Abstract
How should we understand postphenomenological methodology? Postphenomenology is a research perspective which builds on phenomenological and pragmatist philosophy to explore human–technology relations, but one with open methodological questions. Here, I offer some thoughts on the epistemological processes that should be (and often implicitly may be) at work in this research. In particular, I am concerned with postphenomenological research on technological “multistability,” i.e., a device’s ever-present capacity to be used for a variety of purposes, and to always be meaningful in multiple ways. I develop a methodology called “variational cross-examination,” which entails the critical contrast of a device’s various stabilities. As a set of instructive examples, I draw on my own line of research on the politics of public spaces, and especially the critique of anti-homeless design.
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Notes
My self-citation in the References section of this article is already more than self-indulgent. For references to the cases referred to in this paragraph, see: https://rosenberger.spp.gatech.edu/publications/.
Elsewhere I have articulated this point in terms of a distinction between a “positive” and “negative” usage of multistability (e.g., Rosenberger 2010, 2017b). The idea is that the notion of multistability is used “negatively” when wielded as part of an effort to show that some other theory does not recognize the fundamental pragmatic relationality of technology, and thus that that other theory is somehow essentializing, or foundational, or over-generalizing. The notion of multistability is taken up in a “positive” manner when it is used as part of an investigation into the world, spelling out and exploring something’s multiplicity and the implications of that multiplicity. Whyte develops a related set of distinctions in (2015).
These issues become complicated quite quickly when we address complex technologies with enclosed interiors, such as digital devices. Scholars in the philosophy of technology such as Heather Wiltse, Alberto Romele, Yoni Van Den Eede, and others are bringing together a variety of perspectives (including but not limited to postphenomenology) to address these challenges (e.g., Wiltse 2014; Van Den Eede 2017; Romele 2020; Romele et al. 2020; Wiltse 2020).
Several examples designs and art projects that critique anti-homeless design can be found in (Rosenberger 2017a: chap. 5).
For a more fully-developed version of the argument of this subsection, see Rosenberger 2017b.
I first identified the distinction between an “axis of usage” and an “axis of difference” within work in the philosophy of technology on the topic of discrimination in Rosenberger (2020a). For more on what I’ve been calling an “axis of difference” pattern of discrimination that happens through technology, I’d like to direct you to the work of Dylan Wittkower. It is my opinion that his writings on the phenomenology of discrimination and technology should find their way into everyone’s philosophy of technology syllabi (Wittkower 2016, 2017).
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Rosenberger, R. On variational cross-examination: a method for postphenomenological multistability. AI & Soc 38, 2229–2242 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-01050-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-01050-7