Memo+2+–+Neuroses+and+such+–+LM+Bachinger


 * • Do you have more trouble articulating your frame (social theoretical questions) or object? **

- I am a hybrid; I am aware of potential framings and literate on theoretical framworks that can contribute to my question, but once articulated I very often get stuck on a more empirical descriptive level à I sometimes find it hard to make the final analytical step: theory à empirical work à immediate application of the theory to the case and its empirical material - à |STUCK HERE| à feedback into theoretical body A lot of that has to do with time, I guess: Time runs out before I can fully develop my last step. But I am getting better on that more recently


 * • Do you tend to project-hop or to stick to a project, and what explains this? **

I think I tend to project hop here, but retrospectively I think there is a grand theme to my work that I can’t quite put my finger on yet. In all my works and interests and projects there is a shared commonality of larger theoretical interest and I think one major part of my current troubles in my work is that I am getting closer and closer to identifying this tacit grand theme behind my work.

Care is what I call it right now, but in a different conception to its initial everyday understanding, which is why I am currently trying to figure out a better terminology to describe this. This is also reflected in my actual project hopping assignment, I guess: I am looking for this one case that allows me finally carving out what I am actually after; And as this is not yet explicit it is tremendously hard. Shared, recurrent themes are Public Engagement in its broader meaning (which is why generative justice this term will be a valuable contribution to figuring out what I am after); risk, normalcy, danger, inclusion, societal coherence are grand themes that lurk around the next corner from there – and in this connection more recently disaster and crisis in a broader conception (why the independent study is so crucial – and as I am only at the beginning there, a project that takes this into account is missing from my project hopping template); politics of technology (a lot along the lines of Langdon’s work) in connection also to power, knowledge (Foucault, a little of ANT etc.) and are in immediate neighborhood to this, again, and also the whole work on stigmas, deviation (Goffman) and then also health and medicine (circling back to care, taking Goffman, Foucault and Langdon with me). This seems like a whole convoluted mess, obviously, but it is this sense that my current understanding and conceptualization of care represents a shared tacit grand theme that connects all of these domains in a very very specific way, that I still need to figure out. And which is why I am constantly project hopping.


 * • 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 what I have said so far is the answer to this question: It is this strange hybrid of this noise that wants to insert itself as meaningful, but I cant quite figure out where this noise is coming from and what it means. Still always staying too close by my actual object – and thus also hopping around. And I can’t find a way to tune up the noise. Or rather: There is so much noise that I can’t make out its sound. And thus jump from object to object, in the hopes that, if I just change my position, I finally will get better acoustics for what the noise is telling me – becoming sound.


 * • What do you do with unusual or counter examples? Are you drawn to “the deviant,” or rather repulsed by it? **

Sometimes: ignore it. I don’t have too much of problems with them most of the time, as I foreground my example and sometimes treat my empirical material more as representation, as something to get across my argument. Sometimes I don’t even see the counter example. And then, again, at other times, it makes me through everything I had so far out of the window – bc wow! How interesting is this new thing, how different all to all that I encountered so far!


 * • Do you tend to over-impose logics on the world, or to resist the construction of coherent narratives? **

More the former, I guess. I am actually not sure! Sometimes I play with it. Constructing a narrative for illustrative, cleaned up means, while remaining reflexive of it, understanding it as a tool to present one potential iteration of interpretation amongst many. I tend to leave it to my reader, to sort things out.


 * • Do you tend to over-generalize, or to hold back from overarching argument? **

I think I explained already what happens with me and my overarching arguments: not accomplishing the final step. In a bad way – yes, I avoid being essentialist through that (although there is a strong presence of left ideology I can’t free myself from entirely) – but this is not a reflexive choice but more a matter of running out of time, as I get lost in the empirical details, in the many ideas that emerge from it and that I could follow up on, to take the final step back and re-integrate it in a larger theoretical body.


 * • Do you like to read interpretations different than your own, or do you tend to feel scooped or intimidated by them? **

I love different interpretations! They are inspiring. But also dangerous, as they more then often also tend to hijack my brain, take it captive, and force me to a d-tour for quite a while: Oh, what wonderful world is lurking behind this new corner! I have to go there! I have to explore! Goodbye old domains! Ill be back, but not for the next couple of weeks!


 * • Do you tend to change an argument as you flesh it out, or do you tend to make the argument work, no matter what? **

Writing is a material process of thinking for me. As I go along, I explore, experiment. Everything shifts. Looking back at my thesis’ different versions, for this exercise, I realized how things shifted and changed. So the former.

I actually thought about a new modus of writing and publishing last term. An iteration of a wiki as the home-page of the scholar. So say, it is my homepage on me as an academic: I would have a front-page of all my writing and work compiled into one grand text. And then you can go back in time to re-trace the edits and iterations, additions, things that got deleted, shifted around, etc. You would not run into the problems of iteration of introductions or state of the art for papers on similar topics, bc all of it would compile in this major body of literature. And for concepts you would have similar-to-annotations sub pages containing summaries, notes, and interpretations that you can link to in your main body of writing. And you can include further pages on side-projects, or new thoughts and writings that are only emerging – and can get eventually integrated in the front-page with your main body of your writing. This would add time as an element of your writing, producing knowledge, and add a layer of self-reflexivity and explicate your process of learning and doing, including failures and their valuation.

Oh my, how did I get so side-trapped?


 * • 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? **

I am constantly working metaphorically and in associations (See all of what you have experienced in reading this memo so far)


 * • 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.”) **

This was indeed a fun exercise! And the hijacking of the questions was fun even more so!