Radical reflexivity, experimental ontology and RRI

ABSTRACT

RRI does not challenge what this paper calls ‘lyseology’: mobilizing science to convince policy makers and the public that the present possesses some form of lack that should be addressed with a new technology. For a sustained critique of technological fixes as solutions a more radical shift from the persistent old view of a static outside world is required. This entails a process-based understanding of reality and specific consequences thereof for practice. To do so the paper offers an analysis of in what manner current RRI discourse builds on old subject-object ontologies and relies on an outdated worldview. The paper suggests possible pathways of conceiving of research and innovation otherwise: RRI should reorient towards the ontology turn, learn from ethnomethodology and radical reflexivity, as well as from the politics of material participation. This paper proposes that research and innovation should engage with quantum theory inspired alternative worldviews.

KEYWORDS:

• Radical reflexivity
• experimental ontology
• more-than-human worlds
• perspectivism
• agential realism

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Richard Randell for the ongoing conversations on matters of reflexivity, ontopolitics and all else. Some of the ideas in this paper are as much his as they are mine. My gratitude goes to Shauna M. Stack for her kind assistance in preparing this manuscript for publication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 From the Greek word lysi (solution) and logos (knowledge). Lyseology is the use and misuse of science to produce ‘lack’ as a problem and offer knowledge of a better future in which the lack as problem is solved. It is an alternative version of agnotology (Proctor and Schiebinger 2008): the use and misuse of science to produce ignorance in support of corporate interests.

2 ontos/world in plural and genitive.

3 This is akin to what Heidegger refers to as ‘thinging’ as gathering the fourfold and the violence done to the ‘thingliness of the thing’ by thinking (Heidegger 2002, 7).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Austrian Science Fund.