Animated and Disturbed: Narratives of Immaterial Labor Practices
Kathleen Stephenson
University of Amsterdam
5911125
rMA Thesis Cultural Analysis
Laura Schuster (Supervisor), Tara MacDonald (Second Reader)
July 4, 2012
Acknowledgements
The acknowledgement section is always my favorite part of any book. This is
because by paying close attention to the way its written and who is thanked, a
reader can craft a whole narrative of an author in a way that makes them
more present in the text as a human who had help from countless others to
create incredible ideas. Even a secluded author cannot skip this short section
because writing is never a lone practice. As for my narrative, let’s see how
well you do in crafting it.
First and foremost, I am incredibly grateful to my supervisor, Laura Schuster,
and second reader, Tara MacDonald, for taking on my project. Due to the
world unfolding with a few obstacles in the way, these two incredibly insightful
and motivating scholars came on board to my project with a lot less time to
give guidance than most supervisors are given. These two women put in so
much of their energy into my project in a ways that gave it a momentum that
made it easier for me to sit at my computer everyday and write.
While Laura and Tara’s energy gave me the academic momentum to write,
there are some people I must thank that made it possible to get the chance to
sit down and write this thesis. First and foremost is my roommate, teammate,
friend, and partner Elgin. Without his support, surprise Ben and Jerry’s ice
cream breaks, and insight, the momentum that began with my supervisors
would be lost.
In addition I would like to thank the people who have made my studies
possible financially. I’d like to thank my parents, Barb and Doug, who always
supported me in all I do. To Alice and Robert who helped me get my feet on
the ground in Holland. To Julie and Mark who gave me an opportunity to let
me support myself financially, and took me in as part of their family in the
meantime. And finally, to the HSP committee, whoever they are. The financial
support from HSP is a critical and excellent program for young international
students in Holland, one that will be incredibly missed.
Finally there are the people whose energies cannot be overlooked in the
writing of this thesis: the Bunch—Jaclyn, Kirsten, and Shannon—these strong
women inspire me the most, and know me the best. Thus they can always
provide a perspective I miss. Mara, for explaining the UvA to me and
providing incredible support and feedback in all I do. Emile and Celine, the
children who give me a break from my thesis (and actually enjoy my
renditions of children’s songs). And finally my teams the NUTS and the Rusty
Bikes who let me work out my frustrations on the field.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS TO BECOME OF ME?
WHAT IS TO BECOME OF ME?
IMMATERIAL LABOR
DISTURBING
DISTURBINGLY ANIMATE, ANIMATIONS THAT DISTURB, AND DIFFRACTION: A SCIENTIFIC
PRACTICE THAT DISTURBS
CHAPTER 1
DISTURBINGLY ANIMATE
1
1
3
5
8
10
INTRODUCTION
ANIMATED WORKERS
THE UNCANNY: AS A FEELING AND AS AN AESTHETIC
THE MATERIAL TURN: MATERIAL-SEMIOTIC THINGS
A FORCE IN WHAT OCCURS: MOVEMENT AS AGENCY
SLAPSTICK COMEDY
CONCLUSION
10
13
19
24
29
33
37
CHAPTER 2
38
ANIMATIONS THAT DISTURB
INTRODUCTION
READING-USING “SEPARATION,” JUNE 4, 2012
DIGITAL DEVICES AND ELECTRONIC LITERATURE
MATERIALITY AS CONTENT AND CONTENT AS MATERIALITY
MATERIAL-SEMIOTIC APPARATUSES
ACTIVE READER-USERS AND POSTHUMAN SUBJECTIVITY
ANIMATIONS THAT DISTURB: ABRAHAMS’S USAGE OF BEHAVIORAL MECHANISMS
WHAT ANIMATIONS THAT DISTURB CONVEY ABOUT IMMATERIAL LABOR PRACTICES
CONCLUSION
38
40
47
49
52
54
57
59
63
CHAPTER 3
64
DIFFRATION: A SCIENTIFIC PRACTICE THAT DISTURBS
INTRODUCTION
REPRESENATIONAL IDIOM
PERFORMATIVE IDIOM
A DISCUSSION OF STRATEGIES
DIFFRACTION
DIFFRACTION AS A READING PRACTICE
DIFFRACTION AS A WRITING PRACTICE
DIFFRACTION FOR CULTURAL ANALYSIS
CONCLUSION: DIFFRACTION A USEFUL PRACTICE?
64
65
66
69
72
73
75
76
79
CONCLUSION
80
WORKS CITED
THE MATERIALITY OF IMMATERIAL LABOR
82
Stephenson 1
Introduction: What is to become of me?
Despite the hopeful tune of the possibilities that can come to be in the “post”
and feminist theories I have been steeped in, when I think of submitting this
very text I cannot help but wonder what is to become of me?1 This thesis
stems from my anxiety. The type of labor that I will most likely participate in
after graduation, if so lucky to be employed, is something different than the
types of labors I have done before. The type of labor that I am talking about is
immaterial labor.
Immaterial labor is a concept that was developed during the late 1980s
and 1990s through both the discussions and the writings of the editors of
Futura Antérieur, a journal started by Antonio Negri in Paris that addressed
“the problems that were to characterise the global era of neo-liberalism,” and
“expressed and highlighted the new characteristics of living labour.”2 These
theorist crafted new terminology that attends to what Negri calls a paradigm
shift in which Fordism became postfordism and modernity became postmodernity.3 Immaterial labor is described as a transformation in which people
produce “the informational and cultural content of the commodity.”4
Although I will outline the particularities of immaterial labor in this
introduction, in my analyses I will be focusing on the movements that people
make when doing immaterial labor. In my preliminary readings on immaterial
labor, I became increasingly interested in the way in which people move when
carrying out immaterial labor practices. I found this to be missing in writings
about immaterial labor. In this thesis I consider the everyday experiences of
performing this type of labor, and the material realities of doing immaterial
labor. This is because I want answers to questions such as: will I have pain in
carrying out this form of labor, if so what will hurt? How focused do I need to
1
This certainly sounds like a self-involved question, but really it can be expanded to
what is to become of us, since immaterial labor is a prevalent form of labor today.
2
Negri.
3
Ibid.
4
Lazzarato 133.
Stephenson 2
be when doing this type of labor? What does it feel like to do this type of
labor? Is this labor boring, fun, creative; is it social?
To answer these questions, I do not take kinesthetic approach where I
would study the particular measurements of movements, or a field research
approach in which I observe and interview people on the way they move when
doing immaterial labor, instead I convey the material realities of doing
immaterial labor by analyzing two narratives that interrogate immaterial labor
practices. These narratives—one a comedy sketch called “MindFi” from the
television show Portlandia, and the other an electronic poem titled
Separation—express feelings, attitudes, aesthetics, ways of reading,
movements and other particularities attached to immaterial labor practices.
Besides being described as a form of labor that produces the
informational and cultural content of a commodity, immaterial labor is marked
by the usage of cybernetic devices. Since laborers’ movements are
dependent upon the machines they use to do work, the way in which
immaterial laborers move differs from the Fordist paradigm. Donna Haraway
was one of the first authors to write about the transformation in how people
move when doing immaterial labor (although she never uses the term).5 In her
famous essay, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and SocialistFeminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” she writes, “Our machines are
disturbingly lively, and we ourselves are frighteningly inert.”6
This sentence can be read in countless ways, which is exactly what
Haraway wants: to resist the meaning and give meanings. In a 2006 interview
with Nicholas Gane, Haraway was asked if this sentence was intended to
“provoke thinkers who continue to treat human agency as something sacred,”
or if it is intended to be a “serious declaration about the emergence of
intelligent technologies that possess creative powers and agencies that rival
those of so-called ‘human’ beings.”7 Haraway explains that it is “both and;” it
is both intended to treat human agency as sacred and be sarcastic about this
5
Haraway uses the notion of homework economy rather than immaterial labor.
6
Haraway, “A Manifesto” 11.
7
Gane 141.
Stephenson 3
perspective.8 In this thesis, I latch on to the word disturbing, and follow it in
various directions to try and open up ways of thinking about movement and
immaterial labor. In order to do this I ask: to what degree do the two narratives
suggest that human movements—as extended by digital devices—are
disturbing, and by framing these movements as disturbing what do these
narratives express about doing immaterial labor?
Immaterial Labor
Before examining the movements attached to immaterial labor as represented
in narratives, it is useful to first outline it as a concept. Immaterial labor refers
to the way in which labor practices have transformed with the advent of digital
devices, and the prevalence of information and cultural content as
commodities. In his article, “Affective Labor,” Michael Hardt explains the
historical transformations of labor: whereas modernization was marked by the
migration of labor from agriculture and mining to industry, since the 1970s the
migration of labor has been from industry to service jobs.9 This shift, explains
Hardt, refers to a change in economic paradigms from an industrial economy
to an informational economy.10 In order to point out some of the particularities
of immaterial labor, it is useful to turn to Michel Foucault’s description of labor
during the 18th and 19th centuries, during the industrial paradigm, to highlight
the alterations in how laborers experience time, space, training for new skills,
and management.
In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault outlines particularities of the
industrial paradigm, specifically to craft his argument of how these practices
were enforced. He called it a discipline society, referring to the way power was
experienced during that period. Foucault argues that through enclosure,
workers (school children, soldiers, etc.) experience a panopticon—a metaphor
that captures what he calls a technology of power—in which workers regulate
8
Furthermore, she explains it is a complaint about the passivity of herself and
her political friends in addition to herself and her “intellectual buddies.” Gane
141.
9
Hardt 91.
10
Ibid. 93.
Stephenson 4
themselves because they feel unverifiably observable. In the informational
paradigm, however, things have dramatically changed.11Instead of a steady
cycle in which the workday ends and laborers go home, workers today are
expected (depending on their employer) to be reachable at any time in any
place.12 The workday no longer needs to be 9-5, and what is considered
leisure might also be labor such as blogging, listening to music, or reviewing
new art pieces. 13 This is all possible because workspaces are no longer
enclosed as Foucault framed it (referring to factories), but rather workspaces
are extended via electronic devices and the Internet. The pressures on
workers today also require flexibility, not just in supplemental work such as
working at home, but also with endless training for new skills and freelance
work. 14 Ultimately, the whole cycle of production varies than that of the
factory.
Maurizio Lazzarato explains that the cycle of production today in the
informational paradigm is made of small “productive units,” that can be
comprised of just one person, who works on projects until completed. When
completed the cycle dissolves back into the networks and flows that make
possible the reproduction and enrichment of its productive capacity.”15 This
makes a worker’s experience precarious. Precarity, argues Vassilis Tsianos
and Ditmitris Papadopolus, “is the embodied experience of the ambivalences
of immaterial productivity in advanced post-Fordism.”16 They explain that this
means that workers are vulnerable for a number of reasons: they need to be
flexible without any form of protection, they are hyperactive in that they always
need to accommodate and always need to be available, they are restless due
to the fact that they are continually coping with the exposure to an over
11 My intention is not to say that this is the only form of labor today, but rather a
prevalent form of labor. 12
Deleuze 5.
13
Terranova 78.
14
Terranova 74, and Deleuze 5.
15
Lazzarato 137.
16 Tsianos
& Papadopoulos. Stephenson 5
abundance of communication, and they are unsettled because of their
constant experience of mobility across different spaces and timelines. 17
In addition, unlike the industrial paradigm in which the worker is always
starting over—from school to the barracks, from the barracks to the factory—
Deleuze claims in a short essay called
“Postscript on the Societies of
Control,” that in the post-industrial society a worker is never done: one is in
perpetual training.18 The prevalence of perpetual training is particularly crafted
by the management strategy of post-Fordism. During the industrial paradigm,
people were placed in space in a way that made it easy to produce and
enforce hierarchy. Workers were motivated by the desire to move up in the
chain of command through promotions. Deleuze explains that today, where
the corporation has replaced the factory, workers are motivated through
challenges, bonuses, and rivalry.19 The notion of “salary according to merit,”
argues Deleuze, requires workers to be in perpetual training, reworking the
way in which one is educated. In addition, a manager in the information
paradigm is not managing workers’ practices, but rather their social relations,
subjectivity, and personality in order to make the worker's soul “become part
of the factory.”20 All of these elements contribute to immaterial labor as being
something disturbing, but let me now explain what it is I mean by disturbing.
Disturbing
As I mentioned, there are a lot of ways in which Haraway’s sentence can be
read. Packed into it are questions of agency (can non-living things be capable
of acting?), movement (how are movement and agency related?), materiality
(is dead matter’s capacity to move eerie?), politics (are we too busy or too
tired to be political as immaterial laborers?), reading practices (do we have a
new way of reading that is distracted due to the multiplicity of devices around
us?), and even literary techniques (how do different narratives of immaterial
labor describe our contemporary situation?). Part of the reason why this
17
Tsianos Papadopoulos
18
Deleuze 5.
19
Ibid.
20
Lazzarato 134.
Stephenson 6
sentence can be read in so many ways has to do with the various
connotations attached to the word disturbing, and that is my intention to take
this sentence and read it with two (material)cultural artifacts that address
movements of immaterial labor.
Even though the words Haraway uses, disturbingly and frighteningly,
are synonyms, I find the word disturbing more productive as a concept to
investigate the ways humans and machines move and how we think about
their movements. I do recognize that in her exact quote she describes
machines’ liveliness as disturbing.
Despite this fact, I think that because
frightening and disturbing are so closely related and because machines
movement and human’s lack of movement are so dependent upon one
another, that disturbing suffices in analyzing both human and machines’
movements.
That being said, disturbing can be read as something that
“discomposes the peace of mind or calmness of (any one),” or something that
moves “anything from its settled condition or position.”21 Therfore, disturbing is
not something that should just be qualified as a negative feeling, but rather it
can have productive elements to it. In order for something new to emerge (be
it systems, networks, materiality, genetic codes, or ideas) what is there before
must be disturbed.
In this thesis, I draw on a number of concepts in order to flesh out
some of the idiosyncrasies of the word disturbing. These concepts are
animation, the uncanny, and diffraction. The first concept, animation, became
important to my project from the beginning because of my association of
Haraway’s distinction of machine being lively and human being’s acting inert
with animation. Both of these words drew me to the notion of animation
because to be animate is to be alive and with movement, but to be animated
is to be moved by another agent so that the illusion of movement is made to a
viewer. Haraway is one of many theorists who suggest that we complicate the
way we have conventionally conceived of animate things and animated
things. Animate things are supposed to be living beings that have the capacity
21
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary. Stephenson 7
to move because they are alive, and animated things are dead matter that are
moved by living beings. Instead, with the advent of digital devices we have
metal matter (electronic devices) that can move (disturbingly animate), and
human beings have become moved by electronic devices in particular ways
(animations that disturb). These two ways of thinking about movement and
matter shape my first two chapters.
I also address the notion of the uncanny, a sensation and aesthetic that
means familiarly unfamiliar, which was made famous in the early 20th century
by Ernst Jentsch, and later Sigmund Freud. When reading Haraway’s quote,
the concept of the uncanny—although inexplicitly—seems to jump out of the
page at me. Not only does Haraway address the movements of dead matter
as being disturbing, one of the key examples of what is uncanny in Jentsch’s
writing, but she also claims that this relationship is disturbing and frightening,
which are negative feelings. By thinking of disturbing as uncanny, I will be
able to determine what feelings are attached to the movements of doing
immaterial labor.
The last chapter diverges from the previous two chapters in that it is a
chapter where I think about my methodology which was shaped by the
metaphor of diffraction. Diffraction is a visual metaphor that is widespread in
feminist materialisms at this moment. It refers to the way in which light
particles act when passing through a prism. When passing through a prism
light particles scatter in different and unpredictable patters. By looking at the
concept of disturbing in two very different readings of the word (one as an
adjective and one as a verb), and with two very different objects in mind, I
hope to provide a piece of knowledge that is diffractive, specifically in that it is
different, adding to the world rather than just critiquing, and a partial yet
rigorous perspective. Thus, I argue that diffraction as a methodology is
disturbing in that it attempts to unsettle previous ways of thinking and
traditions of making knowledge.
Stephenson 8
Disturbingly Animate, Animations that Disturb, and Scientific Practices
that
Disturb
The first chapter of this thesis is titled “Disturbingly Animate.” In this chapter, I
think about disturbing as an adjective, particularly as a negative feeling. In
order to explore disturbing as a feeling, I give the term a context with a short
comedy sketch from the television show Portlandia, titled “MindFi.” Some of
the conceptual connections to disturbing that I discuss in this chapter are
animatedness and the uncanny. By reading animatedness and the uncanny
through Brian Massumi’s writings on movement, I provide a framework of
thinking about humans’ movements when extended by computers in a way
that is not saturated with notions of enlightenment. Finally, I turn to Henri
Bergson’s theory on why particular movements are comedic, and I argue that
this clip makes a political statement. The political statement disturbs the
notion that progress is only progress because we tend to forget about our
materiality, and in doing so progress does not function as such.
The second chapter is titled, “Animations that Disturb.” In this chapter I
think about disturbing as a verb, as something that disrupts that which is
settled. To think about disturbing as a verb, I put it in the context of a digital
poem titled “Separation,” which is beneficial because in order to read the
poem, one must carry out movements that correspond to those of doing
immaterial labor making the process self-reflexive. After pointing out some
characteristics about electronic literature, I look closely at “Separation,” and
how it portrays the movements of immaterial labor. In particular, I argue that
the animations that are key to the poetic nature of “Separation” are capable of
capturing the tensions and contradictions of doing immaterial labor. In
addition, I argue that “Separation” conveys how the object of discipline has
transformed from bodies in a discipline society to data about people in a
control society, and what this means to the workers who do immaterial labor.
Finally, by drawing on how the author, Abrahams, conveys her movements of
doing immaterial labor in her poem with animations that disturb a reader from
actually reading the poem, I argue that the movement of workers in an
Stephenson 9
informational paradigm is not speed as many have argued, but rather—by
drawing on a concept from music—it is syncopation.
The final chapter serves as a meeting point for the previous two
chapters, not as a space for comparison or to put the content of my analysis
in dialog, but rather to discuss in what ways the methodology of my thesis is
productive. In this chapter, which is titled “Diffraction: Disturbing Scientific
Practice,” I outline a short history of feminist science studies critique of
modern Western knowledge making, and suggest taking on a methodology of
diffraction. As a metaphor, it calls for an affirmative methodology by which a
researcher tries to follow difference patterns. In this chapter, I discuss how I
took up some of the experimented methodologies in this thesis to write with a
diffracted methodology, and some of the practices that I did not. I explain how
diffraction is useful for cultural analysis, and how productive I found it to be in
writing this thesis. Now, however, it is time to start following one of these
partial, colorful, diffractive rays of light, and that brings me to “MindFi,” and the
notion of disturbing.
Stephenson 10
Disturbingly Animate
Introduction
Since the late 1800s there has been a drive to analyze how workers move, and
engineer more “effective” ways for them to move to increase labor efficiency and
ultimately profits for factory owners. Frederick Winslow Taylor developed a theory of
management in the late 19th century, and argued that if one uses analysis, logic,
rationality, and empiricism he or she can determine the most efficient way for
workers to carry out their labor.1 He called this theory scientific management. Even
though scientific management is beyond its heyday, engineering ways in which
workers should move has not. There is even a discipline today devoted to
engineering equipment, studying movement, and environments when carrying out
labor practices (and other practices for that matter): ergonomics.
Although in this project I set out to investigate the movements that are
attached to immaterial labor, it is not to determine which movements are most
efficient in a Tayloristic sense, but rather what these movements do, how they make
us feel, and how they shape the way we experience the world. To do this I look at a
narrative of immaterial labor, a comedy sketch called “MindFi” from the television
show Portlandia. This narrative functions as only a partial perspective, a case study,
that puts forth a fictional—yet significant—description of the movements that are
made when doing immaterial labor. I argue that this fictional account is important
because it captures and highlights elements of immaterial labor that can sometimes
be lost when thinking about it from other perspectives. The short comedy sketch,
“MindFi” plays with the movements of doing immaterial labor mostly by exaggerating
them.
“Mindfi” tries to capture some aspects of immaterial labor that I explained in
the introduction. It is set in the living room of a house in which the main character
Fred is using various technological devices that surround him namely, his iPad,
iPhone, MacBook, Netflix DVDs, and television equipped with a digital video
recorder. The first image the viewer sees is a medium shot accompanied by the
sound of Fred mumbling to himself saying “check my email really quick” while he is
1
Taylor 1.
Stephenson 11
sitting behind his computer. Almost immediately after he states this he receives an
identifiable notification sound (one associated with Apple devices). After checking his
email, the shot becomes a close-up of his computer in which the viewer can see
Fred is looking at the website Puffington Host, which has a list of “the top 10 cutest
puppies.”2 In the middle of looking at the website the camera comes back to a
medium shot of Fred in which he looks at his cell phone to send a text. Following this
the view becomes a close-up of an iPad in which Fred mutters, “software update,”
and the shot quickly transfers to his pile of Netflix DVDs. We hear another notification
sound, and Fred calls for help from Carrie.
Carrie is in the kitchen doing the dishes and putting them away. Music begins
to play with increasing tempo as Carrie briskly walks into the living room where Fred
is sitting. From an angle that implies Carrie’s perspective, the viewer observes Fred
sending another email on his computer, a text message from his iPhone, and hears
additional notifications. The camera goes back and forth between a confused Carrie,
and all of the websites that Fred is looking at, specifically his Netflix queue, his
Tumblr, his YouTube account, and Puffington Host. During a shot where Fred is
setting his DVR (Digital Video Recorder), Carrie begins to try and break him from this
technology loop. To do this Carrie exclaims, “Fred, wait. Please! You know what’s
happening right? You’re just spiraling; you’re out of control. No, there’s [sic] too many
things going on. You’re out right?” We then see a close-up of Fred’s face in which his
lips are not moving, but we can hear his voice say, “Please! Please help me!” as he
looks at Carrie.
Fred continues to move back and forth to each device around him, and the
viewer sees Carrie run into the other room. While the music tempo continues to
increase as notifications almost take over the soundtrack, Carrie runs back with
something in her hands. Carrie shoves a photo of Fred from high school in between
him and his devices. Warm music begins to play and Carrie exclaims, “Fred, that’s
you in high school, that’s you before computers, and Internet and iPads, and
YouTube, and Tumblr, before your fantasy baseball team, before your Netflix
queue…Look how happy you look. You’re in a technology loop.”
2
The website title, “Puffington Host,” is a parody of the actual website, “Huffington Post.”
Stephenson 12
The camera then pans to a shot where you can see both Carrie and Fred
where Fred asks aloud, “What should we do?” We hear a voice-over of Carrie’s voice
implying that she is communicating to Fred via her thoughts. Her voice over indicates
her telepathically saying to Fred “Welcome to MindFi.” Fred asks her what it is in his
own voice over, and she explains that MindFi as something like WiFi but for thoughts
in which “now you can let go of all your electronic devices and be free in your mind.”
In the middle of asking how it works, the soothing music ends and we hear a
commercial that tells Fred to think about the keyword gossip to get the latest
information about celebrities. Fred states in the voice-over, which is his MindFi, that
he is going to think about this and in doing so we hear a voice stating “now
transferring to celeb—.” The voice goes haywire, and we see a close up of Fred’s
face in which he’s frowning, his eyes flash red and white, and they roll into the back
of his head accompanied by the sound of a machine powering down. We then see a
computer in which an unknown person is looking at the screen in which Fred is
featured on Puffington Host’s “Top 10 MindFi Fails.”
The short sketch “MindFi” engages various feelings and aesthetics linked to
the bodily consequences of doing immaterial labor. The main character Fred not only
experiences labor in the sense of the collapse of leisure and labor, or the extension
of the workspace, but also in how his body moves in ways that are distinctively
connected to this form of labor. In this chapter, I look at how “MindFi” as a case
study represents the movements of doing immaterial labor. I draw on Haraway’s
quote that I introduced earlier, “our machines are disturbingly lively, and we
ourselves frighteningly inert,” to see to what degree this early description of working
closely with electronic devices is still accurate. Ultimately these movements craft a
narrative that draws on literary techniques of comedy, but they also draw on other
feelings and aesthetics such as uncanny, and animatedness.
To do this, however, I want to turn back to Haraway’s quote. Upon first
reading, her quote seems to perpetuate one of the anxieties when it comes to the
usage of electronic devices. This anxiety is of dead matter’s capacity to act—or to
move for that matter—as threatening to human beings. This theme has been
prevalent in literature, and is often marked by Mary Shelley’s 1818 book,
Stephenson 13
Frankenstein, in which “the first whispers of techno-resistance” were conveyed and
have intensified in narratives through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first
century, specifically in science fiction.3 But does “MindFi perpetuate this anxiety?
And does Haraway intend to affirm it? By looking at this popular culture narrative of
the movements attached to immaterial labor with Haraway’s quote in mind, I ask in
what ways are the movements attached to immaterial labor as portrayed in “MindFi”
disturbing?
To begin my discussion of how “MindFi” portrays the way we move when
doing immaterial labor, I first turn to the notion of animation and docile bodies, a
prevalent conceptualization of workers’ movements. Questions of the animation of
workers bring to the forefront questions of agency, and the disturbing associations
attached to it. From here I turn to the feeling of the uncanny, which has historically
been attached to dead matter moving and lively beings correspondingly lack of
movement, from both Ernst Jentsch’s writings on intellectual uncertainty, and
Sigmund Freud’s conceptions of disruptions of the “rational self.” With the suggestion
of feminist materialists to remember materiality, I reread Jentsch and Freud with
Massumi in mind, and I argue that “MindFi” is disturbing, but not in the uncanny
sense of the word. To get to this point, however, I begin with the notion of animation.
Animated Workers
In my research, the way in which workers’ movements have been described keeps
bringing me back to the practice of animation. Taylor, in his 1895 book, The
Practices of Scientific Management, proposed that managers should walk around
timing and taking notes of workers’ movements. Taylor states that he wanted to
“remove ‘all possible brainwork’ from the shop floor, handing all action, as far as
possible, over to machines.”4 Even when Foucault describes how workers moved in
the industrial paradigm, he seems to point to workers’ movements as animated when
he writes:
3
Dinello 9.
4
Hindle.
Stephenson 14
By the late eighteenth century, the soldier has become something that can be
made; out of a formless clay, an inapt body, the machine required can be
constructed; posture is gradually corrected a calculated constraint runs slowly
through each part of the body, mastering it, making it pliable, ready at all
times, turning silently into the automatism of habit; in short, one has 'got rid of
the peasant' and given him 'the air of a soldier.' 5
For me, the imagery that Foucault describes refers to the tedious and
calculated process of moving clay figures when constructing Claymation films in
which a person’s bodily practices become ones they are molded into: animated by
calculated design. I want to look closer at this notion of animation to determine to
what degree immaterial laborers are animated as Foucault depicts workers during
the industrial paradigm. To do this I first trace the history of the word animation.
Animation is a word with a long history that shifts meaning in each century yet
does not completely shed its former definitions. Originally, animation was used to
signify when someone was close to the divine, and later in the 17th century as the
immeasurable vital principle or soul.6 By the 1800s it loosened from the religious
connotation in which life itself is deemed as being animated.7 Vivian Sobchack points
to the example of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in which the notion of animation loses
its link to the divine because a person can bestow “animation upon lifeless matter.”8
Animation went one step further in the 20th century in which it became commonly
known as a technique in which not only movement is given to a series of drawings,
but even the whole production of moving pictures.9
Foucault’s description of workers in the factory supports his figure of the
docile body, which he argues is how bodies have been conceptualized since the
5
Foucault 136.
6
Sobchack 381.
7
Ibid.
8
Shelley 52.
9
Sobchack 381
Stephenson 15
classical period, as objects of power.10 A docile body refers to the dissolve of a
person’s individually specific movements because a worker is trained in ways where
her movements become habitually automatic, and her movements are used to serve
capitalist demands. Workers are not just animated by themselves, but by a system of
discipline that always implies a worker is constantly observed by managers, factory
owners, or other overseers. To be docile is to move in ways that are not entirely
one’s own. Similarly, drawing on the most recent definitions of animation, Sianne
Ngai writes about animatedness a concept of her own construction. She describes
animatedness as a negative feeling that is attached to what she calls obstructed
agency.11 This feeling explains Ngai, refers to an experience where something
outside of someone (be it an object or a feeling) moves him or her in a particular way
that
is
undesirable
because
it
is
connected
to
political
and
economic
disenfranchisement. She writes, “The exaggerated expressiveness and hyperactivity
associated with animatedness… draws our attention to the politically charged
predicament of suspended agency... As the translation, into affect, of a state of being
“puppeteered” that points to a specific history of systemic political and economic
disenfranchisement.”12
As I mentioned, Ngai and Foucault’s descriptions are closely connected to the
most recent definitions of animation, but they alter the notion in a way. Instead of a
10
Foucault 135.
11
Ngai 32.
12
Particularly, Ngai argues that this animatedness is a racalized feeling. She argues this by
drawing on multiple literary texts from the abolitionist era to today in which African
Americans are represented as animated. She draws on a contemporary cartoon, The PJs, to
argue that various cultural products have crafted an imagined racialized subject that is “an
excessively emotional and expressive subject” (7). In this paper I am trying to move away
from identity politics and towards the politics of imperceptablity as suggested by Elizabeth
Grosz. With this type of politics in mind I would not argue that any identity category is the
only one that feels this feeling of animatedness, but rather about the spatial temporal
moment of feeling the disenfranchisement due to a decrease in the capacity to move. This
quote is found on page 12.
Stephenson 16
person animating an inanimate object through the “horror” of giving it life, or the
cinematic practice of making the illusion of an image or object moving, Foucault and
Ngai use animation in a way that describes how a human is moved by something
outside of them, begging the question, what is it to be animated as a human by
something else?
Foucault’s description of docile bodies comes from his research of how
workers (students and soldiers) were disciplined during the industrial era. By using
the word docile, or teachable, Foucault is drawing on the notion that bodies were
seen as malleable, transformable, in order to be “improved.”13 Foucault argues that
people in positions to discipline others focused on bodily movements not so that a
person did what they wished, but operated as they wished with the techniques,
speed and efficiency that discipliners determined.14 For Foucault, this form of
discipline increased the forces of a body in terms of economic utility, while
simultaneously diminishing these forces in a political manner in which workers
became more obedient.15 The increase and decrease of these forces in a worker by
this form of discipline seems to be a form of animation in that the worker is moved in
a way not decided by himself, but by someone else.
Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 film, Modern Times, captures some of the elements
connected to the docile body in which workers’ movements are supposed to be
controlled. One of the most iconic scenes of the film is when Chaplin is in the factory,
trying to keep up with the pace of the conveyer belt when tightening screws. (See
Figure 1.1). Chaplin, a factory worker, not only messes up the assembly line
because he cannot keep up with the speed, but also he disrupts the workers’ break
because he develops a twitch, and spills his co-worker’s food. Chaplin’s body resists
the movements of how he is supposed to operate, and thus he is unemployable.
13
Foucault 136.
14
Ibid. 138.
15
Foucault 138.
Stephenson 17
Figure 1.1 Charlie Chaplin in the assembly line Modern Times
In “MindFi” we see this image of Chaplin resonating in Fred who cannot cope with
the bodily movements attached to doing immaterial labor, but instead of an overseer
who demands him to work faster—as in Modern Times—Fred himself tries to keep
up with the bodily movements necessary to carry out his immaterial labor practices.
While these movements for Chaplin regard the speed needed to carry out the
demands of building commodities, Armison’s movements refer to the speed and
overload of information that he is both consuming and producing at the same time.
Figure 1.2 Fred Armison and Carrie Brownstein “MindFi”
What is similar about these clips is that both Armison and Chaplin are
portrayed as not being able to cope with the technologies that they must work with.
They are both unable to carry out the tasks because they cannot adapt to the speed
Stephenson 18
and directions required when moving with the technologies used in their jobs. A way
in which they differ, however, is that Armison’s movements are not calculated by a
factory owner; his movements are not encompassed by a disciplinary society, but
rather they are individually manufactured for personal efficiency. He is governing
himself to work faster, and this is an element that comes particularly with this
paradigmatic shift of the type of labor carried out, and the type of discipline used in
this paradigm. It is not the movement of an immaterial laborer that is monitored, but
rather how much information he can create. Thus, the demands on Fred are still
related to moving with a device with a certain quickness, but his movements are no
longer calculated. Fred is animated in another way: by the device itself.
To be animated by the actual device when carrying out labor practices is not a
surprise or shocking if we think about it in terms of Ngai’s concept of animatedness.
Ngai argues that animatedness—the feeling of being animated—can be executed by
anything from objects to feelings. To be animated for Ngai is a negative feeling
because it refers to the suspension of agency.16 Ngai’s concept of animatedness is
useful in its connection to the cinematic practice of animation. It helps point out how
“Mindfi” is disturbing.
Fred is animated in two ways in this clip: figuratively by the ways he moves
when using his devices, and literally when his eyes flash red.
Figure 1.3 “MindFi” Fail
16
Ngai 12.
Stephenson 19
Fred seems to be animated in a number of ways in the sketch, most notably
his inability to stop using his devices. His yell for help juxtaposed to his continuation
to work crafts a tension of what he wants to do (intention), and what his body is
doing (automatic response). Fred even conjures an imagery of ventriloquism at a
point where he asks Carrie to help, but he does not move his mouth, as though his
voice is disembodied, ruptured from his body. This schism, between Fred’s voice
and Fred’s movements allows the feeling of animatedness to be recognized by the
viewers. It also perpetuates the idea of a body mind split in which a body can be
hijacked from a rational mind.
In addition to the figurative animation of Fred in this piece, he is also literally
animated when his eyes flash and roll back into his head. The imagery of someone’s
eyes flashing and rolling into the back of his or her head is undoubtedly disturbing
(and linked to the uncanny as I will show later), but this is not the feeling that the
viewer gets. Because “Animation foregrounds its artificial character, openly admitting
that its images are mere representations,” the viewers are aware that this imagery is
playful rather than terrifying.17 But what are the feelings attached to human being’s
animation? To answer this question I want to frame the concept of the Uncanny.
The Uncanny: as a feeling, as an aesthetic
Ngai’s concept of animatedness is a feeling that Fred, a person doing immaterial
labor, may experience, but since the clip “MindFi” involves watching him do
immaterial labor, I further ask what feelings are attached to seeing a person move
with electronic devices? To answer this question, I look closer at the concept of the
uncanny that is inexplicitly connected to Haraway’s usage of the words frightening
and disturbing when describing the movements of machines and humans. There are
two reasons why Haraway’s quote is connected to the notion of the uncanny. The
first is that uncanny is associated with negative feelings involving fright. It seems her
choice to qualify specific movements as disturbing and frightening perpetuate these
negative feelings. The second reason why Haraway’s quote is connected to the
uncanny is her focus on movements of machines and people because it is a main
17
Manovich.
Stephenson 20
example in of what is uncanny for Ernst Jenstch who coined the term, and Sigmund
Freud who altered the term in a way that accounts for his theory of psychoanalysis.
In his 1906 essay, “On the Psychology of the Uncanny,” Jentsch describes
the uncanny as being not at home or not at ease with a situation.18 He describes a
number of situations where an uncanny feeling may arise: at mask parties, when a
sensory organ is disturbed (one cannot see, or hear), or a lack of orientation.19
Jentsch argues that one of the main ways this sensation comes to being is when one
has “doubts whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or conversely,
whether a lifeless object might be in fact animate.”20 This main focus has to do with
when dead matter moves, and alive beings do not, drawing on examples such as
wax figures, dolls, automatons, and what he considers to be the reverse, people who
suffer from epilepsy.
Jentsch main argument is that what is in common of all of these examples is
that uncanny sensations stem from an intellectual uncertainty. For Jentsch, there are
two ways of experiencing intellectual uncertainty one resulting in the drive to
research and gain knowledge, and the other causes disorientation and an uncanny
effect.21 Jentsch differentiates these two forms of intellectual uncertainty based on to
what degree the thing of uncertainty or the “new/foreign/hostile” is related to
something “old/known/familiar.”22 The further this separation means that there is a
larger pursuit of knowledge. The closer the uncertainty means a larger uncanny
effect. With the example of the wax figure then, the relationship between these two
categories are closer because it is a figure that resembles a body (something
familiar), but because it is not moving, lacking a liveliness, the body as we know it is
disrupted.
This being said, how exactly does this the “Mind Fi,” sketch fit Jentsch’s
18
Jentsch 2.
19
Ibid. 3-6.
20
Ibid. 8.
21
Ibid. 4-5.
22
Ibid. 5.
Stephenson 21
version of uncanny? To answer this question I want to draw on a quote from Jentsch.
When writing about a person who has epilepsy, he writes,
The body that under normal conditions is so meaningful, expedient and
unitary, functioning according to the directions of his consciousness – as an
immensely complicated and delicate mechanism. This is an important cause
of the epileptic fit’s ability to produce such a demonic effect on those who see
it.23
An epileptic fit, from a Jentsch’s perspective, is uncanny because the
“normal,” “unitary,” and “meaningful” body breaks down. The assumption that bodies
are unitary and meaningful is embedded deeply into Enlightenment thought, and
opens the door for many things to be uncanny. In “MindFi,” we see a body that is
fractured between intention and automatic response. If we think of this from a
Jentschian perspective this is a disturbance between body and mind, and it is
uncanny because Fred functions as a body without a “rational self.” While Freud is
one who also argues that the uncanny threatens the rational self, he argues that it is
for different reasons.
Freud departs from Jentsch in his research from the start where he declares
that his analysis has to do with aesthetics rather than psychiatric experiences. He
explains by aesthetic he is expanding the definition from “theory of beauty” to “theory
of the qualities of feelings.”24 That is, rather than analyzing what triggers an uncanny
feeling, or the embodied response to these feelings, Freud is more interested in
representations (namely literature), and what could be considered uncanny. This
aesthetic is useful when analyzing a television clip because it draws on the
historically crafted standards that have been remediated in new forms, particularly
film.25
When considering what conjures an uncanny aesthetic, Freud departs from
Jentsch in arguing that intellectual uncertainty is not uncanny. Freud revisits the
23
Jentsch 14.
24
Freud 219.
25
Bolter and Grusin.
Stephenson 22
narrative that Jentsch drew on to develop his theory on the uncanny, and that is E.A
Hoffman’s The Sandman. While Jentsch argues that Olympia, the automaton in the
story, is uncanny because it is something familiar—a human body—and is at the
same time not familiar—it is not a living being—Freud thinks that this is not the
uncanniest element in the narrative. Freud argues that it is the Sandman because he
threatens to take the eyes of children. The threat of blindness, according to Freud is
“enough to substitute for the dread of being castrated.”26 The anxiety of being
castrated is an infantile complex, which when returned to consciousness, creates an
uncanny experience.27 Specifically Freud states, “an uncanny experience occurs
either when infantile complexes which have been repressed are once more revived
by some impression, or when primitive beliefs which have been surmounted seem
once more to be confirmed.”28
The Jentschian reading of the uncanny element of “MindFi” has to do with the
disruption of Fred as a unitary and meaningful body that is portrayed in his inability to
draw his body away from his electronic devices as he intends to. From a Freudian
perspective, however, this is only a minor uncanny element. What is really uncanny
from a Freudian viewpoint is the imagery of Fred’s eyes flashing and rolling into the
back of his head. In the clip as I mentioned earlier, Fred tries to adapt to “MindFi” but
instead of feeling free of the devices that Carrie promises, he is distracted by a
bombardment of information. More than just a return of a repressed fear, the loss of
vision for Fred is a loss of a power, being degraded, a loss of eye/I. Fred’s eyes
flashing and rolling to the back of his head is supposed to be an exaggeration, and
26
Freud 231.
27
Castration anxiety is something imbedded in Freud’s Oedipus complex. Drawing on the
Greek legend in which Oedipus kills his father, marries his mother, and after doing so blinds
himself, Freud develops a whole theory of human development based upon this narrative.
He argues that children have a sexual attraction to the parent of the opposite sex, and a
jealousy of the parent of the same sex. In this complex a girl believes her jealous mother
castrated her, and a boy fears his father because he thinks his father might castrate him.
Eventually this complex dissolves (Macey 281).
28
Freud 249.
Stephenson 23
draws out the fact that failing at working with technological devices with the speed,
direction, and capacity to stop when desired can be framed as an uncanny aesthetic.
I want to quickly turn back to Freud’s essay again, to reiterate why exactly the
loss of vision crafts an uncanny aesthetic. The return of the repressed and the
confirmation of primitive beliefs are described in this essay as doubles, strange
repetitions, coincidences, the loss of sight, dead bodies (and their liveliness), and
castration.29 What these themes have in common, argues Terry Castle in her book,
The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth Century Culture and the Invention of the
Uncanny, is that they threaten the rational self, a notion that was developed during
Enlightenment. Castle argues that uncanny can be metaphorically read as a function
and invention of Enlightenment.30 She quotes Freud who writes, “everything is
uncanny which ought to have remained hidden but has come to light."31 Referencing
what is reason or light, and anything else as what should be hidden, Freud’s
uncanny must be a product of enlightenment. It is through the demand of reason
where “a kind of toxic side effect, a new human experience of strangeness, anxiety,
bafflement, and intellectual impasse.”
32
Thus, Fred’s blindness marks the inability of
being able to see, to reason, and thus the demise of a “rational self.” The uncanny,
as framed by Freud, is linkable to Fred’s loss of vision.
Freud writes from a position that is very much imbricated in the way we come
to theory today, yet it is limited in a number of ways. In the next part of this section, I
want to think about the movements attached to immaterial labor practices in a way
that addresses the material turn in theory.
29
Freud also argues that the vagina is a secretly familiar which goes to show how incredibly
male-centric the theory this concept comes from. I dismiss this from being connected to my
arguments.
30
Castle 9.
31
Ibid. 7.
32
Ibid. 8. Stephenson 24
The Material Turn: Material-Semiotic Things
In the previous sections materiality has been important to the description of what
triggers an uncanny feeling or animatedness. Because of this, in the following
sections I intermingle these theories with a feminist theoretical framework, which is
most notable for its commitment to materiality. In addition, because this feminist
materialist turn draws on some of Haraway’s writing that functions as a base of its
theoretical structure, thinking about “MindFi,” with feminist materialisms might draw
out some alternatives readings to “our machines are disturbingly lively, and we
ourselves frighteningly inert.”
Before I begin with this analysis, I want to give some background to what the
materialist turn is. The materialist turn was first called neo-materialisms and new
materialisms by Manuel DeLanda and Rosi Bradotti in the second half of the
1990s.33 The coining of these theoretical schools was intended to bring attention to
various authors who were working on bringing materiality back into the picture after it
was neglected in poststructuralist writing. Thus, these authors are not privileging
materiality, but they are giving it it’s due. Authors from both feminists’ genealogy and
science and technology studies offered a different route to see the world and make
knowledge with it. They have worked to construct strategies to think about things as
being shaped by both matter and meaning at the same time.34 Some of the first
authors to do this include: Haraway, Bruno Latour, Deleuze and Guattari, who point
out with concepts such as natureculture and material-semiotic, the inseparability of
matter and language.
In order to think of material-semiotic things in the hyphenated sense of the
word, materialist turn authors promote a generative understanding of ontology, and a
posthuman framework of agency. My intention now is to bring two strands connected
to Haraway’s quote together: disturbing and the materialist turn. I want to re-evaluate
animation and the uncanny by thinking about materiality as generative.
A generative understanding of the material turn is that not only is language
unstable and changing, but so is materiality. The term generative ontology refers to
33
Dolphijn & van der Tuin, Forthcoming, 15.
34
Ibid. 7.
Stephenson 25
the notion that materiality is constantly being made. With the material turn in mind,
Foucault’s concept of docile bodies becomes complicated. Although he framed
bodies as being able to be trained and transformed, he does not discuss how bodies’
materiality transforms, and how bodies might resist these transformations. In
“MindFi” Fred himself is supposed to be trainable, to use the new technologies, but
his body resists, and transforms in a way that is unpredictable, and not intended to
happen in which his eyes are now located in the back of his head.
Instead of the figure of a docile body, Elizabeth Grosz suggests the figure of a
volatile body, which considers bodies as, “discontinuous, non totalizable series of
processes, organs, flows energies, corporeal substances and incorporeal events,
speeds and durations.”35 This conceptualization of bodies accounts for the
entanglements of material-semiotic things and the way in which they are forces for
becomings. It is not about a body functioning only as an object moved by something
else, but rather functioning outside of a subject object division. She writes, “Bodies
are not inert; they function interactively and productively. They act and react. They
generate what is new, surprising, and unpredictable.36 But just how are bodies
matter transformed?
Katherine Hayles describes the dynamism of bodies in her book, How We
Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics.37
One of her main arguments is that embodiment needs to be taken seriously as a
nexus between bodies and discourse. In addition, she argues that there is no one
body (white, male), but rather we can only think of bodies of a specific time, place,
physiology, and culture.38 In addition (drawing on Grosz), she argues that bodies are
not stable matter, but rather are constantly shaped and shaping. Hayles advocates
Grosz’s model of the Mobius strip to describe bodies where the inside becomes
35
Grosz xi.
36
Ibid.
37
In this summary of Katherine Hayles work, I draw on ideas I was working on in an earlier
written paper (2010) titled, “Movement as Play: How Embodiment Opens Unpredictable
Possibilities for Ways to Live Differently.”
38
Hayles, Posthuman, 196.
Stephenson 26
outside, and the outside becomes inside.39 But what does this mean and how is this
possible?
The two terms that Hayles uses to describe embodied experiences are
incorporation and inscription. She explains that these two terms are not in opposition
to one another, but rather in contrast. To start with, she writes, inscription is the
normalized and abstract system of signs, such as writing.40 Incorporation, however,
is a movement that is encoded into a body’s memory by repeated performances, and
is influenced by inscriptions.41 The distinction between inscription and incorporation
is not a division of culture and nature, but rather a fusion in which “the body produces
culture at the same time culture produces the body.”42
To show how culture and materiality are inseparable, Hayles discusses bodily
postures. Instead of postures being carried out in homogenous ways as culture
dictates, Hayles argues that because of diversity of time, bodies, contexts, no
incorporated performance is ever the same. The specifics of each embodied
enactment of these postures feeds back into the cultural codes of these postures.
Therefore while cultural codes sediment into the very materiality of a body, the same
body shapes the cultural codes.
Hayles also describes how the configuration of our bodies and how we use
our bodies shape discourse referencing Mark Johnson’s book, The Body in the Mind.
In his book, Johnson argues that because a common experience between humans is
walking upright, metaphorical networks are affected by this manner of being.43
Words and metaphors are implicated with our bodily experience such as up/down,
in/out, and front/back. Johnson’s example of the metaphors derived from our specific
39
Ibid.
40
Hayles, Posthuman, 198.
41
Ibid. 199-200.
42
Ibid. 200.
43
Ibid. 205.
Stephenson 27
embodied experience includes hierarchical systems tied to our vertical stance.44 If
we lived in different bodies, ones of exoskeletons or unilateral bodies, then our
metaphorical networks would be altered too.45 From her experience with Johnson’s
writing, Hayles points out, “when people begin using their bodies in significantly
different ways, either because of technological innovations or other cultural shifts,
changing experiences of embodiment bubble up into language, affecting the
metaphoric networks at play within culture.”46 Discourse, then, can be transformed
by dynamic embodied experiences.
Now that it is clear that embodiment is crucial to understanding being in the
world, and that embodied practices and discourse are constantly shaping one
another, I want to turn to the important part of Hayles argument for this essay: that
through technological development both our very materiality makeup and discursive
systems shift. She writes, “embodiment mediates between technology and discourse
by creating new experiential frameworks that serve as boundary markers for the
creation of corresponding discursive systems.”47 For Hayles, this means that new
ways of living emerge with the introduction of new devices because they extend a
body in a way that requires it to improvise movements, and ultimately influence
discourse.
When watching “MindFi,” we see an example of a person whose movements
and very materiality shifts with the introduction of technological devices. After failing
with multiple attempts to get Fred out of the technology loop, Carrie introduces a new
technology, “MindFi” a way of talking to each other through their minds. Although this
is an unlikely technology, it shows something that does occur with the introduction of
new technologies, which is that the incorporated practices of Fred and Carrie
dramatically change. Instead of shuffling from device to device, Fred is disturbed
from his previous engrained movements, and can just sit and think in order to
44
Ibid.
45
Hayles, Posthuman, 206.
46
Ibid. 207.
47
Ibid. 205.
Stephenson 28
communicate. His movements are improvised and through repetitive actions his
body is shaped in a new way. Ultimately, his body resists this technology too, but this
failure of adapting to the movements required when doing immaterial labor
underscores that just because a new technology is introduced does not mean that
the body adapts well to it. Fred’s failure is another example of how bodies are not
static, and it brings another element to the forefront that humans are not only agents,
but that other things (living or non-living) can act too. The technologies that Fred
uses requires him to move in particular ways that make his actions not only his own,
but rather a conglomeration of actants. Ngai highlights how an assemblage of
actants can shift the way a person move, whether it was her intention or not.
When describing animatedness, Ngai tells a story of how puppets resisted
being animated in the animated television show The PJs. Although Ngai argues that
she is concerned with human agency when thinking about animatedness as a
feeling, her example of slippery mouth syndrome seems to point to the capacity for
nonhuman things to act. Ngai explains that slippery mouth syndrome is a name that
animators came up with to describe the way in which puppets sometime look despite
the fact that animators carefully move them. Slippery mouth syndrome refers to the
effect when the mouth of a puppet produces the illusion of its mouth slipping off of its
face, something that Ngai refers to as “a little too animated.”48 Ngai’s coupling of an
inanimate object’s capacity to influence how something looks or moves to “a little too
animated,” highlights her commitment to an understanding of agency as human
centric because the animation goes amiss with the intervention of nonhuman things.
This example, for me, however, points to the resistances the puppets have in being
moved; how they are forces in the becomings of the puppet and its representation.49
While the show’s creators may have been animating the puppets in a certain way to
be identified, the puppets too have a force in what occurs.
48
Ngai 124.
49
Ibid. 116.
Stephenson 29
A Force in What Occurs: Movement as Agency
The history of thinking of humans as the agents is considerably influential in
western thought. In 1922, Max Weber argued that an act differentiates from a
behavior because an act is made with a purpose, consciousness, and objective.50
Many authors have been critical of the notion of human agency, of the division (and
historical debate of) individualism versus structure, and crafted a new way of thinking
about agency. These authors—with genealogies connected to science studies,
feminist studies, Foucault, and Deleuze—argue that non-human, non-living, things
have agency too. As a strategy to shift away from the concept of agency, Latour
offers the notion of an actant, “something that acts or to which activity is granted by
others. It implies no special motivation of human individual actors, nor of humans in
general. An actant can literally be anything provided it is granted to be the source of
an action.”51 Actants act within heterogeneous networks that momentarily do
something.
In order to think about the relationship between Fred’s movements and
agency, I turn to author Brian Massumi. Massumi addresses notions of agency in his
book Parables of the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation in a way that does not
attach particular emotions or feelings to agency and movement as both Ngai,
Jentsch, and Freud do. By turning to Massumi, I hope to open up more ways to think
about the movements that Fred carries out in “MindFi.”
Massumi crafts a catchy line for his understanding of materiality: “concrete is
as concrete doesn’t,” which refers to the dynamism of matter that I discussed earlier.
It means that when something is in movement it is not fixed, and it is open to
potential becomings. Therefore, something in movement cannot be signified. Within
his analysis of the Cypriot-Australian performance artist Stelarc, Massumi invites a
new way to think about agency, one that includes non-human actants, but resists
thinking about who does what, and replaces it with the types of movements carried
out. Massumi writes about Stelarc’s project “Ping Body.” “Ping Body” is described by
Ashleigh Nankivell as
50
Abercrombie, Hill, & Turner 2.
51
Latour 373.
Stephenson 30
Consisting of a series of muscle stimulating electrodes placed on various
parts of Stelarc's body that responded to remote users login on to the
performance's web interface and stimulating various body parts on the graphic
representation of Stelarc's body. Ping values were gathered from the users'
collective activity and caused areas of Stelarc’s body to be stimulated. Users
also watched the resulting effects upon Stelarc over a live webcast. Video and
sound also played in the background behind Stelarc.52
Massumi argues that Stelarc is extended in this operation. For Massumi
extension occurs through moment where “the thing, the object, can be considered
prosthesis of the body—provided that it is remembered that the body is equally a
prosthesis of the thing.”53 By prosthesis, he means the actual definition of the word
rather than the common notion of the word in that something is added not something
is replaced. Massumi sees bodies engaged with cybernetic devices as extended.54
A moment where a body can be made a network with all other things in the
world is a moment of worlding, or opening of possibilities, for Massumi. The open
possibilities sounds like a utopian dream to get us somewhere better than here, and
although I think that this is a hope for many authors, the possibilities are not
supposed to be a better future or a worse one, just different.55 Massumi’s description
of doing things in the world, however, refers to movement rather than action to move
away from any connotations of “needful or useful action.”56 To do this he draws on
four movements that Stelarc describes in his writing: voluntary, involuntary,
controlled, and programmed.
52
Nankivell.
53
Massumi 95.
54
Ibid. 127.
55
Although Massumi does not reference Actor Network Theory in his book, his description of an extended body ,a body as one of many actants in a network, a body that is and simultaneously has prosthetics seems to connect with Massumi’s writing. 56
Massumi 127.
Stephenson 31
Voluntary movement accounts for “reflexive thought/and or analysis
inaction.”57 This is the only movement where human agency is present. With
“MindFi” in mind, Fred shouting for help functions as a movement that is voluntary.
Involuntary movement refers to the “organic functionings of the body’s automatic
nervous system,” such as Fred’s breathing, blinking, or even his eyes rolling to the
back of his head as a bodily resistance to Mindfi (the technology).58 Controlled
movements are ones that are forced upon a body. In the “MindFi” clip, this could be
Carrie shoving a photo in front of Fred’s face that he must look at, or having MindFi
installed by Carrie an external agent. Finally, the last movement is programmed,
which has to do with the movements as carried out by his devices such as the
notification sounds that he hears (which are connected to the voluntary and
involuntary movements of the person who sent a message). These movements and
examples should not be seen as fixed because in the last situation we see it is
impossible to mark the division between where the voluntary movement ends and
the programmed movement begins.
When moving as an extended-self one cannot decipher the divisions or the
boundaries of each thing acting not only because they are in motion, but also
because some movements lead to other movement.59 Thinking of movements rather
than actants is useful because it resists marking, representing, and identifying
something that is in the process of emerging. In addition, it does not put the human
as the center, but still recognizes the asymmetry of influence various parts of the
network has. Finally, it gives us terminology to think about human agency that is not
separated from other agencies.
Freud and Jentsch attempted to explain how things that people see (often
related to movements) craft a feeling of uncanny that was on par with the
perspective of the world at the time of writing in regards to human exceptionalism,
but what about thinking about their work today with Massumi’s arguments in mind?
57
Massumi 129.
58
Massumi 129.
59
Ibid. 130.
Stephenson 32
The “MindFi” clip brings attention to the fact that movements are composed of
numerous actants, ways of triggering, and ways of remembering (bodily,
programmed), and consciousness. Unlike Modern Times where Chaplin cannot keep
up, Fred is pointing to a tension between the various types of movements he’s
carrying out. To be more specific, the programmed controlled and involuntary
movements are working together in a way that resists or shuts down his voluntary
movements. Rather than thinking of this fragmentation as uncanny as Jentsch might
because the body is no longer meaningful and unitary, Fred becomes a spectacle—
something I will look at more in depth in the next section—because when there is a
failure for voluntary movements to embed with the other movements it becomes
noticeable, disruptive, and thus raises various feelings and aesthetics.
Again, from a Freudian perspective, it is Fred’s eyes rolling to the back of his
head that creates an uncanny aesthetic. The loss of a sensory organ can indeed be
terrifying, but with Massumi in mind, I would not link this to an infantile complex.
Rather I would link the difficulties that are attached to a bodily change such as losing
one’s sight. The imagery of Fred’s eyes flashing show the continual production of
technology that requires us to constantly change how we perceive information, move
with various devices, and think. These transformations are becomings that occur at a
rapid rate due to technology. These rapid transformations can sometimes be too
much. Although Fred is becoming, he is becoming in a way that would not be
celebrated. It is not part of the utopian possibilities of the future, but rather it is about
the failure and inability to adapt to the becomings. Failing to adapt to new
technologies may be uncanny, but in “MindFi” it’s clearly comedic.
Thus far I have analyzed Fred’s movements in a way that caters to the notion
of disturbing by drawing on various authors such as Ngai who might qualify Fred’s
movements as obstructed agency, and Jenstch and Freud who would might argue
that Fred’s movements signify a disturbed rational and unitary subject. By writing
about these theorists with Massumi’s description of agency as movement in mind, I
opened a way of looking at this clip that shows what unfolds when voluntary
movement is overtaken by other movements be it programmed, controlled, or
involuntary. I argued that Fred’s eyes rolling to the back of his head is an example of
this. Rather than framing it as a fear of being castrated, I argued that it showed a
Stephenson 33
failure to adapt to new configurations of actants (namely technology). But why is
“MindFi” comedic rather than terrifying? To answer this question, I think that clinging
to the definition of disturbing as synonymous with the notion of frightening I am
limited. Therefore, I want to think about disturbing in the sense of a verb, as that
which disturbs. Thus, in the next section, I turn to Arthur Berge and Henri Bergson to
think about how Fred’s movement are comedic rather than frightening.
Slapstick Comedy
I have spent the bulk of this thesis considering how Fred’s movements in “MindFi”
are disturbing in a way that is often theorized, but does not quite fit this clip. In my
research on movement and humor, it was difficult to find work on why particular
movements are comedic. Two authors who do write about why some movements are
comedic are Henri Bergson, a French philosopher from the 19th century, and Arthur
Asa Berger, a broadcast and electronic media scholar. Before I get to their argument
of why Fred’s failure to disengage from technology is comedic, I want to describe the
tradition of the visceral humor of slapstick.
One of the reason’s why Chaplin’s film Modern Times is so easily pared with
“MindFi” is that they both function as slapstick comedies. Slapstick comedy gets its
name from an act in vaudeville shows in which an unsuspecting clown would be
wacked by another with a device—a slapstick—creating a loud exaggerated sound
of getting slapped.60 This act was perpetuated as a form of comedy in silent film
because it was capable of making people laugh even without dialog. Even though
sound was introduced to film in 1927, slapstick comedy is still a popular subgenre.61
One of the elements that is critical to slapstick comedy, according to Barry Salt,
which is evident in both Modern Times and “MindFi,” is a “crazy machine.”62 Salt
writes, “The slapstick, then, presents a rather minimal form of a crazy machine, a
seemingly purposeful device which in fact detours that purpose into spectacular but
60
Page 46. 61
Nelmes 77. 62
Salt 141. Stephenson 34
destructive or purposeless end, triggering laughter…But machines in slapstick
comedy need not be so simplistic.”63
In “MindFi” these “crazy machines” are regular devices that viewers can
identify because they are the most sold computers and cellphones on the market.
Viewers can identify with the tasks that Fred carries out, but as the sequential
tradition of slapstick goes, these “seemingly purposeful” devices do detour and make
Fred a spectacle, reiterating this form of comedy. Although it is evident that this clip
adheres to slapstick comedy conventions, I still have not explained why this is
comedic.
To answer why, I want to refer first to Bergson and his work on comedy. In
1900, Bergson published his book, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the
Comic. In it he argues, “The attitudes, gestures, and movements of the human body
are laughable in exact proportion as that body reminds us of a mere machine.”64 His
interpretation, of a human moving in mechanical way departs significantly from how I
interpreted Haraway’s quote, “our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves
frighteningly inert” because Bergson takes the movements paired with humans and
machines and qualifies it as humorous. But why is it humorous? For Bergson, a
human moving like a machine is comedic because a she is no longer elastic.
Bergson sees the world in a way where everything is constantly changing, and when
movements are so ridged that they do not accommodate this elasticity of they world
they are comedic. Bergson provides an example about how rigidity is comedic by
writing about a man who is walking down the street and falls. Bergson explains that
this is funny not because the man voluntarily sits down, but because he involuntarily
does so. A viewer that witnesses the walker’s fall laughs because of his clumsiness,
and his clumsiness comes from his inability to adapt to the changes that are inherent
in living.65
Another example that Bergson provides to portray the comedic has to do with
repetition. Bergson draws on a quote from Pascal who argued when two people look
63
Salt 141. 64
Bergson 11b. 65
Bergson 6a. Stephenson 35
alike people think it is funny. Bergson explains that this is because repetition goes
against elasticity, against the openness of life. Specifically, Bergson states, “The
truth is that a really living life should never repeat itself.”66
If we think about this in regards to Fred, this seems to be so. Fred functions
as a repetitive ridged character so much so that Carrie describes his behavior as
functioning as a loop, where he continually moves from one thing to the next
repeating over and over again. In the end, Fred’s incapacity to cope with the
elasticity of emerging technologies is what makes him crash, but is it his lack of
elasticity that makes this sketch comedic, or something else? To answer this
question I move on to Berger’s writing on superiority theory, on of a handful of
theories of why things are comedic.
In his book, An Anatomy of Humor, Berger describes different forms of
comedy, different theories of comedy, and he crafts an in depth analysis of jokes
from various theories of comedy. One of the theories that he describes that I think is
useful for analyzing “MindFi,” is superiority theory. To describe superiority theory,
Berger begins with Aristotle. Aristotle argued that “an imitation of men who are worse
than average,” are comedic.67 Berger furthers this theory by quoting Hobbes who
explains that, “the passion of laughter is nothing else but the sudden glory arising
from a sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves by comparison with the
infirmity of others, or with our won formerly.”68 If we think about superiority theory
with the tradition of slapstick comedy, and Bergson’s writing in mind it may convey
just why this clip is comedic.
In “MindFi,” we see Fred working with identifiable, common, everyday devices
that the audience is most likely familiar with using. The purposeful device, as Salt
described, slowly makes Fred a spectacle due to his rigidness, and his inability to
adapt to the pace of the technology. Although in this sense “MindFi” seems to
confirm superiority theories, it does in some ways resist it too. An example of
resistance to this theory is the fact that Portlandia is a show that references the
66
Ibid. 13a. 67
Berger 2. 68
Ibid. Stephenson 36
stereotypical traits of the audience intended to watch the show. It is also selfreferential because the characters use their own names, and because they
exaggerate people and situations they encounter in Portland.
The intermingling of self-referentiality and superiority theory is what I think is
disturbing about this piece from a comedic perspective. This is because the creators
of the show want to shed light on practices that are contextually specific to their own
situation. Christopher Beach explains that this is possible because “comedy
examines and critiques social structures – including those of class – and at certain
points in history it has served as an important facilitator or mediator of society’s
attempts at self-critique.”69 Thus the intermingling of superiority theory, selfreferentiality, and exaggeration of movements is another more accurate way of
approaching this clip as disturbing. Fred’s inability to adapt is also humorous to the
audience, people who identify with the processes and the overwhelming qualities of
these devices, but at the same time make a political statement that is almost always
embedded into comedy sketches. By framing immaterial labor in a comedic manner,
Fred acknowledges some of the ridiculous qualities of living and working in an era of
incredible quantities of information. In Fred’s discussions with Carrie we learn that
Fred takes part in too may applications, and ultimately crashes. This disturbs the
notion that technology is only progress. Although this narrative is comedic, it does
warn viewers about how the movements of immaterial labor have changed us for
better or for worse.
Conclusion
The combination of Haraway’s quote functioned as a starting point with the word
disturbing, and the short comedy sketch “MindFi,” which provided me a specific case
study to look at how the movements of immaterial labor can be narrativized has led
me to a different understanding of the word disturbing, and a broader understanding
of the how movements can make us feel by observing them. By thinking about the
feelings of uncanny and comedic, I showed just how circumstantial movements are
to the feelings they craft. If perceived as a person being unable to carry out voluntary
movement it may be interpreted as uncanny. At the same time, a person’s lack of
69
Beach 4. Stephenson 37
elasticity makes them seem like a failure, and given the historical techniques of
slapstick humor, this could be interpreted as comedic. In this instance, what is
frightening and what is comedic are closely related particularly because they refer to
a body that cannot keep up with technology. The technique by which a laborer’s
movements are portrayed, however, has more to do with the degree it is comedic or
uncanny. That being said, the most disturbing element of this piece that I found in
the end was the social commentary that Fred offers through his movements, and this
is that progress is not always progress.
Stephenson 38
Animations that Disturb
Introduction
In the last chapter, the way I wrote about the concept disturbing began to shift
from an adjective to a verb. With this shift, the way I approached Haraway’s
statement “our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly
inert,” also changed. When thinking about disturbing as an adjective, I
address the negative feelings that may emerge when machines take on more
tasks of daily life. I explained that these negative feelings such as
animatedness or the uncanny depend on an anthropocentric worldview that
was propagated by Enlightenment. Towards the end of the chapter, the
concept of disturbing transformed due to what the television clip had to “say”
about the relationships between people and machines. Particularly, the clip
did not use visual imagery that was frightening, but rather the techniques used
to represent immaterial labor in “MindFi” were comedic. This does not mean
that the clip was no longer disturbing. In fact, I argued that the clip disturbs the
totalizing narrative of technological advancement as purely progress. “MindFi”
highlights some of the problems of information and communication moving at
such intensified speeds that we cannot keep up with, and in our attempts to
keep up with the intensified speeds, the “MindFi” clip shows that we can break
down.
To study this tension further, I analyze a narrative that also draws on
this disturbance titled, “Separation.” “Separation” is a poem about the
limitations of human bodies when engaged with the incredible speeds of
communication today in the informational paradigm. “Separation” is productive
in a different way than the “MindFi” television clip when researching the
movements of immaterial labor because it involves utilizing the technological
devices, automatic movements, and processes that are embedded in
immaterial labor practices themselves, while television has historically be
linked to a leisure activity. This poem engages the reader-user in self-reflexive
ways because the reader-user must think about her own movements of
working with computers just to read the poem.
Stephenson 39
“Separation” is a digital poem based upon the creator’s, Annie
Abrahams’s, own experience with an injury that is classified as a repetitive
strain injury (RSI). RSI was classified as an occupational health problem by
the Australian National Health and Medical Research council in June 1982. It
is an umbrella term that refers to the acute pain, cramps, fatigue, or spasms
that are associated with tasks that require repetitive movements, forceful
movements, vibrations, or staying in uncomfortable positions for long
durations.
1
“Separation” utilizes animations that mimic RSI software,
something Abrahams used after being hospitalized, which is a method
created to prevent RSI symptoms. Abrahams designed the stretches in her
poem based on the poses suggested by WorkPace software, the software
that is installed on her computer, in order to tell a story of her experiences.2
By analyzing “Separation” as a case study, I ask, how does the poem
“Separation” convey the practices of doing immaterial labor in a manner that
is particular to digital literature, and what do the particularities of Abrahams’s
poem based on her own experiences say about immaterial labor practices?
To answer this question, I first describe my reading-using of the poem
“Separation.” I look closely at one execution of the poem due to the capacity
of the reading-using of the poem to vary. After I layout my reading-using of
“Separation,” I discuss its historical specificity within electronic literature.
Because a piece of electronic literature acts differently than in print, I collect
and describe relevant approaches to studying “Separation.” By drawing on
authors such as Katherine Hayles, Espen Aarseth, Adeline Morris, Astrid
Ensslin, and Karen Littau, I address issues particular to electronic literature
namely: the medium’s influence on the content of the poem, the act of “doing”
electronic literature as a material-semiotic apparatus that is dependent upon a
multiplicity of things and momentarily enacted rather than an object of study,
the role of a reader as s a reader-user that requires a larger physical
engagement in “reading,” and finally, I focus on one of the more complex
elements of “Separation;” how bodily mechanisms as written into the poem
1
Lucire xiv.
2
This was stated in the artist’s description of the poem.
Stephenson 40
require movements that complicate linguistical meaning. The bodily
movements that are instigated with the programmed behavioral mechanisms
of the poem portray a particular motion of immaterial labor. This motion, that
still reiterates the importance of speed to industrial labor, requires
disturbances because of human limitations. I describe this motion as
syncopation.
Reading-Using “Separation” June 4, 2012
Digital literature has transformed the ways we can think about literature. No
longer does a text stay on a page locked into its position forever. Instead, it is
a process by which a reader-user has a hand in how the narrative can unfold.
Because of this, I analyze my reading-using of Abrahams’s poem as an event
rather than the poem as a literary object. Hayles argues in her essay, “The
Time of Digital Poetry: From Object to Event” that because digital literature
has a “distributed existence spread among data files and commands, software
that executes the commands, and hardware on which the software runs,” a
poem is no longer a “self-contained object,” but rather a poem becomes a
process.3 To think of electronic literature as a process rather than an object,
Hayles suggests that we should cite “the time of the performance…versus the
time of production.”4 Hayles might be factious to some degree here, but she is
pointing to the tremendous possibilities of reading paths when reading-using
an electronic poem. In order to frame this poem as a process rather than an
object accounting for all of the actions carried about by both human and
nonhuman elements, I will follow Hayles’s advice and use my reading of
“Separation” as an event to analyze the poem with the concept of disturbing.5
My reading-using practice of Abrahams’s poem begins on the website
of the Electronic Literature collection, the second edition. I find a thumbnail
image of
“Separation.” I click a button that states, “begin” to access
Abrahams’s poem. I am then redirected to a new page that requires me to
click on the title “Separation.” After clicking on the title, a new window opens
3
Hayles, Time, 181-182.
4
Ibid.
5
This process occurred June 4, 2012.
Stephenson 41
up on my computer, and I realize that in order for each individual word of the
poem to appear in the window I must click the mouse over and over again.
After clicking my mouse five times only four words appear on my screen, a
warning pops onto the window covering the words of the poem. It states:
Figure 2.1 Animation from “Separation”
I try to click further, but the animation will not go away. It makes me pause. I
wait for the warning to disappear, but it does not, so I decide to start reading
process again, and I refresh the page. I assume this is not programmed in the
poem, but rather an error of one of the actants executing the poem (It was
most likely my internet connection). This time I click at a more relaxed pace,
and read the words that appear on the screen painstakingly slowly. They
state:
lonely soul,
not knowing how to differentiate between you and me,
you don’t feel my pain
As I click, presuming the next word in the poem would appear, an animation
takes over the screen titled “Show the pain.” Within the animation there is an
explanatory text that describes a stretch for the viewer to carry out
accompanied by an image of a woman whose mouth is open wide and her
face strains to push in different directions. It states:
Stephenson 42
Figure 2.2 Animation, “Separation”
At the bottom of the animation there is a red bar that becomes smaller
in correspondence of how much time has passed. I wait for the red bar in the
animation to slowly disappear when I determine that clicking will not speed up
the process. It marks the time spent on the stretch that is 30 seconds in total.
By now I have spent over one minute reading three lines of the poem. I return
to clicking after the first animation disappears from the screen.
The text of the poem that appears word after word is:
Your body became mine
you are interesting
involving
absorbing
demanding
Immediately after the word demanding, a new animation covers the
poem. It is of a silhouetted woman whose shoulders are occasionally
shrugged and occasionally relaxed. The text of the animation explains why
this exercise is suggested, and that is because it is intended to counter the
posture one holds when doing work on the computer. The animation states:
Stephenson 43
Figure 2.3 Animation, “Separation”
After this animation disappears I click the text further to see how the poem
progresses:
We are exchanging constructing, developing
to-get-her fusion, adaptation
Your body became mine,
but mine, mine
muscles, nerves
overused, abused, neglected
You don’t feel my pain,
The click after the word “pain” triggers another animation to fill the screen; an
animation that is titled “Rest.” The image that is conveyed is of a silhouetted
woman who is sitting in a chair with her arms resting on her legs and her head
hanging from her neck. It is the first time I see an image of something that is a
connected to immaterial labor. This visual image is of an adjustable desk chair
with wheels on the bottom is commonly linked to computer work. In addition
to the image, the text suggests taking rest in this way when doing work.
Stephenson 44
Figure 2.4 Animation, “Separation.”
The poem carries on stating:
You don’t feel my pain
and I, I forget about them --absorbed in you
My body starts hating you
your limited ways of recieving [sic] input
your imposing ways of need
you don’t caress,
Just after reading the word caress the next animation is titled “Caress
your back.” It shows a woman holding her arm by the elbow above and behind
her head in which she undulates her arm back and forth over her back. The
animation telling me to caress my back after Abrahams’s complaint of a lack
of caressing from what sounds like an inattentive lover (or computer), reminds
me of my own materiality and what it feels like to be touching my computer
while reading the poem.
Figure 2.5 Animation, “Separation”
Stephenson 45
The pattern of animation-text-animation continues and the words of the poem
that are enacted after the animation of caress state:
you are speed
You never need a break
and when you are down
it’s me who has to repair you
you won’t repair me
I have to leave you
I need desintoxication
I must fight
The next image is the stretch titled “Take courage,” in which I see the figure of
a woman whose hands are clasped behind her back. The instructions given
are for the reader-user to stand up, get away from her computer, and engage
in a shoulder stretch multiple times.
Figure 2.6 Animation, “Separation”
The poem then reads:
I must fight
I need to cherish,
take care off [sic] pay attention to all the parts of me you don’t
Just as I click “don’t” I get the reminder pop-up that I “do not have the right
attitude in front of the computer” again, and after thirty seconds of what seems
Stephenson 46
like a punishment I am able to click onwards. I do so a bit more carefully
modifying my own behavior so that this animation does not disturb me again.
The poem continues on:
recognize
From now on I will use you
and I won’t let you take me over again
Another animation comes on the screen titled, “Pray the sky,” in which we see
a silhouetted woman sitting in a typical desk chair, leaning backwards and
opening her arms and then closing them. The text reminds the reader-user to
relax and take pauses, something that is often forgotten by workers suffering
from RSI.
Figure 2.7 Animation “Separation”
After the reminder to relax in the animation called “Pray the sky,” the final text
of the poem is accessible in which Abrahams asks:
How to relax a computer?
How to massage a computer?
“Separation” as a process rather than an object, has the capacity to
convey things through movements and actions that a text immobilized on a
page cannot. The freeing of words and narrative structures from the page has
a particular history that just like immaterial labor is connected to the advent of
electronic devices. By tracing the history of computer’s disturbances to
Stephenson 47
literature, I hope to describe elements of immaterial labor that are have not yet
been written about. In addition, by considering the added possibilities that
electronic devices provide for telling a story, I describe just how innovative
“Separation” is in describing this labor.
Digital Devices and Electronic Literature
Labor practices were not the only things that dramatically changed with the
introduction of computers; literature was also affected. Literature, which we
have traditionally assumed as being analog in the form of a printed book, has
expanded to another medium, computers. The Committee of Electronic
Literature defines electronic literature as, “work with an important literary
aspect that takes advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the
stand-alone or networked computer.”
The ways authors have engaged the “capabilities and contexts” of
electronic devices when making literary works has instigated a shift in how we
can conceptualize literature, how we make literature, how a reader functions,
and how we research literature. In order to convey the significance of
“Separation” as a narrative of immaterial labor practices, I want to set up the
framework by which electronic literature came to be, and how we can
approach this narrative.
The first form of electronic literature that emerged in the mid 1980s was
hypertext. Hypertext as a narrative form was pioneered by North American
literary and media scholars who wanted to “verify the central tenants of
poststructuralism” such as “the death of the author, the decentralization of
meaning and coherence, the rhizome metaphor, multilinearity, and the notion
of the text, chunk, or lexia.”6 Hypertext is a form that is made up of “blocks of
semi-autonomous text joined by hot links into variable user-driven
configurations.”7 Although this narrative form is not strictly limited to digital
inscription, authors making digital narratives experimented with it more
frequently. I want to add here that it is not just the possibilities that computers
6
Namely, Michael Joyce, Stuart Moulthrop, Deena Larsen and Jane Yellowlees
Douglas (Ensslin147).
7
Morris 7.
Stephenson 48
have brought to crafting narratives that helped shape this form, but also the
theories that were interesting to the makers at the time. In fact, Ensslin even
points out that hypertext did not become popular on a popular cultural level
because the authors exaggerated the meta-theoretical component of the
work, “neglecting the aesthetic effects necessary to attract a non-academic
readership.” 8 In addition, Morris explains that the advocates of hypertext:
“overestimate the agency of the electronic reader, underestimate the
complexity of print texts, and occlude the genuinely revolutionary behavior of
the digital image.”9
While many authors tinkered with this form, “Separation” falls under a
different tradition of electronic literature called second-generation electronic
literature. Second generation electronic literature is marked by the introduction
of sophisticated programming languages in 1995, which infused narrative with
sound, motion, animation and other software functionalities.
10
Second
generation electronic literature departs from hypertext because this type of
literature generally does not depend on text blocks. Further, second
generation electronic literature also departs from videogames because the
pieces generally do not depend upon a series of rules or simulated worlds.11
Separation, among various other electronic literature pieces, highlights
elements of reading that are often overlooked such as: the importance of the
medium of a narrative, how a reader is part of a material-semiotic apparatus
that engages a narrative as an operation of a conglomerate of things rather
than an observer who views a narrative as an object from afar, that narratives
are crafted with more than just the text in mind, and finally that narratives as
material-semiotic apparatuses need to be researched in a way that considers
how elements beyond signifiers shape meanings of narratives. These
elements depart from traditional literary research, but because of electronic
8
Ensslin 147.
9
Morris 13.
10
Hayles 27.
11
Morris 7.
Stephenson 49
literature’s particularities I attend to these components in my analysis of
“Separation” in the following pages.
Traffic between Materiality and Content
Electronic literature has brought materiality back into focus when it comes to
doing literary research. This is not because materiality is less significant in
analog literature, but because it is more noticeable with digital media as
something that shapes the way a reader-user can experience narratives and
poems. The absence of a narrative’s materiality in literary theory could have
to do with the historical division of book making labor in which authors are
supposed to be concerned only with writing the text, while publishers
concentrate on the layout of the physical book.12 This division of labor has
shaped the way literature has been researched in that there has been a
demarcation between studying books as a manufactured object, and as
conveyors of meaning.13 Karen Littau explains that traditionally people who
studied the materiality of books were cultural historians who were interested in
the technological innovations of books, while literary theorists were interested
in the ways of reading and interpreting texts.14 Despite these strong traditions,
electronic literature has collapsed the divisions of a book as an artifact and
conveyor of meaning due to the intensification of bodily involvement, and
correspondence of materiality and semiotics when reading.
In her pamphlet, Writing Machines, Hayles argues that the materials
that narratives are inscribed upon, the medium, influence the way a reader
can experience a narrative. To make her argument, Hayles looks closely at
various analog books that take materiality seriously in a playful manner.
Hayles argues that the medium that a narrative is inscribed on functions as a
material metaphor that influences the meaning of a narrative. According to
Hayles, material metaphors refer to the traffic between verbal construction
12
Hayles, “Time,” 185.
13
Littau 1.
14
Ibid.
Stephenson 50
and a physical object that causes the elements and senses associated with
one to be transferred to another.15
To convey the gravity of material metaphors, Hayles looks at various
analog books and to show how important materiality is to the content of a
narrative. One example that I found particularly intriguing from Hayles’s
argument is Karen Chance’s book Parallax. This narrative is physically crafted
like an accordion to tell story from two directions. That is, there is no “front” or
“back.” This physical shape of the book allows a story to be told from two
perspectives. One perspective is from a straight man that thinks gay men are
unwanted intrusions in his life. The other perspective is from a gay man who
feels threatened by straight people who refuse to acknowledge him.16 The
physical shaping of this book allows an intermingling and tension of
viewpoints to be exposed, tying these two perspectives closer together in a
way that a linear craftsmanship of the book cannot.
Figure 2.8 Parallax, Karen Chance
Hayles declares that the long accepted notion from literary critics that
form is content and content is form should be reconfigured to “materiality is
content, and content is materiality.”17 She argues, “To change the material
artifact is to transform the context and circumstances for interacting with the
words, which inevitably changes the meanings of the words as well. This
transformation of meaning is especially potent when the words reflexively
15
Hayles Writing Machines 23.
16
Ibid. 69.
17
Ibid. 75 (her emphasis).
Stephenson 51
interact with the inscription technologies that produce them.”18 The study of
literature, therefore, requires some consideration of that which the narratives
are inscribed upon, the material that stores the narrative.
Although Hayles is highlighting the importance of materiality when it
comes to narratives, she is not doing so in a McLuhanian manner in which
“the medium is the message.” To say that Hayles thinks that the medium is
the message or that materiality equals content would be a misreading of her
work. Rather, Hayles argument is that content is shaped by a medium—the
materiality of a narrative—and vice versa. These two elements are not the
same, but at the same time not separable. Therefore, if a narrative is told
through a different medium it transforms the narrative.19
The specificity of the computer as the medium of “Separation” has a
significant influence on how the content of it can be understood. “Separation”
is a poem that expresses Abrahams’s experiences in doing immaterial labor.
The text of the poem describes Abrahams’s difficulties separating from her
computer, even when she is pained in using it. The computer, as a material
metaphor, allows for many connections that a reader-user can make between
the text and the computer that would be lost if it were just printed in a book.
For example, because the narrative unfolds in time and because one can only
find out if Abrahams is capable of separating from her computer at the end of
her poem, the reader-user must use the computer, the very thing Abrahams is
advocating against in her text. The animations that interrupt the reader-user
from reading the text cause a reflexivity in which the reader-user thinks about
their own usage of the computer. When animations such as “Show the pain”
come onto the screen, the reader-user cannot help but think about her own
body as instructed by the animation, especially if they are feeling any pain as
Abrahams did.
This tension between the motivation to use the computer to access the
poem, and the deterring disturbances from the animations that “prevent RSI,”
18
19
Hayles, Machines, 23-24.
This is also why she calls for a media specific analysis as a methodology. An
analysis that takes in consideration the particular medium by which information is
conveyed through. Stephenson 52
mimic actual disturbances of immaterial labor (be it pain or a disruption from
RSI software), and the physical annoyances of the disturbances and
processes to get past them would be lost if the poem was printed on paper.
There is traffic between the computer and the narrative as Hayles suggests.
This being said, it is not only the meaning or experience of Abrahams’s poem
that is affected by the materiality of a “Separation,” but the role of a reader in
the performance of reading. To understand the reader’s role as different than
a historical silent reader I will first highlight how some authors approach
readers of electronic literature as part of a material-semiotic apparatus.
Material-Semiotic Apparatuses
In order to help conceptualize how a person engages with literary
works—especially since the advent of electronic literature—Hayles proposes
thinking of electronic literature as a process composed of many actors, and
she refers to these processes as material-semiotic apparatuses. This concept
is connected to two different traditions: science studies and film studies. The
notion of material-semiotic stems from both Bruno Latour and Donna
Haraway’s writing. The hyphenation of the words material and semiotic is
intended to signify that one cannot simply think of things as solely material or
solely semiotic. Rather, as I argued in the last section, materiality and
language are constantly shaping one another.
The other part of Hayles concept is apparatus, which is for me linked to
apparatus theory of film studies. Jean-Pierre Baudry instigated this theory in
his 1970 essay, “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus.”
Drawing on Louis Althusser’s notion of ideological state apparatuses, and
Freudian notions of the mirror stage, Baudry argued, “the very technology of
film—camera shutter, screen, light beam—manifested a bourgeois world
view.”20 What is useful from Baudry’s argument when thinking about electronic
literature is the way one can approach an art piece as a “configuration of
technology and materiality, user positioning, unconscious desires, media text
and context, and the production of meaning as interplay of these elements.”21
20 Thompson and Bordwell 665. 21
Raessens 21-22.
Stephenson 53
It is useful because it does not just focus on meaning, but the interactivity of
semiotics, materiality, contexts, feelings, and a number of other things
providing a much more nuanced and complex analysis.
The combination of these concepts material-semiotic and apparatus
refers to a way of approaching film, literature, and or art. It requires a
researcher to look beyond just the meaning, beyond what is signified. It also
highlights the importance of the momentary enactment of a film, narrative, or
art piece. It suggests that a researcher considers her “object” as something
more complex (an apparatus) that is not fixed and is made of various actors,
both living and non-living.
While an apparatus perspective was useful for theorists of reception
theory who study how viewers cognitively interacted with a piece, or audience
studies theorists who study how fans “actively received revised and extended
texts without…changing the text itself in real time,” I think that it is increasingly
useful for analyzing digital poetry.22 This is because a reader-user “corporeally
influences the body of a digital text itself—that is, a database of information
and its manifestation as display of symbols—in real time.”23
To explore this further, I want to think about my enactment of
“Separation” on June 4th from a material-semiotic apparatus perspective. In
the beginning of my reading-using, I was stopped due to the speed by which I
was clicking for words to appear. In response, an animation appeared on the
screen that said I was clicking too quickly, and that I did not have the correct
attitude in front of the computer. While I assumed this animation would
disappear after a minute, it did not, and I had to refresh the page and start the
process of reading the poem again, which was most likely due to the poor
Internet connection I had at the university that day.
The process of starting over again required me to interact with the
beginning of the poem once again, and made me aggravated and less patient.
Despite being aggravated and impatient, I remembered how long I had to wait
for the animation to disappear, and so I slowed down my clicking. This
22
Morse 18.
23
Ibid. Stephenson 54
allowed the text of the poem to appear on the screen in a way that was more
efficient than clicking quickly. The animated responses to my input influenced
me to slow down my movements, thus providing me a different experience of
the poem than the first time I attempted it.
This momentarily specific enactment of “Separation,” in which the
poem froze and I had to start over, expresses a non-intended, but frequently
experienced action: when the Internet connection fails. Although this was not
a planned action in the poem, it was a possible one, and highlighted an
element of doing immaterial labor that may not be experienced in other
readings of Abraham’s poem. Not only did this enactment point to how it can
be frustrating working with technology, but also it made me reflect and change
my behavior when using the poem. In addition, it also expresses the
complexity of digital poetry as material-semiotic apparatuses. Similarly to
immaterial labor, digital poems are dependent upon human and non-human
actors to be carried out.
By addressing this poem as an apparatus, my experience becomes
more than just reading of Abrahams’s frustrations, I experienced it beyond the
texts, and that is in through my actions. This shows that the poem’s form is
also dependent upon the reader-user’s choices and movements when reading
it. The reader’s role has changed significantly as part of this material semiotic
apparatus, and this is what I will explain next.
Active Reader-Users and Posthuman Subjectivity
In my description of the process of reading “Separation” on June 4th, it is
almost immediately evident that a person who engages in reading electronic
literature is more than just a reader in the traditional sense of the word, as a
person who perceives symbols.24 The description is filled with actions that I
needed to do in order to even read the poem. To recognize these active
elements of reading, I have been referring to readers as reader-users. This is
particularly important to recognize because of the way if affects reading
practices, most notably the physicality involved in reading.
24
Merriam-Webster dictionary. Stephenson 55
To begin, it is not my intention to say that when reading a print book
there is no bodily involvement, in fact when reading analog literature we grasp
and turn pages, focus our eyes, hold our head. Reading-using electronic
literature, however, involves more work than print narratives. The necessity of
reader-users to do more in order to read the text influenced Espen Aarseth to
theorize this practice and ultimately name this type of literature ergodic.
Ergodic is a term he borrows from physics, which means “work” and “path.”
Aarseth argues that in ergodic literature one must work in order to transverse
the text.25 The embodied practice of reading ergodic literature is much more
physical than most narratives inscribed on a print medium. Ergodic literature,
however, is not strictly limited to electronic literature. In fact, Aarseth argues
that the I-Ching, or Book of Changes is ergodic because one can read 4,096
possible texts based on its binary combinations. Thus, this type of reading
practice is not new, but more prevalent and executed in different ways due to
computers.
Before electronic literature emerged, the hegemonic reading practice
was to individually and silently read. Littau explains that to individually and
silently read is an entanglement dependent upon a multiplicity of things
ranging from the introduction of inter word spacing in the eleventh century to
notions of individualism from Protestantism in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.26 This practice of reading, argues Hayles, helped create the liberal
humanist subject in the 17th and 18th centuries, and electronic literature is,
“both reflecting and enacting a new kind of subjectivity characterized by
distributed cognition, networked agency… and fluid boundaries. 27 Hayles
argues that not only has a reader’s reading practice transformed, but also the
way she experiences subjectivity.
Subjectivity is an abstract principle that has been the concern of digital
literary theorists and theorists of immaterial labor alike. While Hayles points to
the way one read-uses electronic literature as enacting a new kind of
25
Aarseth 1.
26
Littau 15,17.
27
Hayles, “What is Electronic Literature”
Stephenson 56
posthuman subjectivity, Mark Coté and Jennifer Pybus argue that the way
labor is experienced influences subjectivity. Coté and Pybus refer to Deleuze
and Foucault to argue that because discipline societies are about fixing
people in space, it also composes bodies in fixed, stable subjectivities. 28
Since the technology of a discipline society is to control a worker’s behavior,
“his aptitudes, intensify his performance, multiply his capacities,” to “put him in
his place where he will be most useful,” his subjectivity was considered
individual and interiorized.29
In a control society—one in which immaterial labor practices are
enacted—a worker is no longer fixed in space. She is extended as part of a
network, and is no longer an individual as opposed to a mass. Rather,
Delueze explains that people have become dividuals in control societies.
Robert W. Williams explains that dividuals refer to the fact that data collected
about us via any monitoring technology makes us into dividuals by which “we
can be divided and subdivided endlessly. What starts as particular information
about specific people—ourselves—can be separated from us and recombined
in new ways outside of our control.”30 Data is the object of power in control
societies by which we are easily divided into parts. For immaterial labor
theorists it is an intermingling of technological devices and technologies of
power that create a fractured, fluid, and networked subjectivity.
Abrahams describes her experience of this form of subjectivity from the
outset of her poem. In reference to her “soul”—that which is generally
reserved to signify the incorporeal elements of a person being their psyche,
self, or essence—Abrahams writes that she is, “not knowing how to
differentiate between me and you.” From the beginning of her poem,
Abrahams figures her subjectivity as something that is connected if not
enacted through a computer. As the poem unfolds, we find that Abrahams’
body rejects being extended by a computer, thus Abrahams’s temporally
based subjectivity is reconfigured, and disrupted. Abrahams struggles with the
28
Coté and Pybus 8.
29
Translation of Foucault Coté and Pybus 8. 30
Williams
Stephenson 57
changes that fractured and fluid subjectivity brings to living. In addition to
writing about her experience with a networked and distributed subjectivity,
Abrahams crafts behavioral mechanisms in her poem for the audience to
experience how a dividual is monitored in a control society, but to explain this
further I will first outline behavioral mechanisms importance in digital poems.
Animations that Disturb: Abrahams’s Usage of Behavioral Mechanisms
One of the purposes for poets when writing poetry, argues Allucquè
Rosanne Stone, is to restructure descriptive language in a way of making
meaningful statements “at least partially outside the force field of
phallogocentrism.” 31 While poets of print media are able to experiment
resisting phallogocentric meaning with words, punctuation, line breaks,
spacing, font type, and white space, digital technology gives writers “more
flexibility in how they can employ temporal dimensions as resources in their
writing practices.”32
One of the first ways that I noticed that Abrahams’s utilizes expresses
her experience with more than just meaning in her poem is with animations
that suggest various stretches. In her poem, Abrahams not only tells a readeruser of her pain, but also, with the recommended stretches that are based
upon an actual RSI prevention software, she provides an opportunity for a
reader-user to see—if not feel—where the pain that is associated with
computer users build up. In various animations, Abrahams suggests stretches
that point to tensions that can build up in one’s face, shoulders, back legs,
wrists and arms when doing immaterial labor. If a reader-user actually does
these poses, she experiences the poem in a visceral way involving touch as a
major sense that perceives it. Visual imagery that suggests a stretch,
however, is not something that is exclusively specific to a digital medium. In
fact, an analog poem could involve images of such stretches. That being said,
I want to talk about behavioral mechanisms that Abrahams implements in her
poem that is particular to digital literature.
31
Stone 379.
32
Hayles, Time, 181. Stephenson 58
On more of a complex level, some of the temporal dimensions that
Hayles is talking about that are taken advantage of by most digital literature
authors are what Ensslin calls behavioral mechanisms, which are capable of
shaping a reader-user’s reading practice through procedures of animation,
sounds, and motions that change the way in which reader-users engage with
narratives. 33 Because an author has the capacity to affect the readingpractices of her audience, she is not only authoring a text, but also she scripts
a performance for a reader-user.
Abrahams utilizes behavioral mechanisms in a way that she can
capture contradictory feelings that many of us experience today with the
prevalence of digital devices. The particular contradictory feeling she captures
is the want or need to be extended by a computer, and the simultaneous want
or need to not be extended by a computer. I refer to this as a feeling because
I do not want to necessarily qualify consciousness to this want or need
(affect), nor do I want to exclude it (emotion).34 This want (or sometimes need)
surfaces in many ways in daily life be it through automatic affects—such as
when pain takes over ones wrists when writing—or conscious emotions such
as our desire to be connected to others through the Internet. Abrahams
captures this in her digital poem by crafting a text that is about her
impossibility of detangling herself from her computer, and a behavioral
mechanism that makes it incredibly difficult for a reader-user to be absorbed
into the poem. Abrahams writes:
Your body became mine
you are interesting
involving
absorbing
demanding
We are exchanging, constructing, developing
To-get-her fusion, adaptation
Your body became mine,
33
Ensslin 149.
34 Massumi
argues that affects are intensities and emotions are of subjective content. Stephenson 59
Here we see that Abrahams is conveying an experience with a computer in
which she became extended by it, but the behavioral mechanisms perceived
through movement of clicking and touch trigger an affect that through
conscious thought conveys something different than the text of the poem. To
read the text a reader user has to move, to click, at an incredibly slow pace.
The pauses between words are long enough that it makes a reader-user focus
on one word at a time, and they seem to stand alone due to these temporal
pauses in which the words lose their context. The disrupting animations that
make a reader-user wait thirty seconds before she can access the text again.
These pauses can sometimes be so that a reader-user can forget the text she
has already read. In addition, although Abrahams is crafting a narrative of her
experience, a reader-user is preoccupied with monitoring how quickly she
moves. The slow pace of the text on the screen makes it difficult for a readeruser to focus on the narrative or meaning of the poem.
With the implementations of behavioral mechanisms, Abrahams is
capable of making an experience for a reader-user that captures her own
frustrations of being extended by computers. She recreates a disturbance,
mimicking the disturbances she experienced while doing immaterial labor by
crafting animations that a reader-user has to do in order to access the poem.
By implementing behavioral mechanisms—animations that disturb—into her
poem, Abrahams is capable, yet again, of conveying meaning outside of
signifiers. She crafts a poem that is about affects, but after conscious thought
they become meaningful to the reader. What is particular about the meaning
that is experienced and expressed from this poem is that is dependent upon
each process of the poem. Thus, this analysis is contingent entirely upon my
reading-using of “Separation” on June 4th. That being said, the event of
reading “Separation” on June 4th pointed out some idiosyncrasies about
immaterial labor that I will now look at closely.
What Animations that Disturb say about Immaterial Labor Practices
Despite the fact that bodies are no longer the object of discipline in a control
society where the predominate form of labor is immaterial, does not mean that
embodied experiences and bodily movements are less important even if they
Stephenson 60
are less apparent. Hayles writes in her 1999 book How We Became
Posthuman,
My dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities
of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of
unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and
celebrates finitude as a condition of human being, and that
understands human life is embedded in a material world of great
complexity, one on which we depend for our continued survival.35
While I have been delving into immaterial labor, I have focused tremendously
on the material aspects of this labor. In Abrahams’s poem, she conveys two
material consequences of immaterial labor, the first is the possibility of
acquiring pain from the types of movements that immaterial labor requires,
and the second is how movements are monitored—because they still are—
today. Both of these things have something in common: they disturb a person
from being extended by her computer.
The pain that workers may experience from their labor practices
intensify in the informational paradigm in the sense that they are extended
beyond eight hours a day due to the dissolve of leisure and labor. A popular
cartoon from the Internet titled “This is Modern Life,” captures this dissolve,
showing a person at work, home and at play. People are often behind their
computer
doing
the
same
Figure 2.9, Source Unknown
35 Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, 5. movements
almost
all
day.
Stephenson 61
The pain that some workers encounter when carrying out these tasks
or leisure activities are ones that occur so frequently that they are often define
as repetitive strain injuries. Since RSI inflicts over 3.2 million workers in the
Netherlands alone, various scientists have studied these injuries ranging from
occupational therapists, psychologists, and ergonomic engineers.36 Because
this affects two fifths of the working population, products and methods have
been developed to decrease the number of people who suffer from RSI
ranging from hardware such as special keyboards and mice, to software that
requires workers to take breaks. Abrahams’s poem, which focuses on the
implications of using this software as a response to RSI, points out two
particularities of how a worker experiences doing immaterial labor today, and
that is who surveys a worker’s movements, and what purposes are behind
surveying the movments.
One of the most notable elements of a disciplinary society is the notion
that one is always immersed in a panopticon, and thus one could always be
surveyed by an overseer. The notion of being surveyed in a control society no
longer fits today due to the lack of enclosure. Surveillance as we know it in
terms of a panopticon is no longer a viable way of explaining how workers’
actions are controlled. Instead of a human monitor, today we have our very
own computer to do this job.
Abrahams conveys this in her poem. Although she declares in the
poem, “I won’t let you take me over again,” the fact of the matter is that the
computer won’t let the computer take her over again. To think about this even
further, I am hesitant to even use the word surveillance. Surveillance,
stemming from the French word surveiller or “to watch over,” is linked to
notions of vision. The software that Abrahams is mimicking, on the other
hand, is one in which bodies are a data double. They are not seen but coded.
The data double, according to Kevin Haggarty and Richard Ericson, “serves
as markers for access resources, services and power in ways that are often
36
This data comes from the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific
Research and was found on the Dutch RSI Association website.
Stephenson 62
unknown to the referent.”37 RSI software, that which Abrahams imitates, is
one that collects data on how many keystrokes and mouse clicks a person
executes per minute, how diligent a worker has been in taking her breaks, and
finally by putting this data into a formula, it suggest stretches and reconfigures
the pace at which she should move. Thus, surveillance has changed in that it
is no longer a person doing it, and it is mostly about collecting data and
comparing it to data that has been synthesized earlier. This being said, I want
to remark on the way in which a person is supposed to move when they work
closely with computers.
One of the aspects that Hayles dreams for posthumanism is for authors
to take care and consider human materiality and its limits. The recognition,
development of research, and steps implemented to prevent RSI, shows that
yes, indeed, people are concerned with human materiality in a posthuman
era. The prevalence of RSI has shaped the overall movement of immaterial
labor, at least as portrayed in this poem.
Technology and speed seem to be almost natural pairings, and their
relationship has been written in full detail from authors ranging from artist and
futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti to French theorist Paul Virilio who see
technologies as accelerating the way in which any task can be carried out
(particularly pointing to warfare). Abrahams, however, crafts a poem where
efficiency for a task to get done (the task being to read her poem) is less
dependent upon speed, and more dependent upon a reader-user doing the
task at a pace that “will not injure her.” Although relative quickness is still
demanded from workers, the possibility of acquiring a repetitive strain injury is
taken into consideration, shifting the way in which workers experience the
movement of labor.
Speed and quickness are still the desired outcome from immaterial
laborers, but because human bodies have limitations a new movement, one
with breaks and pauses, emerges. To describe this movement I turn to music
to describe it, in which the tempo of speed is executed with a rhythm of
syncopation. According to Christoph Eschenbach, the music director of the
37
Haggarty and Ericson 109. Stephenson 63
(US) National Symphony Orchestra, syncopation is a “disturbance or
interruption in the regular flow of rhythm. It’s the placement of rhythmic
stresses or accents where they wouldn’t normally occur.” Abrahams scripts
this in the behavioral mechanisms for her poem. In my description of readingusing “Separation” I state, “As I click, assuming the next word in the poem
would appear, an animation takes over the screen.” This animation functions
as an accent or stress that is placed at a time that it normally would not occur.
By implementing these animations that are based off of her very own
experience of doing immaterial labor after her injury, Abrahams is telling an
element of immaterial labor that is often overlooked, what the limitations of
human bodies does to the movement of labor itself.
Conclusion
The disturbing elements of immaterial labor in “Separation” comes across as
something quite different than the disturbing elements of “MindFi.” By looking
at a digital poem, which has more opportunities to express experiences to
reader-users outside of language, I found an alternative way of thinking of the
movements associated with technology than that of speed, and I called it
syncopation. Syncopation is that which disturbs through accents at
unexpected points, becomes something prevalent in immaterial labor today
due to the recognition and threat of workers acquiring this injury. By mimicking
the software, which enforces syncopation as the movement of immaterial
laborers, Abrahams brings attention to what it is to have a posthuman
subjectivity in her poem in a material-semiotic way. Thus, disturbing has
transformed from a feeling, the uncanny of how we perceive these worker’s
movements; to another way we perceive these movements as humorous that
disturbs everyday conceptions of people who work with computers with
political ends in sight; and finally to the movement of laborers who work with
computers.
Stephenson 64
Diffraction: Scientific Practices that Disturb
Introduction
In the previous two sections, I examined the concept disturbing from various
angles to see how the concept and objects shape different configurations in
understanding embodied experiences of immaterial labor. I shaped this
methodology based on my education in cultural analysis, and my commitment
to feminism. During the construction and execution of my research I kept a
quote from Haraway in the forefront of my mind, what kind of difference do
you want to make? Her question is one I take seriously; I am concerned with
the implications of the knowledge I make. If poststructuralism taught us
anything it was that there is not truth, only truths. Even so, there are some
truths that are favorable for a number of reasons, which means knowledge
making—including this thesis—always comes back to politics. The question
that I ask in this chapter is what difference does this thesis make, and how
does it make this difference?
Haraway and many other feminist scholars have looked for ways to
address this question. One of the methodologies that have emerged through
dialogs of interrogating knowledge making is called diffraction. Haraway uses
diffraction as a visual metaphor for how researchers should conceptualize the
process of making knowledge. Diffraction is a physical phenomenon that is
best described by thinking of how light passes through a prism. When light
passes through a prism the waves disperse to different directions, creating
difference patterns. As a methodology, diffraction requests researchers to
follow these difference patters to make innovative knowledge. Diffraction is a
type of affirmative methodology that rather than producing the same, or
applying a theory, it goes somewhere different. 1
In this thesis, I have
attempted to use this visual metaphor by drawing on various feminist authors
who executed diffractive methodology in numerous ways.
In order to answer my question, what difference does this thesis make,
and how does it make this difference? I want to first explain the history of the
1
For more on affirmative methodologies see Brian Massumi’s Parables for the Virtual
12.
Stephenson 65
critique of knowledge making in modern western science. The hegemonic
understanding of knowledge making in modern science has been called the
representational idiom because scientists have assumed that their job is to
represent the world as it is. Both science and technology studies theorists and
feminist technoscientific theorists have been critical of this view of the practice
of science, and have suggested that science as a practice should be thought
of and addressed as performative rather than representational. From here
many theorists have offered different ways to make knowledge and share it
with others. I will explore this process of how researchers suggested making
and sharing knowledge ultimately leading to Haraway’s suggestion of
diffraction.
Representational Idiom
One of the most important critiques when it comes to science for both science
and technology studies and feminist technoscientific theorists is the critique of
how knowledge is made in the sciences. Beginning with Durkheim and
Mannheim from the classical sociology of knowledge, Steven Woolgar
explains his book, Science, the Very Idea, that researchers were interested in
how knowledge arouse, specifically how variations of knowledge are
associated with different positionings in the world.2 Science, however, was
seen as a discipline that was not affected by social contexts.3 The sociology
of scientific knowledge (SSK) was one of the first groups to challenge the role
of logic and reason in science, leading to various different genealogies of
researchers concerned with how knowledge is made.4
One of the issues at the heart of the concern of how knowledge is
made is science’s philosophical commitment to fixing boundaries.5 Andrew
Pickering calls this way of understanding science as the representational
idiom because scientists are seen as engaging in an activity where they can
2
Woolgar 22.
3
Ibid. 22.
4
Ibid. 50.
5
Ibid. 15.
Stephenson 66
represent things in a way that mirrors the world as it is.6 Haraway calls the
figure of the representational scientist a modest witness, someone who
impartially unveils “the world as it is.”7 Imbedded into the representational
idiom is an essentialist understanding of the world, which promotes the idea
that, “discrete objects exist independent of our perception of them.”8 What is
problematic
for
various
technoscientific
theorists
in
regards
to
the
representational idiom is that it: requires theorists to assume that materiality is
stable, assumes that it is possible to represent things in a realistic and
objective manner,9 considers scientists as detached or separated from the
objects they research, and promotes the notion that humans are thought of as
the only things that have agency. As an alternative to the representational
idiom, Pickering suggests that we should think of science in a way in which
the world is not filled with facts and observations, but with agency.10
Performative Idiom
In contrast to the representational idiom of science, various technoscientific
theorists have suggested a performative idiom that regards science as “a field
of powers, capacities, and performances situated in machinic captures of
material agency.”11 The performative understanding of science came as a
response to the intense stronghold of social constructionism from both
feminism and science studies.
The concept of performativity has a long history stemming from J.L.
Austin’s writings on speech acts where some sentences say things and some
sentences do things, to Jacques Derrida who writes about how speech acts
6
Pickering 5.
7
Haraway, Modest, 223, 339.
8
Woolgar 30.
9
Steven Woolgar goes even further in his investigation of the representational idiom
in his book, Science the Very Idea. He crafts a clear arguement of what scientists do
to get around these pitfalls, and prescribes another way of approaching knowledge
making.
10
Pickering 6.
11
Ibid. 7.
Stephenson 67
are performed to bring particular people to power, to Judith Butler’s writing on
how gender is not set, but rather performed through actions.12 Although these
theorists were writing from perspectives of literary and theater studies to
critique representations, authors in science studies were also growing critical
of representation in the sciences.13
Barad explains the shift from the representational idiom to a
performative one changes the focus in science from the correspondence
between descriptions and reality to matters of practices/doings/actions. The
performative idiom has a long history and has been developed by a number of
theorists namely: Karen Barad, Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Andrew
Pickering, Joseph Rouse, and Steven Woolgar.14
Pickering, who is known for taking ownership of the performative idiom,
crafts his argument in connection to actor-network theory.15 His main focus is
how to include “human and non human (material) agency,” when thinking
about how knowledge is made. Pickering tries to convey this process with his
concept of “the dance of agency.” The dance of agency refers to the scientific
process of making knowledge in which scientists, “make machines and
passively wait to capture whatever material agency takes effect.” 16 Based
upon the effects, scientists reconfigure their plans and goals accordingly,
which highlights just how performed this process is. Pickering provides an
example of this dance from Bruno Latour’s writing on Louis Pasteur. Latour
argues in his research on Pasteur that Pasteur is not the only one acting but
12
This is one of the largest critiques of Barad and Haraway on Pickering’s work; that
he ignores the queer history of the performative idiom in addition to taking credit for
it. Barad 806-7.
13
Barad refers to Ian Hacking’s 1983 book Representing and Intervening in which
Hacking points out the limitations of representationalist thinking about the nature of
science.
14
Barad 807.
15
Barad argues that Pickering is one of the few science studies scholars to take
ownership of this term 807.
16
Pickering 21.
Stephenson 68
also his yeast.17 Pasteur would set up an experiment and wait for the yeast to
do something, and based upon the response of the yeast he would set up his
experiments in new ways. Pickering explains,
The dance of agency, seen asymmetrically from the human end thus
takes the form of a dialectic of resistance and accommodation, where
resistance denotes the failure to achieve an intended capture of agency
in practice, and accommodation an active human strategy of response
to resistance which can include revisions to goals and intentions as
well as to the material form of the machine in question and to the
human frame of gestures and social relations surrounding it.
To reiterate, he is saying is that a scientist responds to how his experiment,
machines, and other nonhuman agents involved act until an answer can come
to be.
The performative idiom from a feminist technoscientific perspective is a
little bit different from Pickering’s because it is written in in a way that
recognizes the concept’s queer history. 18 The feminist technoscientific
perspective is focused a bit more on addressing the notion that “there are
assumed to be two distinct independent kids of entities—representations and
entities to be represented.” 19 In particular, Barad puts forth her own
philosophical account that addresses the inseparability of representations and
things in the world; she calls it agential realism.
An agential realist account is one that advocates a “relationality
between specific material (re)configurings of the world through which
boundaries, properties and meanings are differentially enacted…and specific
material phenomena.” 20
Barad is arguing that that through enactment
(performatively), boundaries are temporarily made to mark and describe the
world, in order to make knowledge. This requires a new understanding of
metaphysics
(onto-ethico-epistmemology),
17
Ibid. 21 fn 35.
18
Barad 808.
19
Ibid. 804.
20 ibid.
139, (her emphasis). agency,
causality.
This
Stephenson 69
metaphysics requires one to consider representations and things interlinked
shaping one another and not pre-existing their relations, it requires an
understanding of agency in which not only humans act, and finally it requires
an understanding of causality where things are constantly being arranged
differentially in the “ebb and flow of agency.”21
In the second chapter of my thesis I approach the “object” of my
analysis in a performative way, in that I focus on my own particular readingusing of “Separation” as an event. By approaching “Separation” as an event,
in which I record the time of reading-using, I do address my role and other
materials’ role in the becoming of the poem, adjust representations from their
pedestal as the most important element of a narrative, make space for a
material-semiotic reading of the poem, and provide a partial non-totalizable
reading of the poem.
This means that I convey a perspective that was
relevant for my reading-using of the poem which is highly influenced by the
questions I asked in my thesis.
The various ways in which theorists have come to critique the
representational idiom shows just the beginning of a dialog of how knowledge
is made. In the next section, I summarize the various strategies and their
critiques of how to make knowledge while avoiding the pitfalls of
representation.
A Discussion of Strategies
One of the first strategies to cope with the representational idiom is
suggested by Woolgar, who argues that authors should be reflexive in their
work. To do this he suggests using two techniques: inversion and
feedbacking. He describes inversion as considering a representation as
preceding its object. This is reflexive because it recognizes that a
representation constitutes an object.22 The other strategy that he suggests is
feedbacking, which emphasizes the rebounding connections between science
as an object in our attempts to produce a study “of” science. 23 Haraway
21
Ibid. 817.
22
Woolgar 57.
23
Ibid. 36.
Stephenson 70
argues that although reflexivity points out the invisible modest witness,
Woolgar’s “relentless insistence on reflexivity…seems not to be able to get
beyond self-vision as the cure for self-invisibility.”24 That is, Woolgar thinks
that by pointing out specificities in his representing practices he is being “more
objective.”
From here, Sandra Harding tries to make an account that departs from
value-free objectivity and relativism. She argues for strong objectivity, which
draws on tenants of the strong programme and feminist standpoint theory.25
Harding explains that this feminist standpoint epistemology requires a
strengthening in standards of objectivity. This is possible for Harding by
considering scientists as socially situated human beings. By taking an
approach that is connected to the strong programme, Harding argues that this
can be accomplished by looking at both the formation of “good” and the “bad”
knowledge considering both the lab, as the strong programme suggested, and
as Harding adds the social context because cultural beliefs are swept up into
scientific processes and knowledges.26 One of the main ideas of standpoint
theory is that politically and socially marginalized people have epistemic
privilege because—and drawing on Marx—they have an “outsider’s” position,
a different way of engaging knowledge.27
In 1987, in her essay, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in
Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” Haraway engages the
things that she likes from Harding’s strong objectivity, and suggests other
avenues of thinking in regards to the elements that she finds problematic.
What is problematic for Haraway is Harding’s perpetuation of identity politics.
While Haraway wants to bring out the positionings of dominated and
marginalized viewpoints, she does not want to perpetuate the self-other
dichotomy that is a part of identity politics. As a starting point, Haraway
suggests addressing vision, something that is built into the framework of
24
Haraway, Modest, 234.
25
Harding 141.
26
Ibid. 149.
27
Harding 124.
Stephenson 71
modern science and is thought of in a way that encourages a binary
relationship in which a (male) seer/gazer/knower looks at separate things
around him and has the potentiality of “infinite vision.”28
By fastening a new framework of vision, Haraway hopes to reclaim the
sense in order to “find our way though all the visualizing tricks and powers of
modern science and technologies that have transformed the objectivity
debates.”
29
Her suggestion for a new visual metaphor in “Situated
Knowledges” is one of partial perspectives. Partial perspective is an
alternative for the all seeing knowledge maker and the totalizing relativist
because it fosters a “practice of objectivity which privileges contestation,
deconstruction, passionate construction, webbed connections and hope for
transformation of systems of knowledge and ways of seeing.”30
In the last two paragraphs, I have outlined some of the useful elements
that have come out of Haraway’s dialog with other theorists: her contesting
the self-other framework of identity politics, her negotiation of a epistemology
that is neither relativist nor objective in the traditional modern science sense
of the word, and her reappropriation of vision as a metaphor for making
knowledge. Despite these very important suggestions, there are some
troubling aspects to the essay as well.
Kirsten Campbell argues that Haraway’s situated knowledges is
problematic for three reasons. The first is that a tension arises because
Haraway does not distinguish between the standpoint of the feminist knower
and the standpoint of the subjugated positions of women. 31 The second
problem is that while Haraway argues that people are oppressed, she doesn’t
offer an account of the sociality that produces these subjugated positions,
thus making an essentialist account of the subjugated. 32 And finally, she
assumes that subjugated knowledge posses particular knowledge that is
28
Haraway, Situated, 189.
29
Ibid.
30
Ibid. 191.
31
Campbell 171.
32
Ibid. 172.
Stephenson 72
“more truthful” than the knowledge that is derived from positions of
domination, permitting feminist science studies, “ to provided a more accurate
and critical account for science.”33
While all of these elements are problematic, the most detrimental to the
project is Haraway’s assumption that while subjugated positions are not
exempt from deconstruction and decoding they are, “preferred because they
seem to promise more adequate, sustained, objective, transforming accounts
of the world.”34 Despite these conceptual struggles, this essay and the visual
metaphor according to Allessandra Tanesini, functions as a transitional paper
in which Haraway frees herself from the representational idiom of science
studies reflexivity.35 Haraway then develops a visual metaphor that serves as
one of the most accepted frameworks in creating knowledge in feminist
technoscientific theory today: diffraction.
Diffraction
Haraway first introduces her metaphor of diffraction in her 1992 essay, “The
Promises of Monsters: a Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others.”
This visual metaphor functions as a step away from the representational idiom
to the performative idiom. Diffraction is a physical phenomenon that occurs
when light passes through a prism. When light passes through it creates
difference patterns where the rays disperse into various directions and move
elsewhere.36 Haraway explains that this optical metaphor is useful for making
knowledge because,
Diffraction does not produce “the same” displaced, as reflection and
refraction do. Diffraction is a mapping of interference, not of replication,
reflection, or reproduction. A diffraction pattern does not map where
differences appear, but rather maps where the effects of differences
appear.
33
Ibid. 172.
34
Haraway, Situated, 190.
35
Tanesini 180.
36
Schneider 19.
Stephenson 73
Diffraction, then, fulfills her intentions of promoting partial and
differential perspectives, yet avoids promoting one viewpoint as more
objective as another. My intention is to point out what diffraction as a visual
metaphor for critical knowledge does, how diffraction as a visual metaphor is
carried out, how it is useful for cultural analysis, and finally how I use it.
Diffraction as an optical metaphor does a number of things when it
comes to approaching making knowledge. First of all, the temporal patterns
that are given off when light passes through a prism refers to the différantial
relations between words and the things they signify in that they are both fluid
and they are separations enacted from within.37 This means that things in the
world resist a totalizing taxonomy, and positions like subject and object are
enacted. This is important because other agents are recognized as having the
capacity to do things, and these agents are not just human. 38 Because
positions are enacted, and not pre-existing, diffraction avoids identity politics,
and departs from Haraway’s hang up from the visual metaphor of partial
perspective.
Although there is not a “more truthful” difference pattern made in
diffraction, there is a politically driven choice in the patterns one follows. In the
practice of mapping these interferences, theorists have a responsibility in how
the world is made, and Haraway argues that we should follow the ones that
bring us to new places. Since Haraway argues that diffraction is about
mapping the effects of where differences appear, she is promoting a way of
thinking that disrupts linearity and fixed causality. Diffraction, argues Barad, is
also about transgressing disciplinary boundaries and theoretical schools to
get to new places.
Diffraction as a Reading Practice
Diffraction has been experimented with by a number of theorists as a
methodology. The visual metaphor has had a tremendous effect not just on
the writing practices of authors (who move away from a representational
idiom), but also in reading practices. According to Barad, diffraction as a
37
Clough, 162
38
Ibid., 162
Stephenson 74
reading practice is supposed to “record the history of interaction, interference,
reinforcement, difference. Diffraction is about heterogeneous history, not
about originals.”39 One thing that is important about diffraction as a reading
strategy is to read various texts through one another. This “reading through”
allows a reworking of concepts that appear attached to a particular tradition of
thought.40 Iris van der Tuin argues that diffraction can be a strategy for new
concepts, traditions and philosophies.41 Diffraction, as a metaphor itself, does
this. Originally used in classical physics, it is utilized in a way that is beneficial
for feminist technoscientific theorists. A diffractive reading practice for Barad
requires one to read attentively and carefully in order to get the fine details.42
In addition, a diffractive reading strategy involves realizing the ethics of one’s
analysis because an author is always entangled within it. For Haraway a
diffractive reading practice is about having different reading skills that
intersect diffractively in a way that interrupts one another productively.43
One of the strategies that I wanted to try to see just how diffractive my
thesis could be is to find a concept that would lead me to various authors
because it was either under theorized, or the word had multiple meanings.
Since I was interested in the movements that immaterial laborers make I first
searched for a quote or reference to the movements of immaterial labor that
shocked, surprised, or inspired me. I found this in Haraway’s quote, the focal
quote of this thesis, “our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves
frighteningly inert.”
Upon my first reading of Haraway’s quote I was shocked. I could not
believe that she would attach negative feeling to the world unfolding so easily.
She is not the type to be utopic or dystopic when it comes to things emerging
as practices or material-semiotic things. I was then surprised to see the
various ways of I could interpret the sentence. After reading some interviews
39
van der Tuin and Rick Dolphijn, Forthcoming, 140.
40
van der Tuin, “Diffractively,” 27.
41
ibid. 27.
42
van der Tuin and Rick Dolphijn, Forthcoming, 139.
43
Schneider 149.
Stephenson 75
about this very quote, I became inspired to follow at least two flightlines, and
see if it was a starting point that would be fruitful to investigate the way
narratives frame immaterial labor practices. I thought it would be a useful
place to begin because Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto has had a significant
influence on collective attitudes towards technologies in the late twentieth
century.
In addition, I read texts anachronistically to see what elements of great
thinkers resonated with these objects, and with the concept of disturbing.
Although it seemed a little risky to take writings of a particular tradition and
intermingle them with objects of popular culture, Marxian authors of labor, and
psychoanalysts, the connections that came through were something that
could not be found if I stuck to one discipline, to one tradition.
One example of this in my thesis is my rereading of Jentsch with
Massumi’s writing in mind. When Jentsch wrote his article, “On the
Psychology of the Uncanny,” he noticed a certain oddity, a particular feeling
that he had when observing an epileptic patient have a seisure. To look
closely at this feeling he used the knowledge, theoretical frameworks, and
research capacities that he had available at the time. When I read his work
over a century later, and infused it with writings from another author who is
also curious about movements yet differs in context, genealogy, and
disciplines, a new and exciting explanation emerged through the connections
that I could draw between Jentsch and Massumi. For me, this was incredibly
productive because it is avoids discrediting ideas that are flawed in some
ways, and looks for more ways of seeing, and more knowledge.
Diffraction as a Writing Practice
That being said, a diffractive reading practice quickly becomes a
diffractive writing practice. Haraway’s writing adds another element to a
diffractive methodology, and that is by writing in a way that is partially
understood, critically positioned, critically visioned, power sensitive, not
pluralistic, vulnerable, and resists fixation.44 Haraway is able to do this in her
writing by using metaphors, figures, and ironies, which complexify and resist
44
Haraway, Simians, 195.
Stephenson 76
meaning in a way that fosters more diffractive readings. Haraway explains
why she uses these literary devices in her work in an interview with Nina
Lykke, Randi Markussen, and Finn Olesen,
I like layered meanings, and I like to write a sentence in such a way
that—by the time you get to the end of it—it has some level questioned
itself. There are some ways of blocking the closure of a sentence, or of
a whole piece, so that it becomes hard to fix its meanings. I like that,
and I am committed politically and epistemologically to stylistic work
that makes it relatively harder to fix the bottom line.”45
Diffraction as a writing practice is something much more difficult for me to
negotiate in my research. Although I am inspired by the way many authors
have experimented with literary language in their scientific writings, when I
write I attempt to convey my experiences in a way that does not stump my
audience. Part of this could be partially from the fact that I see myself as a
writer who needs more experience, and the other could be my commitment to
a non-academic audience being able to read my writing.
Despite these complications in diffractive writing, I do make one
attempt to write in a way that sends readers in different directions to read my
writing. I do this by writing with a metaphor, syncopation. By drawing on a
musical term I try and convey movements of immaterial labor with rhythm.
Syncopation is something that even varies in music, and when the reader of
my researcher comes across this term I hope that they think of immaterial
labor, my concept disturbing, and the objects that I analyze in a different way.
By writing in a way that resists meaning, Haraway avoids the fixation
that is at the goal of scientific knowledge making. Her writing requires readers
to use multiple literacies and read her text in different ways. I will now explain
how diffraction is a useful visual metaphor for doing cultural analysis.
Diffraction for Cultural Analysis
The next question I wanted to address with the concept of diffraction in
mind is in what ways is it useful in doing cultural analysis. Cultural analysis is
described by Mieke Bal, the founder of the Amsterdam School of Cultural
45
Lykke 333.
Stephenson 77
Analysis (ASCA), as a critical practice that can be summarized as “cultural
memory in the present.”46 Bal explains in her introduction to the book she
edited The Practice of Cultural Analysis, that there are three issues at the
core of cultural analysis, namely the standpoint in the present and subsequent
relationship to history, close reading, and methodological self-reflection.47 The
first core issue, the standpoint of the present and subsequent relationship to
history, is a way of reconfiguring time in a way that is not linear, but rather
collapses linearity. The call for close reading is similar to Barad’s argument for
the care and attention one should use when reading diffractively. Before I
move onto the last core issue of cultural analysis, (self) reflection, I want to
first mention the way cultural analysis is suggested to be done because it has
had a major influence over how I read and write in addition to how the master
degree of cultural analysis is shaped. In the preface for her reader, Bal writes,
The shift in methodology I am arguing for here is founded on a
particular relationship between subject and object, one that is not
predicated on a vertical and binary opposition between the two. Instead
the model for this relationship is interaction, as in “interactivity.” This is
because of this potential interactivity—not because of an obsession
with “proper” usage—that every academic field, but especially one like
the humanities that has so little in the way of binding traditions, can
gain from taking concepts seriously.48
Here Bal is confirming a performative model of making knowledge, one
where an object and concept—as chosen by an author—are read through one
another to craft something new. Particularly, when approaching concepts, Bal
argues that they are not fixed, that they travel “between disciplines, between
individual scholars, between historical periods and between geographically
dispersed academic communities,” and through their movement their
“meaning, reach and operational value differ.”49 Although Barad and Haraway
46
Bal, Practice, 1.
47
Ibid.13.
48
Bal, Reader, xxiii.
49
ibid.
Stephenson 78
might be cautious in using words such as between and interaction because
they constitute a relationship of things that already exist before the relation,
Bal’s interdisciplinary call to use concepts of various discipline’s origins to
critique any cultural object or artifact allows a diffractive reading and writing to
come through. From this juncture, there are only three red flags that I want to
address. The first is the interest in cultural artifacts. Why is it necessary to
distinguish cultural analysis’s object as a cultural artifact? Does this
designation perpetuate an artificial nature-culture boundary that isn’t useful in
the first place, or by calling the object cultural does it function as a locative
tactic by which we know we can find the cultural analysis students in the
department of the humanities?
The second element that I want to address is the designation between
the object and concept. Concepts for Bal are not fixed, they change based
upon the dialog that they have with objects. Objects, which Bal argues should
be seen as cultural processes rather than stagnate objects, are things that
according to Bal “speak back.”50 Bal writes,
Even though, obviously, objects cannot speak, they can be treated with
enough respect for their irreducible complexity and unyielding
muteness—but not a mystery—to allow them to check the thrust of
interpretation, and to divert and complicate it…Thus, the objects we
analyse enrich both interpretation and theory. This is how theory can
change from a ridged matter discourse into a live cultural object in its
own right.51
In this quote Bal points out how it’s difficult to differentiate the
difference between objects and concepts because they shape and become
one another. In addition she suggests a type of agency in which material
artifacts have an influence on discourse, bringing nonhuman actants to the
scene.
The last element that I want to address is the notion of (self) reflection.
In a conference in Copenhagen called Feminist Materialisms, Barad noted
50
Bal, Traveling, 44, and Bal, Reader, xxiii
51
Bal, Traveling, 45
Stephenson 79
that reflection and refraction are elements that are part of diffraction. The selfreflection that cultural analysts do seems to be useful in that they consider in
what ways their project of analyzing certain objects with certain concepts are
useful. Of course I would argue that this is not a way to be more objective, it is
inherent in cultural analysis to always be looking for better ways of doing
things, and (self) reflection is one way that people can do this.
Diffraction: A Useful Practice?
Diffraction for a student, reader, writer, or academic who does not quite
fit in to any one discipline is a way of having guidelines that allows
exploration. It is a facilitating practice rather than one of closed doors.
Diffraction for a student, reader, writer, or academic from a feminist
background, who sees the importance of engaging with knowledge and
viewpoints that are different than any hegemonic system of thought, by giving
voices to those who engage in other ways of thinking, makes this practice
politically crucial. By taking up this methodology, I was able to carry out my
ambitions to think about movements, something generally saved for the
kinesthesiologist, and write about it from a perspective that looks to narratives
to frame this knowledge. The knowledge that I produced is not an attempt to
be more accurate than what a kinesthesiologist could come up with, but it is
just different. Diffraction encourages this type of knowledge making; one that
does not save particular objects, theories, or traditions for any one discipline,
and in doing so opens up routes where innovative knowledge can be made.
Diffraction as a methodology has opened up a possibility to explore my
curiosity, and in doing so has shown some elements of immaterial labor that
may have been missed in other research. That being said, it is only a small
portion of what narratives have to say about the movements of immaterial
labor because it is limited in that it is only a case study of two narratives, but
adheres to the non-totalizing difference patterns that diffraction propagates.
Based upon my curiosities and the knowledge I wanted to make, diffraction is
a useful visual metaphor as a methodology that is still being shaped by many
authors today.
Stephenson 80 The Materiality of Immaterial Labor
As I sit and write the closing portion of this thesis, my legs and arms
are throbbing in pain. It is the night before my deadline, and there is still much
to do. I push on. I have chosen for no silhouetted woman to interrupt my
typing, and the breaks I take are becoming fewer and fewer. It is at this point
that I want to confess that in the introduction I was not completely honest with
you. I do know some of the bodily consequences attached to immaterial labor,
but I only know them from my experiences in studying. During the last thesis
that I wrote, I lost sight in one eye that took a month to recover, and today I
write with sharp pins shooting through my wrists. Nonetheless the deadline
remains the same, and attached to missing the deadline is a hefty “fine” of
paying an extra month of tuition.
After a paragraph like that, it may seem like the way I approach
immaterial labor is that it is some big demon that we need to fight off, but in
fact industrial labor practices have large demons looming over them too. In
addition, this type of labor is something that many have been fighting for.
Joost de Bloois stated in a lecture at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam that
Precario bello was in fact coined as an emancipatory notion: precarity
was seen as a means of emancipating oneself from the sheer boredom
of a working life; being precarious meant that you would no longer be
working for the same boss for the rest of your life, but that you could
chose to work for a couple of months, than travel for a bit or look
elsewhere for a job.1
What de Bloois shows is that with every sort of labor practice has a catch
along side it. The factory demanded physical labor, from 9-5, in the same
building everyday, with a very structured pay scale, with time off, and the
same boss. The freelance worker, on the other hand, takes the jobs she
pleases, works the hours she pleases, and has more autonomy. With this
autonomy comes what de Bloois calls “an uncertainty of livelihood,
vulnerability (both financial and emotional).”
Precarity requires workers to constantly prove that they are productive.
In a time of economic downturn with austerity measures in play, this can
Stephenson 81 mean working grueling hours for little or no money. These taxing hours, as I
have shown, can have an impact on the health and well being of immaterial
laborers that I can only imagine as getting worse as unemployment benefits
decline and the age of retirement increases.
This thesis is an attempt to bring to attention that although the way
many experience work today is different (that is if a worker is within the
informational paradigm), and seems to be attached to minimal bodily
consequences, there are indeed still bodily consequences of doing immaterial
labor. The concept immaterial labor itself seems to state otherwise, but this
was one of the intentions of writing this thesis, to highlight the material, the
bodily consequences of immaterial labor.
I have gone through a diffractive path to show that immaterial labor can
be conveyed as frightening and comedic. When portrayed as comedic it is a
critique in how we use computers. I have shown that computers have
provided new ways to tell narratives, and have instigated a new kind of
subjectivity. I have shown that who monitors bodily movements in the
informational paradigm has shifted from overseer watching bodies to
computers that analyze our data double, and finally I argued the force of
immaterial labor is syncopation.
Thinking about immaterial labor as syncopation is absolutely crucial for
those of us in the hiring pool to remember. This is absolutely crucial for
members of government who determine the social safety nets and labor laws
to take into consideration. We do not have an economy based upon the
equilibrium force of the industrial paradigm, and consequently we need to be
prepared for giving our bodies the interruptions and disturbances they need.2
1
de Bloois
2
Deleuze 3. Stephenson 82
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