Comments on: Beyond reading and listening: how do we capture the impact of recent biomedical technology for museum collections http://www.corporeality.net/museion/2007/09/27/beyond-reading-and-listening-how-do-we-capture-the-impact-of-recent-biomedical-technology-for-museum-collections/ Medical Museion Thu, 29 Dec 2011 20:58:27 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 By: Søren http://www.corporeality.net/museion/2007/09/27/beyond-reading-and-listening-how-do-we-capture-the-impact-of-recent-biomedical-technology-for-museum-collections/comment-page-1/#comment-246181 Søren Wed, 03 Oct 2007 09:14:35 +0000 http://www.corporeality.net/museion/2007/09/27/beyond-reading-and-listening-how-do-we-capture-the-impact-of-recent-biomedical-technology-for-museum-collections/#comment-246181 I think you point to some very important and central elements of the problems encountered when we try to bring corporeality and materiality into our analyses. I light of what you are saying, the caveats could almost be seen as a kind of boundary-producing discursive act that removes the observer from the observed, thus producing the distance emblematic of scientific analysis. A strategy of legitimation, with the deeply problematic nature of any split between mind and body being glossed over by an assurance that the author would love to join the two, but is not able to do so. Still, the caveats probably also indicate a real (and growing) ambition on the part of historians to bring non-discursive materiality into their work. I think you point to some very important and central elements of the problems encountered when we try to bring corporeality and materiality into our analyses. I light of what you are saying, the caveats could almost be seen as a kind of boundary-producing discursive act that removes the observer from the observed, thus producing the distance emblematic of scientific analysis. A strategy of legitimation, with the deeply problematic nature of any split between mind and body being glossed over by an assurance that the author would love to join the two, but is not able to do so.
Still, the caveats probably also indicate a real (and growing) ambition on the part of historians to bring non-discursive materiality into their work.

]]> By: Adam Bencard http://www.corporeality.net/museion/2007/09/27/beyond-reading-and-listening-how-do-we-capture-the-impact-of-recent-biomedical-technology-for-museum-collections/comment-page-1/#comment-246178 Adam Bencard Thu, 27 Sep 2007 13:00:13 +0000 http://www.corporeality.net/museion/2007/09/27/beyond-reading-and-listening-how-do-we-capture-the-impact-of-recent-biomedical-technology-for-museum-collections/#comment-246178 Some very interesting question indeed. I think the problem is a very general and very important one, and that it is ultimately tied to the subject position established for the critical academic historian of science and technology, which from the outset makes any extended engagement with materiality problematic. The caveat that Anderson and Timmerman make in the introduction (particularly symptomatic is the bracketing of “reading”) is endemic in the current materiality-trend that we’ve seen in the past 5 years or so. From my own research on the history of the body, I have numerous examples of similar caveats – a paradigmatic example can be found in the introductions to Thomas Laqueur’s Making Sex, in which he writes that he is “saddened by the most obvious and persistent omission in this book: a sustained account of experience in the body.” For some reason, this direct engagement with the experience of materiality is curiously often that which is regrettable omitted. I believe this happens to be the case because the engagement with materiality requires transgressing two unspoken boundaries of academic research: On the one hand it means opening academic language to a descriptive register which does not sit well with the idea/ideal of the distanced, critical third-person observer; on the other hand, it means accepting that our engagements with reality takes place on different levels which have different characteristics, not all ultimately reducible to an unbroken discursively structured field. Materiality, then, potentially raises issues of what sort of knowledge we produce as academics, how we produce it, what it should be used for and what sort of questions it ultimately addresses. But this potential is not met if a direct engagement with materiality, however problematic, is simply bracketed off as a regrettable omission in an introductory essay. Some very interesting question indeed. I think the problem is a very general and very important one, and that it is ultimately tied to the subject position established for the critical academic historian of science and technology, which from the outset makes any extended engagement with materiality problematic.

The caveat that Anderson and Timmerman make in the introduction (particularly symptomatic is the bracketing of “reading”) is endemic in the current materiality-trend that we’ve seen in the past 5 years or so. From my own research on the history of the body, I have numerous examples of similar caveats – a paradigmatic example can be found in the introductions to Thomas Laqueur’s Making Sex, in which he writes that he is “saddened by the most obvious and persistent omission in this book: a sustained account of experience in the body.”

For some reason, this direct engagement with the experience of materiality is curiously often that which is regrettable omitted. I believe this happens to be the case because the engagement with materiality requires transgressing two unspoken boundaries of academic research: On the one hand it means opening academic language to a descriptive register which does not sit well with the idea/ideal of the distanced, critical third-person observer; on the other hand, it means accepting that our engagements with reality takes place on different levels which have different characteristics, not all ultimately reducible to an unbroken discursively structured field.

Materiality, then, potentially raises issues of what sort of knowledge we produce as academics, how we produce it, what it should be used for and what sort of questions it ultimately addresses. But this potential is not met if a direct engagement with materiality, however problematic, is simply bracketed off as a regrettable omission in an introductory essay.

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