense zone in which I encountered the Protean and followed it (through various Google technologies) into the story of Wolf Larsen and his protean eyes which were never twice the same.

Am I to install the cat's cradle as a navigational device in The Vessel of Knowledge, at least I will now know that this device - and presumably the entire vessel itself, will inherit the Protean qualities - as an attribute inherited from some other parent than the original Harawayan Cat's Cradle. I may be troping in the wilds, but it somehow makes sense that such a child object capable of inheriting behavior from more than one parent (and thus entered another category which has been disturbing me for quite some time, from the strand of object oriented programming and system design which is one of my almost invisible, but rather dear scholarly parents) will resist being merely the same, displaced.

I decided upon beginning this work day that my first task would be to write this entry, then to turn towards my Academic and Creative Writing paper. I started 13 hours ago, and only now am I ready to complete this first task. And that seems to be one of my recurring dilemmas - when I finally get something done and am ready to continue with what seems to be the main task, I am too exhausted to continue. I admit that I prefer brainstorming over producing ready made text. But deadline is Monday, and that sets the stage.

The Vessel of Knowledge

I am currently working on an idea of introducing my dissertation through The Vessel of Knowledge. The idea derives from a speech given by the vice dean of my faculty at the welcome meeting when I started my PhD-program. He used a metaphor for the research process we were about to begin as the construction of a ship which we had to board and let go already upon starting to build it.

I would like to attach this image to the idea of moving within and through a relentless artifactualism, which forbids any direct si(gh)tings of nature (Donna Haraway), as well as to the theory of The Dream Society (Rolf Jensen), in which he introduces his visions of the society following the information society and an economy (Google definition) based upon the marketing of stories and emotions.

I will follow the idea of The Vessel of Knowledge through the emotional markets of the dream society. I will use it as a technology capable of producing enough noise and friction to allow for an analysis of hidden actors within the material practices of stabilizing meanings and thus producing knowledge (see Haraway 2004, 335, 63, 77). At page 77 of The Haraway Reader, Donna Haraway introduces the idea of a travel machine functioning also as a map. Her choice falls on A. J. Greimas' semiotic square, picked for its ability to generate meanings very noisily. Likewise, The Vessel of Knowledge is my means of traveling through, while mapping, artifactualism to the emotional markets of Dream Society (Jensen 1999, 51).

Through its journey, The Vessel of Knowledge will collect materials used to elaborate the figure, as of now I have thought of using the figure to enter empirical fields enabling us to navigate back and forth between Information Society and Dream Society.

Chapter two of The Dream Society presents six emotional market profiles:

1. Adventures for Sale
2. The Market for Togetherness, Friendship, and Love
3. The Market for Care
4. The Who-Am-I Market
5. The Market for Peace of Mind
6. The Market for Convictions

I am only beginning to explore what my ensemble of empirical fields will consist of. The previously mentioned The Passion of The Christ (TM) Tear Bottle will be tested as an entrance into the Market for Peace of Mind. Likewise, I think of testing the coupling of people who sell stories about science (like Peter Lund Madsen) with The Market for Convictions, the prostitute Susanne with The Market for Togetherness, Friendship, and Love, the Web 2.0 phenomenon with The Who-Am-I Market, and I would like to introduce the study in the light of Clipper Odyssey and its journey into the Pacific Ocean and several trips into exotically staged islands. I still haven't ideas for The Market for Care, but I wonder if a private hospice would serve the purpose here.

I hope that these ideas will be useful for telling a story providing rich and varied insights about human existence, sociotechnical actornetworks, as well as situated studies of easily overseen privileged locations (Google Scholar suggestions on 'politics of location'). I guess that I now need only to learn the magic words allowing this, or something similar or better, to happen.

Daily Screenshot

Define revenge

Define silence

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The Passion of The Christ Tear Bottle

A week ago or so, I found myself immersed in the idea of the emotional markets of Dream Society, especially the Peace of Mind market. I am not fully aware of how, but I think that I was searching ways of understanding these future markets in which emotions are of highest value.

When I am just curious about something, I like to use Google a lot. I do define-searches, image searches, I look for appropriate gadgets for iGoogle, I use a set of notebooks to collect interesting bits and pieces encountered throughout Cyberspace, I search the video directory for animated inspiration, I generally just like and use Google for a whole lot of purposes.

On the journey during which I found this curious artifact, The Passion of The Christ (trademarked) Tear Bottle, I just came from a site that I found by following the first hit of an image search for "who am I?". From there I entered into the realms of The Passion of The Christ, the dispute about its excessive use of violence, and a response from Mel Gibson to that critique. I also found a merchandise section and immediately thought about The Peace of Mind Market of Dream Society. It sat at the lower left corner of the store display, and it caught my attention right away, so I followed it into Tear Catcher Gifts. Before coming here, I knew nothing about tear catchers, their gendered histories, their connections to Christ. Neither did I know anything of The Enduring Word Tablet (trademarked). To keep this story at a reasonable pace, let me just round it up by saying that this artifact so lived up to my expectations of what to find when visiting the markets for peace of mind. And along with a tray in which "Psalm 56:8" ("Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?") is etched in gold, I ordered this artifact to place at my desk in the office. I had to spend that money. The meanings this artifact attracts are so messed up and cacophonic that I had to own it.

I expect the package to arrive within the week, and then I have plenty of time to plan my research of it before my next paper is due. My next paper is the assignment for the course on Feminist Science and Technology Studies I attended a few weeks ago in Trondheim, Norway. The paper will continue where the previous concluded, by taking up the question of my reasons for entering the fields of my project. In the previous paper, I used writing as a method of inquiry as a means of discussing autobiography in feminist research (at least, I assume that this will be the case since I believe that I have the paper thought out well enough for that to happen), in the following I will continue developing this method now focused on my reasons for interest in the stuff that dreams are made of. My main theoretical ressources of the paper are The Promises of Monsters - a regerenarative politics for Inappropriate/d Others and chapter two of Dream Society. Another set of theoretical ressources stem from actornetwork theory and philosophy of technology. My methodological inspiration is drawn from feminist interdisciplinary studies. I will move inspired by virtual ethnography, multisited ethnography, science and technology studies, website analysis, film studies and empirical philosophy of technology (or at least, I hope that I will be able to get around all that as it all seems so relevant and interesting).

I don't know yet how I will narrate this paper. I think that I will make use of immersion, setting the ideas found in the definition search results into play through the ideas covered in the Promises of Monsters which Donna Haraway introduces this way:

"The Promises of Monsters" will be a mapping exercise and travelogue through mind-scapes and landscapes of what may count as nature in certain local/global struggles.

These contests are situated in a strange, allochronic time-the time of myself and my readers in the last decade of the second Christian millenium-and in a foreign, allotopic place-the womb of a pregnant monster, here, where we are reading and writing.

The purpose of this excursion is to write theory, i.e., to produce a patterned vision of how to move and what to fear in the topography of an impossible but all-too-real present, in order to find an absent, but perhaps possible, other present. I do not seek the address of some full presence; reluctantly, I know better.

Like Christian in Pilgrim's Progress, however, I am committed to skirting the slough of despond and the parasite-infested swamps of nowhere to reach more salubrious environs.

The theory is meant to orient, to provide the roughest sketch for travel, by means of moving within and through a relentless artifactualism, which forbids any direct si(gh)tings of nature, to a science fictional, speculative factual, SF place called, simply, elsewhere.

At least for those whom this essay addresses, "nature" outside artifactualism is not so much elsewhere as nowhere, a different matter altogether.

Indeed, a reflexive artifactualism offers serious political and analytical hope.

This essay's theory is modest. Not a systematic overview, it is a little siting device in a long line of such craft tools. Such sighting devices have been known to reposition worlds for their devotees-and for their opponents. Optical instruments are subject-shifters. Goddess knows, the subject is being changed relentlessly in the late twentieth century.

I will use this article combined with some thoughts Haraway expresses in an interview published in the Haraway Reader (conducted in part by two of my current colleagues) about the importance of paying attention to the silenced contributors to the knowledge we provide.

I hope to be able to make a convincing argument that I should treat The Dream Society as a technology for choosing the empirical fields of my study. And then I should call for a deeper investigation of the seamless web of partially connected technological and non-technological actors of my project, including the researcher herself. And then I have something left in the oven for my paper on philosophy of technology. What I hope is that I will be able to use ideas and materials from these three forthcoming papers to sketch a paper which is suitable as a contribution to the Centre for STS-Studies' series of Working Papers. I do recommend that you take a look at the papers available for download at the web page. They are all very interesting commentaries of what STS-Studies are about.

Autobiography in feminist research

In my current project I work with autobiography in feminist research. I try to experiment with the dichotomy of public and private in different ways in order to understand how I myself am located within the different sites of my life, and how they influence what I do as a researcher.

One reason for starting this blog is that it gives me an opportunity to play with a public researcher attitude. So far, my research has been kept rather private, meaning that only a small group of people know me while working. I would like to practice expressing academic ideas in the making, and keeping a public research journal is a way for me to commit myself to refrain accordingly from bullshitting.

To be honest, I didn't have a lot of plans, when I opened the blog; it only occurred to me as something I should really do, and then I went doing it. But as I write this entry, I get the idea of keeping this blog attached to my project in a way that makes it possible for me to hyperlink (obviously the act of linking should be done by other than the usual technological actors) it to other texts that I write during this semester.

In a recent draft writing period, I ended up with a rather detailed study of my work practice as I decided to read chapter 2 of Rolf Jensen's Dream Society, a central piece of litterature in my project. At the end of the period (2 days) I had 12 pages of messy text with excessive footnotes, and I was only five pages into the chapter. The paper showed up to be quite an eye opener to me. I read what I previously wrote and started wondering why I found these things that I mentioned to have such relevance. I was distracted from reading by a lot of anecdotes and self reflections, and I had a few Messenger chats with friends as I worked. I added to the paper screenshots from what I did during times of procrastination, and I took detours into previous experiences which hardly related to the emotional markets of Dream Society.

Last week I didn't work as manically; my daughter was here. Instead, I spent some time reading and trying to figure out how to realize the four papers that I have projected for this semester (only three to be completed this semester, though). I think I have the first paper figured out by know, which is quite fortunate, since it is due on October 15. It will be an 'autobiographical reading study' in which I will use aforementioned text as documentation of the work I did. I will then use that study to frame a discussion about feminist studies, writing as a method of inquiry, and the role of the researcher.

My problem is, or was, that I had so much interesting text that won't really fit into a 15 page paper, but I still feel that they should be able to still somehow belong to the same body. With this blog, I now have the opportunity of referring back and forth between the texts, so that I can keep the more anecdotal stuff where it belongs - in the blog.

This is one way of responding to a question raised at the course of Academic and Creative Writing in Gender Studies, for which the paper is an assignment. The question was how to distinguish relevant from irrelevant when accepting that scientific research cannot be done neutrally in sterile surroundings. Personally, I find this question very important. I support the idea that we need to be aware of how we're situated within the fields in which we do research. However, I don't believe that we need to spit all that awareness into the research papers we publish.

That does not mean that I find it meaningless to spend time writing autobiography, it only means that I think that autobiography shouldn't distract focus from the research questions. Still, your point of location is an important piece of information which shouldn't lack from your research paper. So the question is rather: How do we clarify our point of location within the fields in which we do research, in a way that doesn't draw attention from our reasons for entering these fields? As suggested earlier, this blog is a way of responding to those questions.

Technological Polyphony

This is what my iGoogle quote's tab have to voice this morning before I take a break from my work marathon.

Define technology

Define polyphony

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