schaffer_habits_neuroses_tal


 * Memo 5: Habits, Neuroses, Talents**

//Do you have more trouble articulating your frame (social theoretical questions) or object?// Frame! Very much. This might be merely a result of my natural...nervousness around social theory, still being a little bit of a newcomer to some of the big debates and questions of the field.

//Do you tend to project-hop or to stick to a project, and what explains this?// I have hopped around to a bunch of different projects since I started here, and I continue to try to sample a variety of frames in which to work on my present object. When I was uncertain about an object, it felt like none of my objects of interest were of social theoretical interest (at least not for STS), whereas now that I’m uncertain about a framework I feel like my object is highly nebulous and any framework I test out doesn’t //quite get at what I think is interesting about it.//

//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 is 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 think it’s fairly safe to say that my proto-project is a little bit ground-obsessed. Dirt obsessed? Figure is hard to come by in all this dirt. So I suppose I’m paranoid? I can see a variety of different sites, actors, processes, concepts, discourses, banana peels, and bulldozers all interacting and doing related but not-quite-the-same thing, but I'm having a very rough time figuring out what it is about compost and other changes to waste systems that interests me.

//What do you do with unusual or counter examples? Are you drawn to “the deviant,” or rather repulsed by it?// Drawn to it, certainly. Counter-examples basically follow the same patterns/rules as the normal examples, but something else happens, right? So counter examples are a great way to figure out where your old models need a little more nuance, or where something needs to be explained.

//Do you tend to over-impose logics on the world, or to resist the construction of coherent narratives?// Hm. These are tricky. I certainly like narratives, but I like it when there are multiple narratives. So perhaps I over-impose logics, but I impose a bunch of different logics? Is that an option?

//Do you tend to over-generalize, or to hold back from overarching argument?// When in control, I can hold back from an overarching argument, but the temptation for generalization is //so great//.

//Do you like to read interpretations different than your own, or do you tend to feel scooped or intimidated by them?// I love it! It is really helpful for me to try to put multiple interpretations to one thing. Though in honesty, I sometimes like reading them only to get annoyed.

//Do you tend to change an argument as you flesh it out, or do you tend to make the argument work, no matter what?// I think I’m pretty good at letting an argument change as I flesh it out? I might even give up on an original framing too quickly…

//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?// Hm. I have been having a hard time getting beyond my examples to say that they “say it all,” or that they’re “kind of like” other things. Hm. But the metaphorical path is a little more appealing; that kind of thinking feels much more available to me.

//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.”)// I like trying to fit between the binaries! Bad (good?) habit from years of queer organizing…