ONTOLOGICAL THEATRE.
Cybernetics, Performance and Materiality
Andrew Pickering
April 3, 18.00 CET
This interview with Andrew Pickering, one of the prominent representatives of neo-cybernetic thinking, focuses on the issue of cybernetics as a ‘non-modern’ way to cope with the world, in opposition to the ‘modern’ model of science. Whereas the latter is grounded on knowability, cybernetics recognizes the unknowability and the unpredictability of an environment that is constantly in-the-making. Based on his notions of the mangle of practice, lively matter, self-correction, the dance of agency, performative or cybernetic epistemology, black box ontology, our interview will start with these questions: Why cybernetics in the ongoing global political and environmental crises? Can you talk about the cybernetic definition of ‘control’? Can you give an example of a way to act with the environment and not on it? How can we imagine your notion of ontology of unknowability (or black box ontology) in political terms? What you call ‘a dance of agency’ recalls a constant struggle with globally interconnected things, in which humans are just one of an indefinite number of participants; from this perspective, how can we imagine a science that is able to deal with contingent or unpredictable factors in the environment? Following the model of the mangle, how can we define the role of chance, contingency, or noise in the ontological theatre? How can we imagine getting rid of representations, which fill both the scientific and political milieus? How can humans start ‘doing less’?
Andrew Pickering is professor emeritus of sociology and philosophy at the University of Exeter. Before that he was professor of sociology and director of the STS Graduate Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a leading figure in science and technology studies, writing on topics running from the history of particle physics to cybernetics and the environment. He has PhDs in particle physics and science studies and has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and at Princeton, MIT and Stanford. His books include Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics, The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency and Science, and The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future. His new book is Acting with the World: Agency in the Anthropocene (Duke UP).