[-empyre-] On the limits of critique (d'Ignazio) and the limits of representation (Barad)

[kanarinka]

Regarding the limits of critique -- A reference that I have found useful
that comes more from a design perspective is the human-computer interaction
paper on Feminist HCI by Shaowen Bardzell: http://wtf.tw/ref/bardzell.pdf

If you read the last page of that paper you see she suggests that there are
two approaches to doing feminist human computer interaction -
"critique-based" and "generative". I'm pasting her definition of what those
mean below. While both are very important, I'm personally more interested
in the "generative" approach and feel that there is lots of work to do in
that area.

Quoting Bardzell:
* Critique-based contributions rely on the use of feminist approaches to
analyze designs and design processes in order to expose their unintended
consequences. Such contributions indirectly benefit interaction design by
raising our sensibilities surrounding issues of concern.

* Generative contributions involve the use of feminist approaches
explicitly in decision-making and design process to generate new design
insights and influence the design process tangibly. Such contributions
leverage feminism to understand design contexts (e.g., “the home” or the
“workplace”), to help identify needs and requirements, discover
opportunities for design, offer leads toward solutions to design problems,
and suggest evaluation criteria for working prototypes, etc.

On Fri, Jul 1, 2016 at 5:37 PM christina at christinamcphee.net <
christina at christinamcphee.net> wrote:
----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------


This is exactly what Katie Anania and I were talking about, that cold day
in Washington DC when we had each been turned out, by chance, of our
respective access to national archives.  Liberating the ‘subject’ means no
longer ‘representing the subject’.


— but can you give us, Lee, a bit more about your thinking… ‘whether we are
post-representation’  Perhaps a snippet or quote from your paper…



On Jul 1, 2016, at 9:54 PM, Lee Mackinnon <lmackinnon at aub.ac.uk> wrote:

----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------

I want to pick up on something that Catherine d' Ignazio mentioned in her
introductory text earlier on the limits of critique. This has been on my
mind recently after I gave a paper at the London Conference of Critical
Thought, Birkbeck in London. The paper discussed several articles by Karen
Barad: the first exploring the limits of critique (amongst other things);
the second, exploring the limits of representation. For Barad (2012),
critique is over- utilised and to the detriment of feminism, being
dismissive rather than deconstructive, and relying on rhetoric. She is also
critical elsewhere of a reliance upon 'representationalism', which has come
to seem natural- there is a notion that representation takes precedence
over matter itself, whether through language or visual means (2003). The
digital can interestingly frame these ideas, because, for example, the
digital image or object is granular, evolving and ontological. Its
materiality highlights a move away from the representationalism of the
pre-digital. Perhaps this consideration of materiality before ideas of
representation and content take hold and precedence, can be helpful (what
Catherine refers to as 'situated' knowledge) What if data visualisations
were treated as ontological objects, rather than representations?... I am
wondering whether we are post-representation, whatever that may mean... I
could say much more-- but perhaps that gives a few ideas for now...

Lee Mackinnon
Lecturer  - BA (Hons) Photography

+44 1202 363281
lmackinnon at aub.ac.uk
aub.ac.uk
<imagef163e3.PNG> <imagec95af3.PNG> <image773c8c.PNG>
<imageb45ca2.PNG>

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