Turning a Traffic Light into an Epistemological Device: An ANT Proposal to Disassemble and Stabilize Urban Life into Regions of Usefulness. (2nd November 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Orrego, Santiago
• Is Part Of: Social epistemology. Volume 36:Number 6(2022)
• Page Start: 748
• Page End: 758
• Publication Date: 2022-11-02
• Subjects: Inventive methods -- urban studies -- empirical philosophy -- Actor-Network Theory; Social epistemology -- Periodicals; 121
• DOI: 10.1080/02691728.2022.2040638
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0269-1728

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Mixing Actor-Network Theory, empirical philosophy, and Heidegger's notion of usability, this paper discusses a methodological strategy for approaching and temporarily stabilizing urban life based on an experimental epistemological exercise of decomposing a traffic light in Times Square, New York City, into its practices and relations. This strategy conceives of urban elements and formations as multiplicities of multiple and simultaneous practices and materials ( useful things ) and pays particular attention to the effervescences and heterogeneous associations they embody and enact. As a contribution to the social approach of knowledge production, this essay explores the creation of concepts using any aspects and components taken from outside, unpacking them as analytical instruments and partial results of multimodal ethnographic practices. In a more concrete scenario, Region of usefulness, a sort of qualitative multiplicity, is proposed here as an unfinished epistemological tool for empirically grasping and representing urban life. It is unfinished since it has to be constantly reconstructed and resignified in relation to other elements and, at the same time, it has to be designed and assembled by following and translating those mixed associations composing urban life, using its modes and affordances as analytical resources for producing objective knowledge, that is, limited, embodied, and temporal.