Sketch 6 _ response to Gabriel Grill's post _ Meredith Sattler
Gabriel, your post inspires me to consider ways of thinking through your 'real time' mapping example, utilizing Latour's Inscriptions [definitely old school...but I think there's territory here to be further developed, particularly as it relates to mapping]. Perhaps, combined with his related concepts of Centers of Calculation, Cycles of Accumulation, and Inscription Devices, particularly as they interface with postcolonial studies. Thinking here [of course] of abstraction through scalar shift and decontextualization, which are necessary components of mapping. Your 'real time' example brings temporal accuracy into the mix as well. Additionally, many issues surrounding identification, classification, and ultimately power.
I'm curious how widely accessible the image/database/interface is that you show; is it just for the company factories identified on the map, or do others also hae access, such as government, labor unions, general publics? The intended and unintended audiences seem critical here to understanding how the image might be interpreted and used [recontextualized, in a sense].
Perhaps this idea of specific audience 'recontextualization' could be productive? In a sense, it reverses Latour's process of generation of a scientific fact through inscription production, which strips the object of its context, while simultaneously targeting a very specific audience who will likely read the inscription[s] in very consistent ways, through highly codified epistemologies and ontologies. In other words, it might reverse/complicate the reductionist exercise of mapping your authors performed. In your example, different audiences might perform their own diverse readings, through forms of interpretive flexibility [both through the generative technology itself, and, taking some liberties here, epistemologically, socially, etc.], possibly resulting in a multiplicity of reconsitituted contextualizations, or even contemporary versions of Autoethnographies.
I'm curious to understand more about how you're thinking about this image.
Inscriptions: Latour + Woolgar Laboratory Life,
Centers of Calculation, Accumulation, etc.: Latour Science in Action, Latour "Visualization and Cognition: Drawing things Together", Burnett Masters of All They Surveyed, Miller + Reill Visions of Empire
Interpretive Flexibility: Pinch + Bijker The Social Construction of Technological Systems
Autoethnographies: Pratt Imperial Eyes
