Wednesday, 30 March 2016

Data, Facts and Bodies: (Re)thinking the Knower and the Known

The prevailing modern concept of knowledge has been built upon Cartesian cogito, the thinking ‘I’, as the constitutive factor of knowledge. For Descartes, “body is always an obstacle for the mind
when it aspires to think”. Hence, in Cartesian perspectivism, there is a lonely and static eye observing reality external to it.

The corporeal and affective turns in social sciences and humanities have, however, relocated critical attention from language, discourse and representations (“the mind”) to matter, embodiment and nature (“the body”). This is accompanied by seeing the human mind not as an entity or a thing but corporeally, affectively and socially situated action. In order to understand such action, it is
necessary to study relevant socio-cultural contexts where the corporeal, affective and social human mind is at work.

The lecture asks: If human realities are not seen as “essences” or fixed entities but as processes, how to rethink the knower, the known and their relations. What does it mean that the knower is always already part of the field s/he studies? How to know oneself as an engaged producer of knowledge? How does one’s own social and cultural position influence the way one approaches
one’s research subjects? How do the academic institutions one is a part of influence approaches? For what purposes and to whom do we produce knowledge?