Andrew Goffey

Digital Infrastructures and the Machinery of Topological Abstraction

Drawing on contemporary pragmatic philosophy and grounded in a reading of techniques associated with digital media as sophist practices of influence and manipulation, this paper proposes an ‘experimental’ reading of key aspects of the topological qualities of the infrastructure of the knowledge economy, with its obsessive attempts at measuring, recording and monitoring, or ‘qualculation’. Taking seriously, albeit with humour, early criticisms of actor-network for its ostensibly Machiavellian proclivities, it offers a series of playful stratagems for the exploration and analysis of power as an emergent property of socio-technical relations. Topology, in this account, becomes relevant to cultural analysis because of the way that it allows us to think together processes constructive of the intensive continua of ‘desiring production’ with the sociotechnical operations of digital media infrastructures. Different elements operative within digital media (the super-hub, the power of small numbers, recursion and relational databases) are read stratagematically – as figures of a praxis (the material practice of immaterial labour), that reveals different facets of the operations of power, while also allowing for counter-tactics to be deployed. Rather than proposing a theoretical account or an empirical analysis, the paper develops what Stengers (2011) calls ‘operative constructs’, which become ingredients for further active exploration of and thinking about the topological qualities of mediatic infrastructure. The paper addresses four different and overlapping areas of digital media from a point of view that considers the plural, compositional quality of media/power relations.

Introduction to Guattari on Trandisciplinarity

Written roughly a year before the end of his life, Guattari’s ‘The Ethico-Political Foundations of Interdisciplinarity’ elaborates an account of transdisciplinary research processes closely informed by his conception of transversality. Tacitly critiquing institutions of research that separate it from the political practices associated with the reinvention of democracy, the paper explores in particular the possibilities of conducting transversal research into urban life, and speculates on the value of information technology.

Homo immunologicus: on the limits of critique

Through a discussion of a range of research drawn from the humanities and social sciences, and with a particular emphasis on work that tackles questions about the discourse of the life sciences, this paper considers some of the difficulties with research that aims to offer a critical analysis of immunology and its relationship to culture. It considers in particular arguments made on behalf of a biopolitical reading of the life sciences and, by examining the uncertain shift between discursive analysis and philosophical claim, it seeks to address some of the underlying assumptions made about the relations between different kinds of knowledge practice in the interplay between life science, philosophy and culture. Drawing on the work of Belgian philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers to consider the ways in which critical and philosophical appraisals of immunology adopt a characteristically modern stance in the way that they address the life sciences, it further seeks to characterise some of the limits that such forms of critique display.

Politics, Policy and Privatisation in the Everyday Experience of Big Data in the NHS

Abstract Purpose This chapter explains how fundamental organisational change in the UK National Health Service (NHS) is being effected by new practices of digitised information gathering and use. It analyses the taken-for-granted IT infrastructures that lie behind digitisation and considers the relationship between digitisation and big data. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative research methods including discourse analysis, ethnography of software and key informant interviews were used. Actor-network theories, as developed by Science and technology Studies (STS) researchers were used to inform the research questions, data gathering and analysis. The chapter focuses on the aftermath of legislation to change the organisation of the NHS. Findings The chapter shows the benefits of qualitative research into specific manifestations information technology. It explains how apparently ‘objective’ and ‘neutral’ quantitative data gathering and analysis is mediated by complex software practices. It considers the political power of claims that data is neutral. Originality/value The chapter provides insight into a specific case of healthcare data and. It makes explicit the role of politics and the State in digitisation and shows how STS approaches can be used to understand political and technological practice.

The promises of creative industry higher education: an analysis of university prospectuses in Malaysia

In the context of economic growth policies that stress the importance of a ‘creative economy’, and the expansion of private universities, there has been an enormous growth in the number of creative industry degrees offered by Malaysian HEIs. This paper provides a critical discourse analysis of the promotional materials used by two private institutions, Multimedia University and Limkokwing University, to persuade students that these degrees will offer them a desirable future as employable ‘industry savvy and tech savvy’ creative graduates. We explore the structures of feeling that promotional material seeks to engender in potential students as it promises them future success in a globalised, high-tech world.

Heterogenesis and the problems of metaphysics.

Theodor Adorno’s verdict on the relationship between empiricism and metaphysics would perhaps have met with Gilles Deleuze’s guarded approval. Chance, for Deleuze, was the sole form of necessity; the empiricist search for the conditions of the new involved a counter-effectuation of the accidents of experience; and events defied the strict modal distinction between possible, impossible and necessary. That the link between empiricism and metaphysics was exemplified for Adorno in the concept of openness might also have met with Deleuze’s approval, for openness, according to Adorno, is philosophy thinking beyond itself.