Disasterologies

Tony Grajeda (2005), ‘Disasterologies’, Journal of Social Epistemology, Vol.19, No.4, pp.315-319 (DOI: 10.180/02691720500145381)

Abstract:

This brief position paper explores our current confrontation with technology through a model of the accident. Focusing on failure, risk and malfunctioning technology, the paper offers the notion of disasterologies as an alternative approach to technology studies. Such an approach suggests both a less deterministic and instrumentalized drive than is often found in theories of technology and society as well as a less certain role of the subject in its relation to technology. Disasterologies re-imagines the accident as that which eludes the modern subject’s mastery over the built environment through scientific knowledge and “technological rationality.” By foregrounding when technology fails, disasterologies implies a subject neither entirely in control nor entirely at the mercy of technology, one whose condition of contingency re-opens questions of agency, intentionality, and subjectivity itself.