Provincializing Sts: Postcoloniality, Symmetry, and Method

Law, John; Lin, Wen-yuan

doi:10.1215/18752160-3823859

Cited by 95 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…However, this paper goes one step further; following Law and Lin (2015) when they draw on STS to argue 'for forms of postcolonial investigation that use non-Western analytical resources. Their major concern is to ask 'what might happen if STS were to make more systematic use of non-Western ideas ' (2015, n.p.).…”

Section: Rain Of the Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It has also prompted intense transdisciplinary and crosscultural debate (Kuo 2017). 7 It has further prompted a recognition by Lin (2016, n.p., 2017) that method is emphatically 'provincial' or local, not universal (Law and Lin 2015). Also, that utilising shi (勢), for instance, suggests 'the idea of 'truth' is displaced by something akin to 'efficacy' (gōng xiào, 功效)' with important implications for how academic work is performed (Law and Lin 2016, n.p.…”

Section: Asksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It ends by looking at the difficulty of reconstruing Western practices through a non-Western frame, utilising Law and Lin's recent work (2010, 2017a on disconcertments and the 'provincialising' the Western practices of science and technology studies with the difficult issues of postcoloniality, symmetry and method they bring to bear. This proposal to think 'symmetrically' has provoked considerable comment about its feasibility (Kuo 2017); for my purpose it, equally, raises questions about how far symmetrical thinking about the unconscious is equally possible.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tensions and Symmetries in the Ethnographic Unconscious: Lacan, Rain of the Children, Cross-Cultural Trauma

Farnsworth¹

2017

Media Peripheries

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This paper is situated at the intersection of a number of tensions: the registers of psyche and culture, psychoanalysis and anthropology, colonial and post-colonial, mediation and rerepresentation. Drawing on Vincent Ward's Rain of the Children (2008), it proposes a move from a perspective inflected through western epistemes articulated by psychoanalysts such as Lacan to one situated within non-western perspectives. Such perspectives have recently been explored in a variety of fields such as ethnography and STS in a quest to investigate and rework existing, largely western distinctions. Yet such social science approaches are either ambivalent or silent on how psychoanalysis, the unconscious and the constitution of self are reconfigured within these shifting frames of cultural reference. This is the central question for the paper. These issues are further highlighted where difficult questions of suffering emerge, as displayed by the cross-cultural and postcolonial trauma in Ward's film. Consequently, a key epistemic conundrum emerges in how to engage such diverse cultural perspective when dominant western paradigms are brought into question; the paper illuminates the theoretical and experiential tensions this bring into view.

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Section: Rain Of the Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Asksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tensions and Symmetries in the Ethnographic Unconscious: Lacan, Rain of the Children, Cross-Cultural Trauma

Farnsworth¹

2017

Media Peripheries

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“…To debate this, I consider the contribution of Lin and Law's types of knowledge and their proposal about STS method, both with flawed arguments due to the confusion between social and epistemic levels of analysis. I will begin by summarizing Bloor's contribution and then I will refer to Lin and Law's works to discuss two issues: one related to a classification of East Asian STS practices presented in Lin and Law (2018), and the other related to the proposed method of enlarging the canon, and promoting inter-contextual dialogues (Law and Lin 2017). Regarding the first issue, I will give examples from Latin America in order to discuss problems with the symmetry principle in standard STS approaches.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discussing the symmetry principle: towards a realist dialogue inside global STS theory

Galassi

2019

Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society

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“…Our ambition is to generate knowledge about more dynamic, messy expressions of civil society, paying attention not only to the material conditions for organizing, but to the frictions in the connections and relations between organizations and to alternative communities and struggles going on outside the organizations. Another, even more important ambition is to find approaches and methods that do not reproduce one-directional narratives (Law & Lin 2015). Postcolonial scholars have criticized NGOs and feminist scholars from the North and West for reiterating Western colonial meta-narratives, for example the notion that women's rights, gender equality and sexual rights has its origin in the West and is then diffused out into the world, from the centre to the periphery (cf.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The rainbow flag as friction: transnational imagined communities of belonging among Pakistani LGBTQ activists

Alm¹,

Martinsson²

2017

Cult. Unbound

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This article analyzes the frictions the rainbow flag creates between transnational, national and translocal discourses and materialities. It focuses on the ambivalent role that the transnational 'rainbow' space plays for community building for LG-BTQ activists in in Pakistan. The rainbow flag can function as a way to mobilize an imagined transnational community of belonging, enabling people to politicize their experiences of discrimination as a demand of recognition directed at the state. But it can also enable homonationalism and transnational middle class formations that exclude groups of people, for example illiterates and people perceived of as traditional, such as Khwaja Siras. The article is based on auto-ethnographic reflections on encounters with activists in Pakistan, and critically discusses the problem of feeling 'too comfortable' , as white, Western, middle-class researchers, exploring 'imperial narratives' dominating the feminist and LGBTQ activist transnational imagined community of belonging. It argues for the importance of recognizing the transnational space as a space in its own right, with different positions, communities and conflicts stretching around the globe.

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Provincializing Sts: Postcoloniality, Symmetry, and Method

Cited by 95 publications

References 68 publications

Tensions and Symmetries in the Ethnographic Unconscious: Lacan, Rain of the Children, Cross-Cultural Trauma

Tensions and Symmetries in the Ethnographic Unconscious: Lacan, Rain of the Children, Cross-Cultural Trauma

Discussing the symmetry principle: towards a realist dialogue inside global STS theory

The rainbow flag as friction: transnational imagined communities of belonging among Pakistani LGBTQ activists

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