Empyre follow-up

Posted: September 20th, 2007 | Filed under: Modern / Not Modern |

We use certain means to certain ends, and in so doing produce certain subjectivities.

(One works through zoning law to produce more equitable housing, or through interaction design or software to produce more humane interfaces. The navigation of zoning law implicates us in different ways and makes one another sort of “citizen.” The decision not to do so does the same.)

This doesn’t make the production of subjectivities the true end of the work.

(It doesn’t take a reflexive modernist to look at who we become by doing certain things. One may be aiming for, and achieving, the goal of more equitable housing and end up producing new social relations, epistemologies, ontologies, along the way. That doesn’t negate the original goal.)

To use certain means toward ends other than those for which they were intended is not inherently radical, or automatically productive.

(Methods don’t carry values. Applications of methods produce values.)

But there do exist radical ends, and radical routes to those ends.

(Our work doesn’t take place in neutral spaces, our actions are bound to, sometimes prevented by, sometimes determined by, struggles for power.)

Neither are the means inconsequential just because the ends are deemed worthy,

(Instrumentality, as the smooth flow of intention through some means into perfect realization of ends, does not exist.)

because the use of certain means to certain ends produces certain subjectivities.

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