prelude and notes

out from under the driver's seat of the car, my dad pulled a dogeared self-published-looking copy of David Grayson's Adventures in Contentment. he handed it to me and said I'd probably like it--it's about the minimal, reflective lifestyle of a farmer-writer. I read it in small snippets as we made our way across Kansas and Missouri last week. I did like it very much (and hope to read more of this Grayson fellow). the writing is lovely and the philosophy, though sprinkled with a fine coating of dated perspectives on ethnicity and gender, not as stodgy as you might expect for late 19th Century stuff.

I finished Adventures in Contentment late Sunday evening and the next day immediately picked up Leviathan and the Air-Pump, the first reading on my list for this directed reading. right at the beginning, Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer discuss the trickiness of understanding culture whether from inside or outside its norms. They write, "Being a member of the culture one seeks to understand has enormous advantages. Indeed it is difficult to see how one could understand a culture to which one was a complete stranger. Nevertheless, unreflective membership also carries with it serious disadvantages to the search for understanding, and the chief of these might be called the 'self-evident method'" (4). The standards, categorizations, and schemas we simply accept can be as hugely limiting--blinding almost--as they are invisible. The Way Things Are gets pretty entrenched, even when we do notice it.

this introduction to Leviathan reminded me of a section in Grayson's collection of vignettes, near the end, where the narrator comments on the politics of his small country neighborhood and mentions that "The progress of a people can best be judged by those things which they accept as matters-of-fact." without any forethought on my part, Grayson's first novel has made a pretty neat prelude to my summer reading list. part of why it feels this way has to do with my brain making connections between everything it reads, but it's still neat.

Shapin and Schaffer go on to explain their goal of beginning "to break down the aura of self-evidence surrounding the experimental way of producing knowledge" (13). it's ambitious of them and I'm admiring their work so far. first of all it's enlightening for me to glimpse this historical moment before every ten-year-old child was taught about the scientific method (which along with plenty of other "matters of fact" is something I've taken for granted for ages). I am four chapters (about halfway) into their historical look at how and why the scientific method came to be the way it is. the trio of technologies they introduce in chapter two seem to be echoed throughout, and I wonder if this trio will be useful to me with other readings this summer. for future reference I'll list them here with a few notes:

material technology - tools, machines, physical stuff and circumstances
literary technology - text, drawings, publishing, circulation of information
social technology - conventions, shared expectations, norms, gatherings of witnesses

all three not totally distinct spheres. all three used to remove (or appear to remove) human subjectivity/fallibility

I don't want to bias the rest of my reading with these, but if similarities pop up, I think it'll be interesting to see how useful this trio turns out to be. things, symbols, and relationships. those all seem pretty fundamental--but maybe it's too simple. or not simple enough. after all, as Shapin and Schaffer admit, these three technologies don't stand alone. they overlap plenty, which is also pretty interesting to think about.

currently reading: Shapin, Steven and Simon Schaffer. Leviathan and the Air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.

reading next: Feenberg, Andrew. Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010.

I'm waiting for my copy of Haraway's Modest Witness to arrive. as soon as it does, it'll get moved up in the queue.

also in the queue:
Bijker - Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change
Benkler, - Wealth of Networks
Massey, Doreen -  Space Place and Gender
Weeks, Kathi - The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries
Katie King - Networked Reenactments
Halberham, Judith - The Queer Art of Failure
Standage, Tom - The Victorian Internet

previously read and possibly relevant:
Hemmings, Clare - Why Stories Matter
Lanham, Richard - Economics of Attention