Do you have more trouble articulating your frame (social theoretical questions) or object?
The object. Before i actually begun doing research, i always thought it would be the other way around. The problem is, the wobbly-ness of the object ends up displacing the frame. "The thing!" i wanna proclaim, and then chase & capture, however if the thing never simply "is" and only "is relational, contextual, etc." how many of those can one capture with frames; how many frames are enogh to proclaim you truly dealt with "the thing" and not "the thing in state x,y,z"? It feels like trying to catch water with a fishing net sometimes, yes the net becomes wet, but it is still empty.
Do you tend to project-hop or to stick to a project, and what explains this?
I stick to a project by hopping. Take this would-be thesis im woking on. It started with a paper on Death. "How did our relationship with death change?" was the question. I saw an ad in which a company makes a tree out of your corpse. Not fertiliser, but "a"tree. Individualism preserved post-death. got me thinking, why not add "...with thanatological technologies ?" to the question. Suddenly, Pandemic! Turns out, a lot of good people are just waiting to become martyrs for the economy(!) so the question included their demise, the frames became too small, necro was not enough, so it became necropolitics. The project was hopped, but also stuck too. Maybe the explanation lies again in the wobbly-ness of the object. I do not see this as "hopping" the project but getting a clearer view by adding more frames. To get at "more complete" knowledge, which only makes it unobtainable; as again, how many steps are enough?
Do you tend to be more interested in internal dynamics, or external determinations? In the terms laid out by Keller, do you tend to focus so intently on the object of your concern that context falls away (i.e. are you obsessive compulsive, rather than paranoid)? Is your desire to name, specify and control your object? Is your desire is for figure, its ground your annoyance? Or are you paranoid, context being your focus and obsession? All is signal. Only begrudgingly will you admit that something is noise, outside the scope of your project? Figure is hard to come by. Its ground has captured your attention.
I am definitely a paranoid as you can see by the previous answers. I may even be paraniod about my paranoia, i can swear it much easier to focus on the object before reading Fortun's "Figuring Out Ethnography". When nothing is noise but you cant make out the signal you blame your ears, not your attitude to the subject; so you go back to literature review, 5 books later, what changes is only that you cast a wider net on the water, the net is still not a bucket, you got more wet silk, but still no substantial water.
What do you do with unusual or counter examples? Are you drawn to “the deviant,” or rather repulsed by it?
I am drawn to them, drawn and quartered by them even. Only after several treasons against my intial assumption i realise where i began was left behind long ago. This should not be seen as a mistake though, not necessarily. It does however make it hard to write.
Do you tend to over-impose logics on the world, or to resist the construction of coherent narratives?
I think i wear my ideology pin proudly enough, and admitting the logics one impose is better than playing that good old god trick, no? However, just because one is reflexive enough, (or rather how does one determine one is refliexive enough?) does not mean the world they created holds better than any other. I think of my imposal of logics like trying to carve a rock with bronze tools. I apply all my force only to find my tools changed in shape by the encounter. Or perhapns this is how i trick myself.
Do you tend to over-generalize, or to hold back from overarching argument?
I live for the overarching argument, truly. One rarely gets to proclaim something so loudly in academic work without first appearing and then being proven a fool. The attempt is still mroe important than the result. If we will not say anything radical, why do all this work at all?
"My guess is that one of the main reasons anthropologists do not describe “wreckage” is for fear of being called names—not only apocalyptic, but also romantic, and, worse yet, stupid. Indeed, anthropologists who make big statements have often been wrong, and sometimes stupidly, shamefully so. None of us wants to follow in those footsteps. And yet the fear of being called stupid has stopped our discipline from saying anything at all about environmental destruction. Ironically, a discipline that prides itself on its radical stances has become one of the more conservative disciplines when it comes to ecological wellbeing. We don’t like to say anything stronger than “Everything is complicated.”" - Tsing
Do you like to read interpretations different than your own, or do you tend to feel scooped or intimidated by them?
I welcome a challenge to my readings, does not mean i wont get anxious about them. Im trying to wecome my anxiety to interpretations that differ. I act upon them; challenge them right back, not to win or anything, but to welcome what comes after the challenge. Often i find i am left with a sword that is quite different than the one i drew. I just love that feeling.
Do you tend to change an argument as you flesh it out, or do you tend to make the argument work, no matter what?
The first one, but there are lines i do not cross which could be called "virtue" perhaps.
Do you tend to think in terms of “this is kind of like” (metaphorically)? Do you hold to examples that “say it all,” leveraging metonymic thinking?
My entire education/work has been nothing but a continuation of "this is like that". I am often scared that i will never produce a single original idea, but maybe those comparisons i speak through, are original/authentic enough.
Do you like gaming understanding in this way? Does it frustrate you that your answers often don’t fit easily on either side of the binaries set up by the questions? (Jakobson suggests that over attachment to a simple binary scheme is a “continuity disorder.”)
It does frustrate me but that is the point, correct? This moving onward through frustration, and achieving betterment (in/with what?). Quite the masculine heroics, i must say. And again, on the one hand i know them to be "fake", does not stop by belief in them however; and thus it's reality, in a sense.
