I are/we am

I remember an early school experience where i felt humiliated being made to stand and read aloud some of my writing while other children in the class were asked to point out the mistake made. I was about 6 and had written I are, and attempted to defend this grammatical error by saying but I am always more than one, my twin brother and I are always together... Didnt work, the plurality was not anticipated and got drummed out of me. It is a pleasure to be reading Latour on Tarde, and feel vindicated that while grammatically incorrect,
philosophocally i are very astute!


This article by Latour seems to be arguing that identity cant answer questions of behaviour because identity too is made in contexts

"...whenever you want to understand a network, go look for the actors, but when you want to understand an actor go look through the net the work it has traced. In both cases, the point is to avoid the passage through the vague notion of society....
So far, all of philosophy has been founded on the verb To be, whose definition seemed to have been the Rosetta's stone to be discovered. One may say that, if only philosophy had been founded on the verb To have, many sterile discussions, many slowdown of the mind, would have been avoided. From this principle 'I am', it is impossible to deduce any other existence than mine, in spite of all the subtleties of the world. But affirm first this postulate : 'I have' as the basic fact, and then the had as well as the having are given at the same time as inseparable" (Latour citing Tarde)

And Latour expands further, saying
"Here goes Hamlet, as well as Descartes with his cogito, Heidegger with his Being qua Being, together with thousand of homelies about the superiority of what 'we are' above what 'we have'. Quite the opposite, Tarde instructs us. Nothing is more sterile than identity philosophy —not to mention identity politics— but possession philosophy —and may be possession politics ?— create solidarity and attachments that cannot be matched. "For thousands of years, people have catalogued the many ways of beings, the many kinds of beings, and no one ever had the idea of cataloguing the various kinds, the various degrees of possession. Yet, possession is the universal fact, and there is no better term than that of 'acquisition' to express the formation and the growth of any being'' p. 89. If essence is the way to define an entity within the 'To be' philosophy, for the 'To have' philosophy an entity is defined by its properties and also by its avidity� No way to escape from Tarde's logic: take any monad [individual, atom, unit of measure], if you look at what are its properties and its proprietors, you will be led to define the whole cosmos, which would be impossible if you had only tried to define the essence of an isolated identity."

Brings back a Latourian tenet I had earlier had difficulty with 'existence precedes essence'.
Here I seean application for identity does not precede what makes it.
Identity is made, it is plural...the body is multiple in more ways than that described by Annemarie Mol.
And then to take this a step (or several steps) further, and here's a new thought (for me) in the making:
If "The whole outside universe is composed of souls different from mine, but, in effect, similar to mine'' p.44 (Latour citing Tarde again).
And if we/you/I concede that in knowing something, I only know it in as much as I can fathom, recognise and/or project my beliefs about its being anything at all, then part of me is in everything I meet...
Then
"if you don't want to share avidity and belief with the things you have, then also stop to say what they are. The accusation is upturned and the burden of proof shifted to the accusators. Abstain from the ridiculous solution to say that things exist in themselves but that you cannot know them. Either you talk or you remain silent. But you cannot possibly speak and say that the things you speak about are not in some ways similar to you: they express through you a sort of difference that has you, the speaker, as one of their proprietors. What looks like an impossibility with the philosophy of identity, offers no difficulty with the philosophy of 'alteration'. Possession is another way of talking about translation.

To paraphrase Latour's discussion further: After this brief brief brief brief presentation of some of Tarde's and Latour's thinking on the metaphysics of social theory, you/we/i may now understand why so much of ANT appears difficult:
you/we/i don't want to be had.

a thesis as slices of stories

Daniel Pink's book, A whole new mind, lists the aptitudes for success in a conceptual era. These include
Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning.
I'm wondering if the academy can embrace the shift from the knowledge age with its logics and linear approach and instead value Pink's conceptual concerns of engagement.

Since i am writing a thesis informed by actor-network theory, how might Pink's attributes be demonstrated?
Design would encompass what 'makes things up' not as fantasy but very much as an empirical analysis of what is pulled together. For the thesis, design is also about form with function, design not being an act of titivation. I can use art work, poetry, allegory ... but not as a gimmick, it has to progress the story. And because the academy may not be attuned to work in a conceptual rather than knowledge era, such use needs arguing.

The 'story' tells of how other actors are seduced into such design. How we enrol others and peel them off from prior, or distracting, concerns. In addition, an ANT thesis presents the research story as partial, and or fractal and or overlapping. The multivocal voice need to consider all actors, human and otherwise, so voice is uncovered for such actors; what is the influence of the environment, or of the tools of the trade.
In Aramis Latour demonstrates the use of story to convey multiple stories of a mystery in Who killed Aramis, a nascent form of transportation. In the Body multiple, Mol demonstrates through the telling of empirical stories the multiple performances of practice demonstrating arteriosclerosis as a multiple entity.
Stories are not lineal in the making, they are made lineal retrospectively.To simplify this ignores the messiness that is part of the social (dis)order, and as Law suggests, to make such complexity simple may be to make a mess of it.
The storytelling is not to imply that fiction or facts are necessarily separate entities. In ANT all research is also partial, it does not stand in isolation from those who create it....all facts are creations. In addition, to tell of 'facts' may not suffice, our ability to access knowledge has never been greater, but of itself this does not result in changed behaviour. We probably all know of smokers who are well informed on the facts. Pink tells us "What begins to matter more [than mere data] is the ability to place these facts in context and to deliver them with emotional impact."

In symphony there is a pulling together, how might it be done with more deliberate intent, if one were wanting a particular shape what could be pushed, pulled, left alone. Here its worth the time spent with Itay on youtube for there is an art to great composition and to leading.

This symphony also takes into account the custodial role of telling the story, for the storyteller too has impact. The story chosen and the way it is shaped, and to whome it is told...all these are alo political acts of researcher involvement.
"The most creative among us see relationships the rest of us never notice," Pink says. And this too is the major part of an actor network informed analysis.

Empathy- having a critical imagination is to consider how unknown or unexperienced lives might also be shaped within a network. To not pretend a God like view from nowhere but to appreciate the person's own experience as that which is experienced. To have voice, to make voice. And to know when to make things more and less heard, to have empathy includes considering if whats invisible should be made visible, or not. Susan leigh Star writes on this in her ant approaches to research analysis. It is also a consideration expressed by Latour in saying always consider putting yourself at the peak of enthusiasm that has actors act the ways they do, do not play the sly one advantaged by hindsight.

Play; suggests that there are serendipitous acts that will not be fully known in advance, that there needs to be space for the unknown. To be playful is also about leaving space for being creative, to consider that new learnings may be told in new ways. And also that what is planned for doesnt usually consider failure and risk.

Meaning, and finally to make meaning is also to know that things might also be performed differently, there is therefore scope that things might also be performed differently.

Seems to me that a conceptual approach is congruent with Actor- network theory.

Assessment matters

Delightful prompt from today's higher ed on how studying the humanities contribute and how such contribution might be measured.
Are we there yet?

I have had the joy for many years of being involved with students in teaching them less about content and more about processes; how to communicate, what's involved in thinking critically, what is knowledge... However, I note somewhat wryly that come assessment time, I lose their attention somewhat to the courses that seem heavy in knowledge acquisition; ones full of minutiae specific details of right or wrong answers.
And am also reminded of a non-joyous moment of almost getting a years paid leave to study a subject dear to my heart, text counselling, but failed to win over a panel member because his paradigm was entrenched in better or worse, right or wrong rather than in how it is shaped and being used or shaping and using those involved.

Here's the problem, as put forward by Michael Bérubé; How to measure the unmeasurable.
What does this research do, what footprint will it leave?

My own study is really about greater awareness doesn't have the pulling and pushing power that even an ethics committee would respect. They want to know that what is undertaken will change the world in anticipated, good, ways. But whose idea of good is not examined.

Michael Bérubé describes my angst of being involved in uncovering pluralist ways of being; how to develop and maintain pluralist societies that include people who are not pluralists.
He doesn't have an answer though., being a pluralist has its own ways of being :)
So, instead, a commitment to lifelong learning and suppleness of mind.

I cant see that one getting through a Board of studies as a written objective.
And as he says, we do not know how to measure such things.
Maybe that's also why I lost students at assessment times?

We cannot prove it, we cannot show it...
We humanists suffer from the conviction that the unexamined life is not worth living.

And there is the conundrum, how to assess it.

This reminds me also of Annmarie's excellent article on the gold standard in health of the double-blind placebo. While the argument espoused wasn't enough to win me that specific study grant it was still enough to persuade me that rather than proving, research can be about improving...tinkering with adaptability ... knowing things better.

Mol, A. (2006). Proving or improving: On health care research as a form of self-reflection. Qual Health Research, 16, 405-414.

objects we think with; I am therefore I think...revisited

I'd been cleaning out my parents unit and came across a wooden folding ruler and a wooden pyramid shaped 3d ruler and these reminded me of ways of thinking. I was reminded of maths classes where slide rules were the technology of the moment and log books...I couldn't use either now - I was going to say for love nor money. Love of such 'technology' and my Dads old tools could pique my curiosity.
And then in my google alerts there was a prompt to Sherry Turkle on Evocative objects; Things we think with. A student, gnaedigefrau, had a task to match a self taken photo and some poetry, and it got me thinking, again. My laptop has me thinking, the connectivity of the internet has me thinking...and I have to concede that things i think with include people, friends and strangers. I had been tagged to write of 25 things about myself in facebook, and it got me thinking...
I was 'mucking about' and fluttered into twitter, and there Colin Warren provoked some more thinking, an exercise in networking where a ball of wool was thrown around a lecture theatre symbolically concretising the networks.

There are multiple layers or realities involved in this provocation to thinking, the performance involves multiple realities of intimacy within a public space, and of being a thoughtful phd student while also being a lecturer...and I am reminded students will be blogging their learning too in the knowledge and enquiry paper, and how the tracing of thinking becomes possible with hypertext links making some of this more overt. A committment to what Wesch refers to as being knowledge able as oppossed to knowledgable.

I'm now seeing in Latour's writing when he writes of an ANT informed analysis as being a way to see, for instannce a cloth, folded, and refolded where what is illuminated is subject to change. And that this too is a performance, and the researchers own part in this is a further aspect to whats performed, whats seen and not seen. That reality is more than a perspective, its an engagement and it is not fixed, actors and artefacts are all shaped in combination. Mol talked of the ways different people engaged with arteriosclerosis, showing the multiplicity of this disease entity, but what of how the same actor engages differently at different times. Here's where there's an opening for investigating identity work.
I behave differently here than there, with these things rather than those things...My thinking is shaped by the tools i use, and is also presented differently because of the tools used.

Not killing the genius within or waiting on magical fairy juice. Performative identity work in writing a PhD

My blog had begun to go round in circles on change and I am trusting the move sideways to identity work is not a distraction. I have an inking its part of the same issue, for in as much as we change things, we too are changed.

Elizabeth Gilbert describes a way of being both normal and a genius. Its not the language of performative identity that she uses, but I believe she is writing of identity work.

While Annemarie Mol describes performativity occurring as different people work alongside others in a hospital and where arteriosclerosis is multiple as described in the stories where it is managed/treated/lived with, in contrast Elizabeth Gilbert is an author describing how she is both divine and human, creative and mundane; pressured to always be performing at peak.
And then I began thinking of my own lack of progress...

The following is a synopsis based on Kim Zetters write up
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/ted-how-we-kill.html

"Allowing somebody ... to believe that he or she is ... the essence and the source of all divine, creative, unknowable, internal mystery is just like a smidge of too much responsibility to put on one fragile human psyche," she said. "It's like asking somebody to swallow the sun. It just completely warps and distorts egos, and it creates all of these unnatural expectations about performance. I think the pressure of that has been killing off our artists for the last 500 years."

She acknowledged that an audience filled with rational-minded people would balk at the idea of creativity as a kind of "mystical fairy juice" that's bestowed on someone. But she said it made as much sense as anything ever posited to explain the "utter, maddening, capriciousness of the creative process."

Elizabeth Gilbert relayed a story that musician Tom Waits told her years ago. One day he was driving on a Los Angeles freeway when a fragment of a melody popped into his head. He looked around for something to capture the tune -- a pencil or pen -- but had nothing to record it.

He started to panic that he'd lose the melody and be haunted by it forever and his talent would be gone. In the midst of this anxiety attack, he suddenly stopped, looked at the sky, and said to whatever force it was that was trying to create itself through the melody, "Excuse me. Can you not see I'm driving? Do I look like I can write down a song right now? If you really want to exist, come back at a more opportune moment ... otherwise go bother somebody else today. Go bother Leonard Cohen."

Waits said his creative process, and the heavy anxiety that permeated it, changed that day. In releasing the creative force, he realized that creativity "could be a peculiar, wondrous, bizarre collaboration and conversation between Tom and the strange external genius that was not Tom," Gilbert said.

She recalled his story when she was in the midst of writing her (now top selling book) Eat, Pray Love and fell into a pit of despair when she felt blocked. She said aloud to whatever entity it was that usually helped her but was on furlough that day that if the book didn't turn out to be good it wasn't going to be entirely her fault since she was putting everything she had into the project. "So if you want [the book] to be better, then you've got to show up and do your part of the deal," she told it. "But I'll keep writing anyway, because that's my job. And I'd like the record to report today that I showed up."

I'm looking forward to the release of the Ted2009 talk.

And so for the record...
I'd like to report,today I showed up, today I'm human.
I'm having a Zen moment where before and after enlightenment there's still work to do.
And I am happy to accept my capacity for being genius and human is sometimes not performed concurrently, but performed within a compartmentalised life :)

Multiple realities or alternate perspectives

Elderly care provokes alternate realities to consider. With Annemarie Mol the issue of other perspectives or multiple realities was always a sticking point for me; what was the difference?
Mol would state that in alternate perspectives the view remains the same just seen from different angles. I have had to mull this over for a considerable time before being willing and able to totally endorse this. But she is right. My mum and i do no look at the same view. We are in different realities when looking at the options available.
We might as well be in parallel universes.

Invisible / Visible Paris

I was prompted by Lina's blog to have a look at Bruno Latour's Paris invisible exhibition (online) and was thinking about what else might be added. In traversing paris he demonstartes Paris' digital traces, and Paris woven as a city of light, I would add this:

My daughter was awarded a Jenesys scholarship to fund her AFS year in Japan student exchange, so on her hard earned savings and slavings as a checkout chick she (virtually) took me to Paris :) and here is the virtual evidence which she kindly let me take and place on my blog.
Paris becomes dispersed, a form of it having been distributed. A social that is multiple. In invisible Paris Latour puts together a montage of stories of the social. This provides me a further avenue for considering a montage of stories (similar too to Annmarie Mol on the body multiple, for structuring my own thesis).
Invisibe Paris provides a provocation to think deeply as well as in fun as well but I am really pleased to see a virtually practical application :)

Ripples of change; Domesticated bliss and how Sony got a new home for christmas

My Sony Erikson mobile was a gift, but I had to get a sim card and establish a contract with a service provider, take it home, plug it in, charge it… Wait…Read the manual. Personalise it; set the language (English and predictive test) enter the ph. no.s I wanted (I’ve outsourced my memory). Send a message to all my family & friends so they know my no., set the calendar, clock, choose the background, select preferred ring-tone and volume. Reply to half the friends and relations. Set the alarm clock. Put in appointments. Phew. Work the camera, store the photos, learn how to send photos, and bluetooth (???) them to my computer…Read the manual online….Check with service provider online about overseas roaming to send or call from Aus to NZ on a NZ ph., learn to check for service provider coverage, remember to keep it with me or risk my relationship, check for missed calls for the same reason. Get conscious of costs and keep feeding it with top ups by prepay and ensure its power supply is maintained. Learn to clear messages sent and received b4 it tells me 'memory too full' and won't oblige. Transfuse it by credit card when traveling. Check the bank balance. I still don’t know how to use it for email or internet, play games, download music, pay for parking, check movies … it’s already old technology and I haven’t yet learned all its functions.
I’ve had pets that are less demanding. Well at least the tamagotchi and the goldfish... and the cats.
Oh… sudden flash of enlightenment; I’m the one being domesticated!

Thankyou Bruno Latour for addressing the second source of uncertainty;
actions are 'other'taken.
And thanks also to Annemarie Mol in "I eat an apple" and telling the story of grasses.

together wherever

A technosocial story.
The actors in mobile telephony include those who use as well as those who push.
In the advertising pushing mobile phones in NZ there are two major players. Its not surprising that the service providers will push the product, the contracts generate an ongoing source of income. Seems because of the costs of ongoing services the products can even appear very cheap if not 'free'. And then there are the other persuasive aspects these pushers sell in their advertising.
Vodafone is currently pushing the mobile ph (and contract) as it makes it possible to "take your bestmate with you wherever you go".
The accompanying imagery is a guy about to leave a flat but goes back packing his girlfriend by folding her as if a cardboard construction that folds successively small enough that she/it fits in his pocket.
"Now you can take your world with you when your part of the worlds largest network". His girlfriend then blows him a kiss from the screen of his phone before he puts her back in his pocket.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFm83drMr54

Or an earlier Vodafone advert had the miniature bestmate popping out of the pocket to share in the experiences to the accompaniment of a song:

Your my friend
and I'll depend
You'll be there forever
dear my friend
these words I penned
for your ears to treasure
oh my friend I'd like to spend
All my time with you together
let me be your second eyes
let me share in your surprize...

voice-over: with vodafone bestmate your together wherever
And the statement;
BestMate ™
Together, Wherever

The opposition also plays on the best friend anywhere anytime concept. Telecom has Kaz, one of their smart toy range- a play on phones as smart toys- saying of her friend, "hi everyone this is totally my best friend Bex, we go everywhere together". And where texting continues while a conversation ensues, and the texting being so available that txting can occur until your paw catches fire.

What the advertising promises is that one need never be alone, your relationship is as far away as your pocket, with you everywhere anytime, available always.
However, it assumes relationships are attractive, going to be positive in the connection and that the connection will be this easy.
What of the need to have the contract, the prepay paid up, be in a region covered by satellites of the service provider, have a ph that is charged, have a best mate who also has a ph charged and paid and in cell ph cover area plus have a memory that's not full if by text, has a mobile ph turned on, as well as being carried with them....And more than this, have a bestmate that's going to be available anywhere anytime, can talk or text, wants to hear, listen and or look and all in a positive way. The ph becomes a part of me and a part of them; always on.
If the service had not already existed, the businesses might have needed to invent it.
Youthline NZ telephone and text counselling- just as well its here, the service providers do well to invest in it.
For the reality is that our friends, mates may not be as available to us or as helpful as the adverts suggest.
Apparently, according to telecom, a cell ph (and a contract with them) provides "everything your household needs to communicate".
Both Telecom and Vodafone go beyond selling product (phones and contracts). They are also attempting to sell dreams. What people might want is not enough, they try to create a demand, and they do this as Mol (2007) states of other advertisements "not with arguments but with seduction".

For example; get this phone, free, on our best ever txter plan....comes with fm radio, mp3 player....roam the web, maps, know where your friends are... what might seduce them into thinking telecom, vodafone will provide is freedom or even love...
"Share the love with a gift from us ( Vodafone NZ, Nov 2008, web banner).
What people want is not enough, a mobile also needs to look great...it appeals to people who want to go anywhere, its fun and its escape, captured.

In real life, relationships include sadness, loneliness and depression and can be distressing. The majority of calls and texts received by counselling agencies such as Youthline are about relationships causing distress.
In advertisements there is seduction and all-time, real-time, availability.
Who can't resist?

knowledge as a (gather)thing CCK08

There's a similarity between connectivism, rhizomatic learning and actor-network theory. Each places knowledge within a relational context or network.
The difference with actor network theory is that it
1. emphasises knowledge as a performance involving both human and non-human entities.
2. emphasises the work involved to gather together entities that make certain things more or less substantial.
The difference is the degree to which ANT is prepared to name non human influences as integral.
In doing this course, I needed a computer and/or a cell phone preferably with web access. I am enhanced when connected to my laptop= my reach is extended; my ability to hear and to share across the globe made possible with broadband access and the Internet. I am also able to trust to my outsourced memory contact with artefacts of seminal writings (Latour, Law, Mol, Haraway as well as those of Dave Cormiens, George Siemens, Stephen Downes, Deleuze and Guattari, Gregory Bateson...). I am able to access more- the libraries of the world through other relationships i have, and I get to quickly find relevance by maintaining an endnote library reference system at my fingertips. In addition to these interactions which are substantially non human, I get to talk to others similarly connected with similar accoutrements.
And according to Latour, the more actors involved in such a gathering the more 'it' (knowledge or a particular practice) is stabilised. And becomes harder to ignore, or to go outside of, or to change.
Understanding the relational qualities of what is both shaped and shaping allows for insights into what is needed to make things otherwise...

(And hence my PhD on change with emergent technologies in a Youth counselling centre)

In taking this stance, I disagree with Stephen Downes that knowledge is nothing (elluminate talk), it is far too powerful a 'thing' to be discounted out of hand. But I take him to really be meaning that it is no(one)thing.
Knowledge is a shapeshifter.
And I am cyborg :)