“Who” is a “Topical Measuring” Postphenomenologist and How Does One Get That Way?

Abstract

Gert Goeminne’s paper is primarily concerned with “the politics of sustainable technology,” but for good reasons he does not start with this topic. He knows that technology studies as he conceives it must clear a space for itself in a philosophical atmosphere that discourages its pursuit. He therefore begins with a critique of this objectivistic and technocratically defined atmosphere, before moving on to embrace a postphenomenology of technological multistabilities, and then further to introduce what he calls (in an adaptation of Rudolf Boehm) the “topical measure” of technoscientific life. The problem I raise is not about Goeminne’s aims, with which I mostly agree, but with his presentation of how to achieve them. I argue that if one were actually to follow his advice—that is, start with critique, move on to postphenomenology, and end with “political” evaluation of technoscientific life, the project would be doomed to failure. For in our world, no one Understands this pluralizing vision. According to the understanding we actually live through and speak from, some of postphenomenology’s multiple disclosures already arrive in our experience with significantly greater ontological power than others, and sincerity about topical measure notwithstanding, the very identification of something as an interest or “value,” especially if it allegedly comes from a “layperson,” already condemns it to secondary status.