Reflexivity

The idea of creating a frictional space for contradiction and discourse is brilliant, with its mechanical references of steel rubbing steel in motors, creating heat! The heat we create is debate, but how do we create a forum, perhaps a mechanised one, that creates heat without the fire?

I have been reading a bit about ‘situational analysis’ at the moment, the sociological methodological practise that attempts to take into account the ‘postmodern turn’. It uses cartographical approaches to solve some of the issues of complexity.

1. situational maps that lay out the major human, nonhuman, discursive and other elements in the research situation of inquiry and provoke analysis of relations among them;
2. social worlds/arenas maps that lay out the collective actors, key nonhuman elements, and the arena(s) of commitment and discourse within which they are engaged in ongoing negotiations---mesolevel interpretations of the situation; and
3. positional maps that lay out the major positions taken, and not taken, in the data vis-à-vis particular axes of difference, concern, and controversy around issues in the situation of inquiry.

...[The] maps center on the ‘situation’ of inquiry. The situation per se becomes the ultimate unit of analysis and understanding its elements and their relations are the primary goals...It's an on going analysis where enquiry is seen to also have an affect that must be taken into the picture.

Adele E. Clarke’s SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS: GROUNDED THEORY AFTER THE POSTMODERN TURN
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005).


These mapping techniques, although quite dry and to us designers quite naive perhaps, do look at interesting ways of reflexive analysis. This is something that as designers I have always felt we do not do enough of- looking back at ourselves, our practises, our processes, our outcomes and the decisions/beliefs/ethics that drive us. Does this ‘space of contradiction’ , this ‘forum of friction’ exist within practises that enable better reflexive analysis?

Latour below talks about the practise of looking deeper into the situations in which we practise, what i like about this quote in particular is the element of having to look with others. This I believe could be at the heart of the significance of creating an machine in which groups of people can debate and through this process create manifestos that test their own design practises.

In opening the black box of scientific facts, we knew we would be opening
Pandora’s box. There was no way to avoid it. . . . Now that it has been opened, with plagues and curses, sins and ills whirling around, there is only one thing to do, and that is to go even deeper, all the way down into the almost empty box, in order to retrieve what, according to the venerable legend, has been left at the bottom—yes, hope. It is much too deep for me on my own; are you willing to help me reach it? May I give you a hand? (Latour)