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Modes of Knowing: Resources from the Baroque - cover image
Mattering Press

Modes of Knowing: Resources from the Baroque

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TitleModes of Knowing
SubtitleResources from the Baroque
ContributorJohn Law (editor)
Evelyn Ruppert(editor)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.28938/9780993144981
Landing pagehttps://www.matteringpress.org/books/modes-of-knowing
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
CopyrightJohn Law; Evelyn Ruppert
PublisherMattering Press
Publication placeManchester, UK
Published on2016-07-25
ISBN978-0-9931449-8-1 (Paperback)
978-0-9931449-9-8 (PDF)
Short abstractHow might we think differently? This book is an attempt to respond to this question. Its contributors are all interested in non-standard modes of knowing. They are all more or less uneasy with the restrictions or the agendas implied by academic modes of knowing, and they have chosen to do this by working with, through, or against one important Western alternative — that of the baroque.
Long abstractHow might we think differently? This book is an attempt to respond to this question. Its contributors are all interested in non-standard modes of knowing. They are all more or less uneasy with the restrictions or the agendas implied by academic modes of knowing, and they have chosen to do this by working with, through, or against one important Western alternative — that of the baroque. Why the baroque? One answer is that the baroque made space for and fostered many forms of otherness. It involved knowing things differently, extravagantly, excessively, and in materially heterogeneous ways, and it apprehended that which is other and could not be caught in a cognitive or symbolic net. It also involved knowing in ways that did not gather into a single point and knew itself to be performative. As part of a great Western division between rationalist and non-rationalist modes of knowing, the baroque is therefore a possible resource for creating ways of knowing differently — a storehouse of possible alternative techniques. To say this is not to say that it is the right mode of knowing. The book’s authors do not seek to create a ‘baroque social science’ whatever that might be, but instead work in a range of ways to explore how drawing on the ‘resources of the baroque’ can help us to think differently.
Print length268 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Dimensions152 x 14 x 229 mm | 5.98" x 0.55" x 9.02" (Paperback)
Media46 illustrations
BISAC
  • ART015090
  • SOC019000
  • SOC026000
Contributors

John Law

(editor)

John Law is Emeritus Professor in Sociology at the Open University and Honorary Professor in Sociology in the Centre for Science Studies at Lancaster University. His publications have worked through empirical case studies in a range of areas including large technological projects, nature and culture, and postcolonial knowledge relations to develop STS theory and methods in material semiotics. His publications include After Method, Aircraft Stories, and Organising Modernity.

Evelyn Ruppert

(editor)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7781-1491

Evelyn Ruppert is Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She works on questions of method, data, and digital life, and is currently leading a project funded by an ERC Consolidator grant, ‘Peopling Europe: How Data make a People’ (ARITHMUS; 2014–19). Evelyn is the founder and editor-inchief of a SAGE open access journal, Big Data & Society. Her book, Being Digital Citizens (with Engin Isin) was published in April 2015.