Das An- und Fürsich apparativer Sichtbarmachungen. Ein historisch-kritischer Blick auf digitale Materialität

Abstract

This paper focuses on instrument-based productions of in/visibilities (for instance in processes of digital brain imaging) as specific socio-cultural practices contingent on historical epistemic conditions. Situating the calculation and formalization central to these epistemic conditions of knowledge production  in historical processes of abstraction and formalization foundational for modern capitalist sociality and subjectivity allows to problematize specific relation of subject and object (as subjectified objectivity) inherent to this historical constellation. Turning to Karen Barad’s proposal of agential realism, we argue that her notion of agential realism offers possibilities of integrating knowledge of sociality and subjectivity as subject-specific to scientific knowledge production. We insist, however, on the importance of an analytical distinction between human and non-human agency in processes of knowing in order to grasp their specific subject-object relations (and inversions) as contingent and thus open to ethical questions and political (re )configuration.