The other blogs (Concept Work, UC Berkeley Lab Notes, ARC News, and On The Assembly of Things), have all served different purposes, but we decided that in the interests of creating as much virtual coherence and focus as possible that we should flow all these turbulent streams into a few large tributaries. To wit, I have just merged all of the postings from these other blogs into Biopower and the Contemporary (all but the last, On the Assembly of Things, for which there are New Big Plans), which will serve henceforth as The Voice Of ARC–insofar as it has a voice, multiple, creative, and hopefully expanding.

As might be expected, any blog with the word “biopower” in it is likely to attract some attention, and it seemed to those of us (Paul, Stephen, Anthony, Andrew, Gaymon, Colin, and others) that we should take advantage of this. Hence, the discussions that Stephen, Tobias and Colin so helpfully initiated under the title of “Concept Work” will hopefully continue here, along side the more ephemeral updates and asides.

One housekeeping issue: I want to encourage everyone to use this forum to post things related to ARC and its many and various instantiations. For those of you who were posting at one of these various blogs, and want to continue to do so, contact me (ckelty@rice.edu) to update your account.

The Guardian: Soil Association bans nanomaterials from organic products

To recap, basically we have been trying to think about two things: 1) we’ve been trying to think through the utility–literally, is it useful?  for what?– of the diagnostic of equipmental platforms offered to us by Rabinow & Bennet; 2) I’ve been going around asserting that a) contemporary figures need to exist in relation to at least two other figures in order to combine its elements in a way appropriately called “contemporary” b) that third (contemporary) figure is more or less emergent–that is, in the process of formation– in many of our projects.

Specifically, Jerome has been concerned with the fact that it seems that, within the diagnostic, only certain kinds of things get taken up as important or as worthy of being used in the analysis (for example, it seems to be a requirement at least there there be some kind of problem to which somebody is trying to develop a more or less rational-in the sense of consistent–equipental response).  Additionally, he’s been wondering (please excuse by liberty in offering such a limited characterization, Jerome) how to account for the very selection process that occurs–how does he, or anyone, make judgements about what to talk about, what to group together, what to see as having affinities, etc.

At the same time as Jerome has been doing this questioning, Anthony has been provoking me with the assertion that, among his Eurocrats, there is neither an emergent third figure nor even any sense of a problem .

I’ll offer my response to the latter (Anthony) first, in that it leads back to the former (Jerome):  I would argue that Anthony’s Eurocrats aren’t operating in a contemporary mode (there’s not much contemporary about trench warfare, after all), so there should be no surprise that there’s no emergent third figure which is attempting to remediate a percieved problem.

To Jerome: Are only certain kinds of things taken up as interesting by the diagnostic out of the endless infinity of human possibility?  yes.  How is the decision as to which elements made?  I would argue that this is the question of “mode of ontology” (how are things taken up so as that they are able to be worked on?).  Inasmuch as the Diagnostic is itself an element of contemporary equipment, its proper mode of ontology–what it’s geared towards seeing and taking up as interesting–is the emergent.  Quite literally it is for seeing emergence.

These means, among other things, that it is not for everything or everybody.  There are modes of ontology for whih it would be inappropriate or useless.  For example, if one were some kind of monk living in a mountain valley in search of eternal or transcendental truths, the examples of (what we’ve decided to call) destinctiveness and patterning that the diagnostic allows us to see what be utterly meaningless.

So we’re moving towards some kind of answer to some of our general questions: Is the diagnostic usefull?  Only if what one is doing is some form of the anthropology of the contemporary.  What is it useful for? Among other things (yet to be named) identifying elements of destinctiveness and patterning between projects.

But Both Jerome and Anthon’y questions have led me to another question: (How) can one take up decidedly non-contemporary objects in the contemporary mode?

One could, for example, should that our ideal typical monks are in fact engaged in developing a sort of emergent equipmental platform that allows them to beter pursue their transcendental truths.  This fact would be of no concern to them.  Would such an analysis still be collaboration (the mode of composition appropriate to the contemporary)?  If so, we must refine what we mean by “collaboration”.  If not, can we say that the anthropology of the contemporary can only be used to understand itself?

I’ve been tossing around a few questions about the concept of emergence as a name for objects of a form of inquiry that locates itself through problematization (Foucault) and reconstruction (Dewey). I’ll first stake a claim (which is entirely debatable in my opinion) in order to be able to put these questions more directly. I’m hoping the questions are relevant to some of the inquiries taking place under the banner of ARC, but I suppose part of the motivation behind my asking them is to find out if these are the right kinds of questions which you all think need answering just now.

Emergence as Problematization and Reconstruction. Inquiries into emergence are best formulated not as theories of why the phenomena under scrutiny had to happen, but rather as concepts or conceptualizations which enable us to grasp the theoretical and practical forms (equipment?) that have contingently emerged. Emergence, that is, is best grasped through inquiries which demonstrate not the necessity of that which emerges but inquiries which grasp both the contingency of the emergent and the particular contingent forms emerging as complex assemblages.

One way of inquiring into emergence in this register of contingency is by way of a form of inquiry which conceptualizes the problematizations and reconstructions (colloq., the problems and solutions) which together enable the temporal-historical emergence of practices (complexes? singularities? sites? hybrids? assemblages? objects? x?). According to this form of inquiry (which could be genealogical, anthropological, or otherwise in its general orientation), complexes of practices are grasped as emergent responses to problems. (This emergence is best grasped as spiral rather than linear in nature: problems give rise to solutions which in turn fuel larger problems which in turn motivate larger solutions, and so on: complexes emerge in the form of reciprocally-developing structures of problematization and reconstruction.)

The Questions:

1. In what ways is inquiry into the emergent (as it is specified above) dependent on whether or not the inquiry concerns complexes which have emerged in the distant past or recent past versus those which are only just beginning to emerge in the near future? Does problematization and reconstruction take on a different character or quality if the emergent object of inquiry has already taken shape, has only recently taken shape, or is only just beginning to shape up?

One preliminary shot at this question is that it does make a difference insofar as two slightly different forms of inquiry, and attendant concepts employed in the inquiries, are likely to be relevant. In the case of objects of inquiry which have already emerged, one is more likely to track problematizations and reconstructions which have already congealed, however contingently. But in the case of objects of inquiry which are only just now emerging or have only very recently assumed any sort of solidity, it seems that problematization and reconstruction could in principle make some definite contribution to the final shape of the emergent object under scrutiny. It is in this sense that to problematize or reconstruct a practice that is only just now under way is not to leave the practice as it is (i.e., to practice positivist philosophy in the sense still urged by the later Wittgenstein) but is rather to change that practice in the very process of grasping it. My sense is that both Dewey and Foucault (my theoretical sources for reconstruction and problematization respectively) liked to think that their own work was of this latter sort in making a definite contribution to the objects of their inquiry—whether or not this is in fact the case can be debated.

2. Is the relation between problematization and reconstruction adequately and correctly elaborated? Is the relation between these two conceptions of inquiry best formulated as two phases of the work of thought? Or would it be better instead to insist that problematization and reconstruction are two very similar conceptions of the same broad practice of inquiry, though articulated in different theoretical registers? I am inclined to think that problematization leads into reconstruction which in turn leads into further problematization, namely the view that these are best viewed as two different phases of inquiry which we can piece together if we wish. I am led to this view largely by the observation that in the theoretical sources for each of these concepts it is difficult to find a usable specification of the form of inquiry elaborated by the other concept—that is to say, it is difficult to find a usable elaboration of reconstruction in Foucault (helpful remarks in some late interviews and in “What is Enlightenment?” notwithstanding) just as it is difficult to find any sophisticated conception of problematization in Dewey (though he is clear that reconstructive inquiry always begins with an indeterminate and problematic situation).<>

3. If conceptions of problematization and reconstruction enable us to grasp emergence, then how should we understand these conceptions as functioning? Are they to be put forward as characterizations for the way that thought always works (a theory of inquiry, as it were)? Or should they rather be postulated as concepts which help us grasp emergence from some particular perspective which we have chosen to assume? If the latter, that is if problematization and reconstruction are conceptual tools, then it may help to specify what purpose these tools are being fashioned for and to specify what other sorts of intellectual tools these contrast to. What other forms of inquiry are possible? What do these other forms hope to achieve? What do problematization and reconstruction hope to achieve, particularly as concerns emergence, that other forms of inquiry are not suited for?