Costelloe-KuehnCommentMemo31-34Anna

Exemplary Texts
 * I, of course, love "revolutionary books," and would love to hear what you think makes Harvey's book "revolutionary." I just read Deleuze & Gutattari's book on Kafka where they talk about "minor literature" as a strategy to convert hegemonies into the dominant language and disassemble them. I have yet to look at Lukacs on the "revolutionary novel," but Kim recommended checking it out. But maybe by "revolutionary" you meant something more along the lines of a description of a paradigm shift?
 * 1) You want your book to work at multiple scales, describing the institutions and the people. Does "multi-sited ethnography" help you do this? How about "institutional ethnography" (talk to Nancy).
 * 2) I wonder if "boundary objects" and "boundary subjects" work in a similar way as Derrida's "undecidables." As I understand it, undecidables are difficult to fit into dualisms and so can help blow them apart. Example from your memo: are genetic toxicologists scientists or activists? Maybe they unsettle traditional notions of what both "science" and "activism" does?
 * 3) While environmentalism may have largely shifted from a "fighting movement" to a "compromising" one, i would just keep in mind that there are still people and groups that are "fighting" in more contentious, "radical," ways. Like Hess writes, organic food has been "incorporated and transformed" by the mainstream, but there is still a progressive edge in organic food that maintains the focus on local produce, etc. To me "progressive" signals an "ethics of infinite struggle," or something like that, and is always pushing for more just and democratic means and ends.

Chapter Summaries:
 * 1) i like the "allotrope" trope, metaphor.
 * 2) " The introduction will contain my main argument and how theoretically I am going to support it, which theoretical school I am going to follow, and a summary of what is going to follow later in this book."
 * 3) sounds good. i would just encourage you to articulate these elements more specifically for your book here. what is //your// main argument, etc.

Book Cover:
 * 1) Nice. It's interesting that you chose to put a science-fictional, visual representation of (medical?) "nanotechnology," the artifact, in the context of the (human?) body, at the molecular level. It signals a certain scalar focus, perhaps? that's my reading of the cover as it "speaks for itself."

Similar/Different Books:
 * 1) You should talk to ron about "participation." When I was writing my paper on "articulating participation and diversity" he helped me unsettle my goals a bit by looking at the problems with participation.