Hello all
Time for me to respond to Ken and the list. (I have already responded
offlist to Ken – pretty much what I will post here. Offlist posts – a
significant invisible part of this list's culture – may at times be
healthy and provide needed safe space, and they can also be used to
strengthen gates and boundaries and mobilize factions.) My response is
somewhat delayed because of university events and my fieldwork. The
groups I study are self-selecting and self-organizing (peer-to-peer)
grassroots communities oriented to alternative pathways – determined
to "democratize technologies" and put them in the hands of all
citizens. Some are committed to ecologically-oriented production,
experimenting in many ways on how to move towards a 'sustainable'
future. In all this collaborative work, there are important issues
relating to who has the right to knowledge production and whose work
'counts': the collective shaping and redefining of 'expertise',
questions of power and control, strategies to coerce and dominate,
strategies to resist and re-appropriate. An interesting parallel to
knowledge production and strategies of control and resistance in
research listservs, which is our current concern.
And specifically my response on 26 Jan to Ken's mail of 23 Jan that
began the subject thread "Our New Age of Contempt" - which is the only
thing I'm going to comment on.
Our interchange was in reference to the debates and interactions on
the list regarding the subject of social justice and the Decolonising
Design platform, particularly the message threads 'CfP: Social
Justice, Design, and HCI (CHI '16 workshop)' (Dec 2015) and 'Launching
the Decolonising Design platform' – and related A personal comment on
the list discussions; After the party; December 2015 Email to Luiza
Prado, Mariam Asad, and Layal Shuman; Decolonialism, 2feedbacklooplaw,
brexit, elites; How to avoid fights on mailing lists; misogyny and
design; On privilege and a bit on how to start seeing our own
privilege; Victims and bullies; With friends like these who needs the
PhDDesign List? (June and July 2016).
The reasons for my reaction.
Ken's summary of 23 Jan was a gross misrepresentation of these
interactions. To create a 'side' of "shrill and arrogant voices" and
"attacks" sweeps away all the variegated ways people were confronting
each other, framing and reframing, provoking conflict, reaching
compromise, negotiating their space, learning what the other accepted
or dismissed as a valid way to contribute to knowledge production,
feeling part of the listserv 'community', feeling ousted.
Describing the interactions and consequences as a "harsh and
unjustified attack on list culture and list members" does a grand
disservice to the people involved and the shifts and accommodations
and reflections during the confrontations and subsequently.
As for the phrase "a few Trump-like voices" which "can so thoroughly
disrupt", this was a highly manipulative rhetorical move, with the
intent to galvanize and divide. Given the current political climate,
this was irresponsible.
Hence my shocked response accompanied by the appropriate clips from Ken's post:
"Shrill and arrogant voices? Trump-like voices? Really? REALLY?"
There were outcomes of the interactions (in December and June-July),
also variegated. There were statements of exits and outrage; there
were statements of further reflection and changed perspectives.
I was saddened that these emotive but also epistemically reflective
posts were whitewashed in the 23 Jan post. (The processes of renewal,
reflection, healthy questioning on many fronts, are therefore also
invisible in this month's discussion on those events stimulated by
Ken's unfortunate mail and my retort. There are now only the sides of
the "shrill and arrogant" and the affronted and accused.)
Among the leave-the-lists was a young researcher. She was whitewashed
only as a "shrill and arrogant voice" and the background to her
leaving was completely unaddressed. It was a significant event. I was
outraged by this omission in the summary of 23 Jan, and I posted as I
did. "Luiza Prado was completely bullied off this list."
I also committed a disservice here, as there was also an explicit
apology resulting from the interactions. (I did not state "the
apologist bullied her out" and I did not state "Ken bullied her out".
I saw it and see it as the list culture having bullied her out. If I
am a list member, I too am implicated by being passive and silent.)
If the young researcher and others are choosing resistance strategies
using other channels, is this surprising? Frustrated with not having a
voice, they are exploring other ways and means to escape a perceived
hostile environment and let their voice be heard.
This is frustrating in its own turn. It cannot be controlled. Dissent
and resistance does threaten hegemonic control over knowledge
production: what should be researched and how, what counts as
research, how academic debate is to be conducted, in what closed
rooms, with what contents. Traditions are ignored, framings are
questioned, procedures and rituals are scandalously disregarded. This
is the *point*. To think that dissent and disruption in processes of
knowledge production is dangerous, treasonous, heretic, something to
be controlled and contained, is to refute the history of science.
To deliberately misrepresent the empirics – when such confrontations
happen in research discourse – is irresponsible. We learn nothing. I
hence reacted.
Sincerely
Cindy
Cindy Kohtala
Postdoc researcher
Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland
On 26 January 2017 at 10:24, Cindy Kohtala <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Shrill and arrogant voices? Trump-like voices? Really? REALLY?
>
> Luiza Prado was completely bullied off this list.
> That is my view on what happened.
>
> Cindy
>
> --
> Cindy Kohtala
> Postdoc researcher
> Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland
>
>> The harsh and unjustified attack on list culture and list members has taken too great a toll.
>> the attacks on list members by a few shrill and arrogant voices.
>> It would be a sad thing to think that a few Trump-like voices can so thoroughly disrupt what was once an interesting and passionate community.
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