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

Thu Jul 7 11:15:02 AEST 2016

Hi Catherine, Aviva and Lauren,

By some coincidence, the last two poems I have written, *The Spiritual Life
of Replicants* that was published by Talisman Publishers in 2011 and *Animals
of Dawn* that will be published by the same house this year) deal with the
very issues discussed this month. Philosophical, exploratory thoughts are
mixed with intense sensuousness creating a unified, erotic process--thought
not as a series of ideas, dominated by the mind; but thought as a erotic,
linguistic tissue. The body/mind dichotomy completely dissolves into a
synthesis. Of course, one has to read the books or at least a good series
of the poems to see what I am driving at.

Ciao,
Murat

On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 9:35 AM, kanarinka <kanarinka at ikatun.org> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>>
>>
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