Title

Disasterologies

Keywords

Agency; Failure; Rationalization; Subjectivity; Technology

Abstract

This brief position paper explores our current confrontation with technology through a model of the accident. Focusing on failure, risk and malfunctioning technology, the paper offers the notion of disasterologies as an alternative approach to technology studies. Such an approach suggests both a less deterministic and instrumentalized drive than is often found in theories of technology and society as well as a less certain role of the subject in its relation to technology. Disasterologies re-imagines the accident as that which eludes the modern subjects mastery over the built environment through scientific knowledge and "technological rationality. By foregrounding when technology fails, disasterologies implies a subject neither entirely in control nor entirely at the mercy of technology, one whose condition of contingency re-opens questions of agency, intentionality, and subjectivity itself.

Publication Date

12-1-2005

Publication Title

Social Epistemology

Volume

19

Issue

4

Number of Pages

315-319

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1080/02691720500145381

Socpus ID

30444441275 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/30444441275

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