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

[kanarinka]

Hi Murat and Aviva and Lauren -

I like the way you are complicated our discussion of visualization,
mind/body and Aviva's experience teaching different students is a great
example of this. I guess another way to ask Aviva's question "what the mind
knows, that doesn’t seem to require the body" -- what could/should be
addressed analytically and what could/should be addressed experientially?
And when/how should we expose the edges of either analytic or experiential
ways of knowing?

Since I wrote the feminist data visualization piece I've also been thinking
about how a completely other tactic for feminist data visualization could
be to embrace the rhetorical, abstracting, analytical power of data
visualization and to embrace the "view from nowhere" that we associate with
science and to put it in service of overlooked topics and marginalized
people in order to empower them in some way, aggregate information that
hasn't been aggregated before or shift some balance of power. Such as, for
example, mapping out global maternal leave policy or working with
indigenous groups to map their lands in support of a land claim or
translating homeless perspectives on urban space into a visualization to
help planners. In these cases, the authority and expertise that a
visualization carries with it can be an asset and help their creators speak
with more legitimacy.

Catherine

---
Assistant Professor of Civic Media and Data Visualization, Emerson College
Fellow, Emerson Engagement Lab
Research Affiliate, MIT Center for Civic Media
www.kanarinka.com | @kanarinka | 617-501-2441


On Tue, Jul 5, 2016 at 5:35 PM Murat Nemet-Nejat <muratnn at gmail.com> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Hi, this discussion is occurring under the compulsion/framework of a
> mind/body dichotomy in which one must choose or "prioritize" one over the
> other. But this dichotomy at least in the West was created in 17th
> century, principally by Descartes. It is precisely the kind of "male"
> structure that the present group is fighting against. Isn't the abolishing
> the framework itself (the assumption and perception of a mind/body
> dichotomy a better way of asserting a new vision?
>
> Ciao,
> Murat
>
> On Tue, Jul 5, 2016 at 11:54 AM, Lauren Klein <lauren.klein at lmc.gatech.edu
> > wrote:
>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> I, too, am chiming into this discussion late—
>>
>> In response to Catherine, Aviva challenges the view of visualized
>> representation as “primarily a semiotic system,” and writes:
>>
>> > I am interested in the space between of what the body knows that we
>> ignore, and what the mind knows, that doesn’t seem to require the body. I
>> would be curious to know where others might be locating the negotiation of
>> that complicated space.
>>
>> To me, this points to the most challenging aspects of articulating a
>> theory and practice of feminist data visualization: the desire to insist
>> upon the centrality of the body, and of matter more generally, at the same
>> time that we must acknowledge certain physiological aspects of perception.
>> As it has been theorized— insofar as it has been theorized at all—
>> visualization so strongly prioritizes the latter, that any feminist
>> intervention must necessarily emphasize the former. I don’t think it’s
>> “falling into the trap” that Haraway warns about, as much as it is a
>> forceful insistence that bodies, and the social and material contexts of
>> bodies, matter too.
>>
>> Also, hello!
>>
>> By way of belated introduction, I will say a bit about my background and
>> visualization work—
>>
>> My training is as a literary scholar, with a focus on the writing of the
>> early United States (ca. 1790-1830). I became interested in visualization
>> when I attempted to employ some digital tools to visualize my archival
>> data, and was struck by the confluence between concerns about “archival
>> silences,” or gaps in the archival record, and similar discussions in the
>> critical visualization community about the limits of the visual
>> representation. Since then, I’ve begun work on a project about the history
>> of data visualization, with a particular focus on examples that challenge
>> our preconceptions about what visualization can and should do. One of these
>> is the work of Elizabeth Peabody, which you can read about (and see
>> examples of) here:
>>
>> http://medium.com/genres-of-scholarly-knowledge-production/visualization-as-argument-and-on-the-floor-736bb8859cf
>>
>> I’m interested in how her conception of visualization is one that
>> prioritizes interpretation, and is designed to facilitate multiple
>> interactions between producers and perceivers of knowledge. Also worth
>> noting is that her designs were enormous, and the intended mode of
>> interaction was truly embodied: viewers stood around a rug-sized image,
>> discussing the patterns that they saw. This feature has prompted me and my
>> lab group to begin to rematerialize the “mural charts,” as she called them,
>> using individually addressable LEDs and conductive fabric. (You can read
>> about our progress on our lab blog here:
>> http://dhlab.lmc.gatech.edu/blog/). I’m hoping these artifacts,
>> simultaneously historically situated, tactile, and embodied, will prompt
>> further conversation about the uses and limits of visualization.
>>
>> Very much looking forward to this conversation.
>>
>> Lauren
>>
>>
>> --
>> Lauren F. Klein, Ph.D.
>> Assistant Professor
>> School of Literature, Media, and Communication
>> Georgia Institute of Technology
>> Atlanta, GA 30332-0165
>> lauren.klein at lmc.gatech.edu
>>
>>
>>
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>
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