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

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

Hi Lee,

I noticed that your background is in photography. In the light of what you
are saying about representation, could you give your views about the
differences between camera obscura photography and digital photography?

Ciao,
Murat

On Sat, Jul 2, 2016 at 7:03 AM, kanarinka <kanarinka at ikatun.org> wrote:

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