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catch my drift
Lately, a couple people separately mentioned to me the Counter
Cartographies Collective (www.countercartographies.org/).
Specifically, they mentioned an article called "Drifting through the
Knowledge Machine",
www.countercartographies.org/component/option,com_docman/Itemid,32/task,doc_details/gid,1/
A lot of the background will be old news to many of you, but I thought
you'd like other bits of it; so I'm presenting some excerpts here.
*
The authors define a "precariat":
flexible, temporary, part-time, and self-employed workers are the
new social group which is required and reproduced by the neoliberal
and post-industrial economic transformation.
They describe some feminist/situationist (-inspired) research methods
which they find well suited to urban and university contexts:
Precarias methods pursue an intentional model of the drift where
spaces normally perceived as unconnected are linked.
Feminist drifting as TAs, undergraduates, cafeteria workers,
professors, janitors, adjuncts, ground keepers, etc. allows us to
mark the territory of knowledge production as the object of
examination, the object upon which to produce knowledge. Our
everyday lives as university inhabitants become our temporary field
sites, appropriating our research skills to investigate our own
labor/life conditions and explore the possibilities of struggle.
Their first characterization of the university is as follows:
One of the main myths about the academy is the independent ivory
tower, reinforcing its exclusivist role of knowledge-making,
untouched by historical dynamics and free from possible turmoil.
Contrary to this well-established myth we can see the university as
a gridded space crisscrossed by intense relations of power: instead
of a privileged bounded ghetto, an interlocking system with multiple
power and counterpower networks flowing through it.
However, they continue to find the myth or metaphor of an "ivory
tower" useful:
The ivory towers are used as citadels in the newly conquered
territories of the global economy, dotting our landscapes with
sentinels/centurions of empire. They must be laid siege to, they
must be infiltrated--but as any good barbarian horde knows--a proper
siege requires blueprints, and infiltration requires lived
experience and adaptation.
Inside the tower lay the archives of the same system that gave it
birth, often including all sorts of critical analyses, all the
better to empower the struggles of the horde; inside the tower lay
their excess material, secret treasure rooms, their darkened
corners, all sites where the barbarian infiltrators might sew a
counter web that will wrap itself around and overgrow the tower
replacing it with a new--yet unmapped--territory.
They cite this organization as an inspiration for their map-making
activities --
Bureau des Etudes/Universite Tangente -- Hacking cartographies to
map power and imagine insurrections
and they have this to say about maps:
Maps are non-textual and non-grammatical. This means that rather
than a text or tract where the reader is forced to follow the
authors train in a pretty linear way, maps have no rigid beginning
or end. While maps definitely show some things while hiding others
they are not bounded by the same rules of grammar and
syntax. Different map viewers can see different links and orders of
things and can focus on any point of the map at anytime without
having to turn pages. This non-textual characteristic can also help
bridge some constraints of language and literacy (though its
hypervisuality may produce other limitations).
The deconstruction of complex machines and their decolonized
reconstruction can be carried out on all kinds of objects. In the
same way as you deconstruct a program, you can also deconstruct the
internal functioning of a government or an administration, a firm or
an industrial or financial group. On the basis of such a
deconstruction, involving a precise identification of the operating
principles of a given administration, or the links or networks
between administrations, lobbies, businesses, etc., you can define
modes of action or intervention.
*
So, "theory" -- but keep in mind that we can also test the
practicality of these cartography approaches by looking at the
artifacts and effects they have produced. (I haven't done that yet.)
I have, however, used "Drifting through the Knowledge Machine" as a
reference on planetx.cc.vt.edu/AsteroidMeta/metacommons, a
place where I am slowly putting together resources and ideas pursuant
to developing a commons that will help with commons-based development
projects.
I'm excited to use the Counter Cartographies Collective stuff in that
context! If anyone wants to get more into the metacommons thing,
please feel free to join in by email or at the AsteroidMeta wiki...
----
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Cartographies Collective (www.countercartographies.org/).
Specifically, they mentioned an article called "Drifting through the
Knowledge Machine",
www.countercartographies.org/component/option,com_docman/Itemid,32/task,doc_details/gid,1/
A lot of the background will be old news to many of you, but I thought
you'd like other bits of it; so I'm presenting some excerpts here.
*
The authors define a "precariat":
flexible, temporary, part-time, and self-employed workers are the
new social group which is required and reproduced by the neoliberal
and post-industrial economic transformation.
They describe some feminist/situationist (-inspired) research methods
which they find well suited to urban and university contexts:
Precarias methods pursue an intentional model of the drift where
spaces normally perceived as unconnected are linked.
Feminist drifting as TAs, undergraduates, cafeteria workers,
professors, janitors, adjuncts, ground keepers, etc. allows us to
mark the territory of knowledge production as the object of
examination, the object upon which to produce knowledge. Our
everyday lives as university inhabitants become our temporary field
sites, appropriating our research skills to investigate our own
labor/life conditions and explore the possibilities of struggle.
Their first characterization of the university is as follows:
One of the main myths about the academy is the independent ivory
tower, reinforcing its exclusivist role of knowledge-making,
untouched by historical dynamics and free from possible turmoil.
Contrary to this well-established myth we can see the university as
a gridded space crisscrossed by intense relations of power: instead
of a privileged bounded ghetto, an interlocking system with multiple
power and counterpower networks flowing through it.
However, they continue to find the myth or metaphor of an "ivory
tower" useful:
The ivory towers are used as citadels in the newly conquered
territories of the global economy, dotting our landscapes with
sentinels/centurions of empire. They must be laid siege to, they
must be infiltrated--but as any good barbarian horde knows--a proper
siege requires blueprints, and infiltration requires lived
experience and adaptation.
Inside the tower lay the archives of the same system that gave it
birth, often including all sorts of critical analyses, all the
better to empower the struggles of the horde; inside the tower lay
their excess material, secret treasure rooms, their darkened
corners, all sites where the barbarian infiltrators might sew a
counter web that will wrap itself around and overgrow the tower
replacing it with a new--yet unmapped--territory.
They cite this organization as an inspiration for their map-making
activities --
Bureau des Etudes/Universite Tangente -- Hacking cartographies to
map power and imagine insurrections
and they have this to say about maps:
Maps are non-textual and non-grammatical. This means that rather
than a text or tract where the reader is forced to follow the
authors train in a pretty linear way, maps have no rigid beginning
or end. While maps definitely show some things while hiding others
they are not bounded by the same rules of grammar and
syntax. Different map viewers can see different links and orders of
things and can focus on any point of the map at anytime without
having to turn pages. This non-textual characteristic can also help
bridge some constraints of language and literacy (though its
hypervisuality may produce other limitations).
The deconstruction of complex machines and their decolonized
reconstruction can be carried out on all kinds of objects. In the
same way as you deconstruct a program, you can also deconstruct the
internal functioning of a government or an administration, a firm or
an industrial or financial group. On the basis of such a
deconstruction, involving a precise identification of the operating
principles of a given administration, or the links or networks
between administrations, lobbies, businesses, etc., you can define
modes of action or intervention.
*
So, "theory" -- but keep in mind that we can also test the
practicality of these cartography approaches by looking at the
artifacts and effects they have produced. (I haven't done that yet.)
I have, however, used "Drifting through the Knowledge Machine" as a
reference on planetx.cc.vt.edu/AsteroidMeta/metacommons, a
place where I am slowly putting together resources and ideas pursuant
to developing a commons that will help with commons-based development
projects.
I'm excited to use the Counter Cartographies Collective stuff in that
context! If anyone wants to get more into the metacommons thing,
please feel free to join in by email or at the AsteroidMeta wiki...
----
Message sent by the Situationist list.
To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe situationist" in the body of a message
to requests-AT-lists.nothingness.org
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