Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity
Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
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Source Text: Epistemic Justice as a Virtue of Social Institutions Elizabeth Anderson (2012) Epistemic Justice as a Virtue of Social Institutions, Social Epistemology, 26:2, 163-173, DOI: 10.1080/02691728.2011.652211 Publication
The text by Anderson helped shed light on a few issues I stumbled over with Frickers Account. On top of the various issues I and seemingly others have with her virtue-based approach, I think a utilitarian angle is worth considering. That would be: okay, I accept that people can help fight injustice by realising their privilege, showing restraint, silencing themselves, and adopting the benevolent listening approach. I think that is a practical, virtuous, and realistic endeavour. But is it the effective path to alleviating structural injustice? I think not, and initially, that is a major reason I discarded Fricker’s approach, although I saw merit. I have similar concerns to Anderson in the scalability of virtues. Virtuous behavior might help my personal well-being, it gives me normative elevation and might even further the quality of relationships I have. But is it applicable to society, is it enough to counteract structural injustice? Well, maybe, assuming that:
I think, for society, the same society that came up with patriarchy in the first place, external pressure, some measure independent of the convictedness of the subjects is needed. Anderson made the powerful point of: “Anything that works, goes”, which took me some time to appreciate. I am always angry when I get told to keep my shower to a minimum or stop using plastic straws when I know exactly that my using less water is nothing compared to the institutionalized practice of Coca-Cola putting water into bottles. I feel like it is unjustified to ask me to save water while others triple their output, for performance. The same thing applies to Epistemic injustices. It strikes me how much energy it costs to keep up virtuous behavior individually and how little effect there is to show for it. I do not believe in “trickling up” where institutions will eventually adopt individual practices. Is Fricker thereby less right in her point? No, it adds up, as an entire population showering shorter adds up to lots of water saved. Anderson also points out how locally innocent biases can create injustice on a “macro” scale. Another indicator for me is that local virtue is not the sole solution, as it can still feed and sustain a system enforcing epistemic injustice.
I still have doubts about what to do now with my ideas, on how the world looks that I want. I lack the imagination of seeing a world that is epistemically just, and it is hard to strive for something one cannot even imagine. The system is inherently leaning toward inequality, if I try to balance something on a needle, it will only go well so long, before small imbalances create chain reactions and the object should be called unstable. Should we even succeed in “resetting” society, creating equal participation for each subject, how will it remain just? Is Justice always a conjunct of Equality? Are there ways to achieve real Justice without needing equality?
Note
created by Aron Petau on Tuesday 14. July 2020, 17:45
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Source Text: Dr. José Medina (2012) Hermeneutical Injustice and Polyphonic Contextualism: Social Silences and Shared Hermeneutical Responsibilities, Social Epistemology, 26:2, 201-220, DOI: 10.1080/02691728.2011.652214 Publication
My biggest takeaway here was that, as I tried to hint at in an earlier comment, Whenever we talk about justice, this necessarily refers to a relational concept, where everybody has a double role to ensure successful communication. Medina calls these the inquirer and the informant. So, every individual has to make sure to act to her capacity as an epistemologically sound knowledge-acquiring agent (the inquirer). This would involve knowing when and how to falsify/qualify statements, making inferences about the theory of mind, and generally comparing different statements. The other role is the informant, where the individual should have the capacity to function as an object in an inquiry by another. Very roughly this can, I think, be compared to any good communication model, where there are a listener and a speaker, and both have to function. What was new here, or at least came out more clear is that it not only depends on the capacity of both of these roles on the subject, but it is also directly dependent on the “other”, the agent opposite of the subject. We may call this other society later but it helps me to visualize the other as an individual nonetheless. Where the analogy to communication now fails, in my opinion, is this cross-dependence, where an agent does not fully determine her capacity to act both as an inquirer and as an informant, it is co-determined by the “other”. So, if I, as an “other”, listen to someone’s statements, and I fail or refuse to understand the epistemic content of the message, I am not only impairing my epistemic agency, but I also hurt the epistemic agency of the subject. Maybe obvious to most, but this thought struck me as being exactly the point of leverage for dysfunctionalities in power relations. Also argued convincingly in the paper was that these are distinct and independent agencies, which can be impairing an individual separately. Overall, the Medina text was incredibly helpful after the somewhat confusing Fricker text that felt incomplete and left a lot of questions for me. The medina text picked up all my initial doubts, that I couldn’t properly formulate, and many more, while still holding to the general framework of Fricker. Although I was not convinced by the Fricker Text, I tend to think the strategy:
“When in doubt, give the subject full epistemic credibility”
Is a good strategy that might alleviate a lot of issues regarding functions of power, and hierarchy, but also further, it might be a good counter for things as our confirmation bias, expectation bias and many individual errors that we could minimize by constantly exposing ourselves to falsifiability through others (voluntarily). Sounds like science applied to agency to me.
Note
created by Aron Petau on Thursday 09. July 2020, 11:25
Note
Source Text: Alison M. Jaggar (1989) Love and knowledge: Emotion in feminist epistemology, Inquiry, 32:2, 151-176, DOI: 10.1080/00201748908602185 Publication
I found Jaggar to be a very wholesome read, it was the perfect amount of grounded argumentative structure and felt very connected as a whole. This was, together with the ideas from Lugones the best and most fruitful paper for me. On outlaw emotions: First, I hate the term, I think it’s placative and fails to frame the (actually nice) idea behind it. Outlaw Emotions are all those emotions incompatible with the dominant norms. That’s a huge field to cover, among feminist emotions they would also encompass emotions that are irrational or “faulty”. So, Jaggar does the term Justice by saying, some, but not all Outlaw Emotions are Feminist emotions. To make this evident, just think of a murderer’s joy for killing, it is of no feminist interest to dissect, yet it is against dominant values. So, experiencing Outlaw emotions is a (probably) necessary, but not sufficient condition for feminism. The incompatible emotion serves to create discourse and change. Jaggar convincingly shows how emotions have a direct influence on beliefs and can validly constitute evidence, while simultaneously validly influencing values in a similar manner. When we talk about dominant/alternative norms, we already endorse hierarchy in society. We acknowledge its existence, simply by identifying the dominant norm. I am not quite sure what exactly Jaggar proposes we should do with the hierarchy structures in society. Explicitly I can read: Subcultures rejecting dominant norms should be formed, to create counterbalances and a somewhat fair discourse over the topic. “How can we determine which outlaw emotions are to be endorsed or encouraged and which rejected? In what sense can we say that some emotional responses are more appropriate than others? What reason is there for supposing that certain alternative perceptions of the world, perceptions informed by outlaw emotions, are to be preferred to perceptions informed by conventional emotions? Here I can indicate only the general direction of an answer, whose full elaboration must await another occasion. I suggest that emotions are appropriate if they are characteristic of a society in which all Human Life (and perhaps some nonhuman life, too) thrive, or if they are conducive to establishing such a society.” To me this passage sounds sketchy at best, there is no indication of how to successfully separate appropriate from inappropriate emotions. Roughly, I read this part as: emotions are warranted iff they increase the balance of power. (equivalent to minimizing the height of the hierarchy) I would love to get to read this “other occasion” because it seems indefensible to me to formulate a norm that states: Accept only emotions which eliminate/diminish norms. The idea roughly resembles Rawls’s Minimax Principle, where a policy should be implemented iff the benefit for the most disadvantaged is highest. Another thing I found helpful is her reformulation of what norms do: “Dominant Norms tend to serve dominant interests” til here nothing new, this is a tautology for me, I understand norms as identical to dominant interests, that’s literally what norms are. Is an alternative, suppressed norm even thinkable? Isn’t it inherent in a norm that it be the dominant one? But then, after that: “Whatever our color / gender / class / sexual orientation, we are likely to adopt the dominant value of racist, classist, homophobe, misogynistic white men.” This was rather helpful to me, as it reframes the “act” of oppression as the “likelihood of value distribution” being skewed in your favor, making everybody’s values more likely to be similar to yours. This nicely illustrates how a system can be hierarchical and oppressive, without anybody actively, intentionally “acting oppressive”, while still perpetuating oppression. I’m not saying everybody is acting unintentionally oppressive, but it is always hard to imagine for me to picture “White Men” forming a group and collectively deciding on who to hate this coming season, Conceptually separating “being oppressed” and “oppressing” into phenomena without necessary inherent causal relation makes sense to me here.
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created by Aron Petau on Tuesday 23. June 2020, 18:52
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Source Text: Butler, J. (2004). Undoing Gender (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203499627 Publication
Citation from Butler, Page 51, citing Ewald, which is, in turn, interpreting Foucault:
The norm integrates anything which might attempt to go beyond it—nothing, nobody, whatever difference it might display, can ever claim to be exterior, or claim to possess an otherness which would actually make it other” (Norms, Discipline, and the Law, P.173)
Such a view suggests that any opposition to the norm is already contained within the norm, and is crucial to its functioning.
Here, for me, the entire futility of the approach later identified and described is condensed into a few sentences.
Hence, regulations that seek merely to curb certain specified activities (sexual harassment, welfare fraud, sexual speech) perform another activity that, for the most part, remains unmarked: the production of the parameters of personhood, that is, making persons according to abstract norms that at once condition and exceed the lives they make—and break. Page 56, final sentence
The idea that it is impossible to legislatively regulate norms without propelling, propagating, and carving them out deeper resonates with me, but at the same time, it has left me undecided on how to proceed. I understand the first citation to clearly be Ewald’s interpretation of things and am not sure whether Foucault’s careful circumvention of the term “Norms” is related to anticipation of this argument.
Further, I am not sure I share Ewald’s interpretation; I see that the object “othered” by a norm is a constituent and necessary object for the norm, simply due to its “comparative” nature (p. 51, citation from Ewald). The oppressed may well be as constituting of norms as the privileged, but this does not translate to a normative responsibility nor a pang of guilt in my opinion. The dangerous argument that the oppressed bear responsibility for their situation is too close for my taste. I would like to emphasize a clear cut between constituting and reinforcing a norm and thriving on it. Yes, maybe that is a good location to make the cut: The normative and ethical pressure, or better, the guilt of complicity lies with the ones thriving BECAUSE of a norm and clearly not with those thriving DESPITE OF a norm. I would think that Butler makes a similar argument elsewhere, but as such, I was missing it here, resulting in a very bleak and hopeless situation where any struggle to change the status quo through legislation is doomed and inevitably propagates and reinvents stable unfair relations of power.
Note
created by Aron Petau on Sunday 23. January 2022, 14:23
Note
Source Text: François Ewald; Norms, Discipline, and the Law. Representations 1 April 1990; 30 138–161. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2928449 Publication
Some tiny details about norms that stuck out to me about the norm were that: 1: they are fictional and thus, an object conforming to a norm is not more meaningful than an object not conforming to a norm. 2: the entire given set comprises the norm, the deviations play a defining role in the formation of the norm itself (or an average). p. 152: Under norm, 3 phenomena are subsumed: Discipline, less as a constraint, but more as a regulatory mechanism insurance, Reducing objects to their relative occurrence, distributing risk. and standardization. The norm has three defining features:
What, then, is a norm?
It is a way for a group to provide itself with a common denominator in accordance with a rigorous principle of self-referentiality, with no recourse to any kind of external reference point, either in the form of an idea or an object. The normative process can obey a variety of different logics: the panoptical logic of discipline, the probabilistic schema of insurance, or the communicative logic of the technical norm. These three logics have the same form: in each case, the rule which serves as a norm, by virtue of which everyone can measure, evaluate, and identify himself or herself, will be derived from those for whom it will serve as a standard. A strange logic, this, which forces the group to turn back in upon itself and which, from the moment it establishes itself, will let no one escape its purview. p. 154
Note
created by Aron Petau on Sunday 16. January 2022, 18:48
Note
Source Text: Michael Foucault. Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977. Pantheon, New York, 1980. Publication
one finds all sorts of support mechanisms […] which invent, modify and re-adjust, according to the circumstances of the moment and the place- so that you get a coherent, rational strategy, but one for which it is no longer possible to identify a person who conceived it. p. 203
In this passage, and the one following it, I think Foucault pinpoints as one of the central attributes of the apparatus (or dispositif) the arbitrariness of the order of power relations. There is no identity having to undergo some sort of inventive process to start off a collective change, a “strategy” just happens to meet the criteria for deployment.
But between the strategy which fixes, reproduces, multiplies and accentuates existing relations of forces, and the class which thereby finds itself in a ruling position, there is a reciprocal relation of production. Thus one can say that the strategy of moralising the working class is that of the bourgeoisie. One can even say that it’s the strategy which allows the bourgeois class to be the bourgeois class and to exercise its domination. But what I don’t think one can say is that it’s the bourgeois class on the level of its ideology or its economic project which, as a sort of at once real and fictive subject, invented and forcibly imposed this strategy on the working class.
This was for me the most powerful grasp of what an apparatus is. A complicated removal of the effector from the effect. I struggle to continue to find any substance to the relations of the classes. Does reciprocal mean anything more than both are constitutive of each other? One produces the means of reproduction of the other, but where exactly can I apply moral judgements? This whole ordeal and now I lack subjects to blame. How can this theory possibly bring about change in society? Is that even its goal? Do we undergo this analysis in order to make society better in the end?
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created by Aron Petau on Sunday 12. December 2021, 22:01
I have attended a fair share of philosophical seminars in my studies and consider it a core topic connected both to science and to digital environments. Normative and feminist social theory, as well as the theory of science and phenomenology, are all brought to me through seminar formats at university and made up a good part of my education there. I find it hard to properly demonstrate what interests me without presenting often long-winded and dull term papers. The courses I loved most also often had a format with a weekly hand-in, where students are asked to comment on the paper they just read to identify points to carry into next week’s discussion. I am incredibly thankful for this methodology of approaching complex philosophical works, often complete books with supplicant essays surrounding the course topic. In my opinion, nearly all of the value created during these seminars is contained within the live discussions fed by reading materials and little opinion pieces in the form of forum comments. That’s why I decided to share here a selection of these weekly commentaries and the sources they are based upon. They are often unrefined and informal, but they indicate the centerpiece of the seminars and demonstrate many thought processes that happened within me during these sessions. Although I took only a small selection, in sum they are a substantial read. Feel free to just skip through and read what catches your interest.
Note
Source Text: Epistemic Justice as a Virtue of Social Institutions Elizabeth Anderson (2012) Epistemic Justice as a Virtue of Social Institutions, Social Epistemology, 26:2, 163-173, DOI: 10.1080/02691728.2011.652211 Publication
The text by Anderson helped shed light on a few issues I stumbled over with Frickers Account. On top of the various issues I and seemingly others have with her virtue-based approach, I think a utilitarian angle is worth considering. That would be: okay, I accept that people can help fight injustice by realising their privilege, showing restraint, silencing themselves, and adopting the benevolent listening approach. I think that is a practical, virtuous, and realistic endeavour. But is it the effective path to alleviating structural injustice? I think not, and initially, that is a major reason I discarded Fricker’s approach, although I saw merit. I have similar concerns to Anderson in the scalability of virtues. Virtuous behavior might help my personal well-being, it gives me normative elevation and might even further the quality of relationships I have. But is it applicable to society, is it enough to counteract structural injustice? Well, maybe, assuming that:
I think, for society, the same society that came up with patriarchy in the first place, external pressure, some measure independent of the convictedness of the subjects is needed. Anderson made the powerful point of: “Anything that works, goes”, which took me some time to appreciate. I am always angry when I get told to keep my shower to a minimum or stop using plastic straws when I know exactly that my using less water is nothing compared to the institutionalized practice of Coca-Cola putting water into bottles. I feel like it is unjustified to ask me to save water while others triple their output, for performance. The same thing applies to Epistemic injustices. It strikes me how much energy it costs to keep up virtuous behavior individually and how little effect there is to show for it. I do not believe in “trickling up” where institutions will eventually adopt individual practices. Is Fricker thereby less right in her point? No, it adds up, as an entire population showering shorter adds up to lots of water saved. Anderson also points out how locally innocent biases can create injustice on a “macro” scale. Another indicator for me is that local virtue is not the sole solution, as it can still feed and sustain a system enforcing epistemic injustice.
I still have doubts about what to do now with my ideas, on how the world looks that I want. I lack the imagination of seeing a world that is epistemically just, and it is hard to strive for something one cannot even imagine. The system is inherently leaning toward inequality, if I try to balance something on a needle, it will only go well so long, before small imbalances create chain reactions and the object should be called unstable. Should we even succeed in “resetting” society, creating equal participation for each subject, how will it remain just? Is Justice always a conjunct of Equality? Are there ways to achieve real Justice without needing equality?
Note
created by Aron Petau on Tuesday 14. July 2020, 17:45
Note
Source Text: Dr. José Medina (2012) Hermeneutical Injustice and Polyphonic Contextualism: Social Silences and Shared Hermeneutical Responsibilities, Social Epistemology, 26:2, 201-220, DOI: 10.1080/02691728.2011.652214 Publication
My biggest takeaway here was that, as I tried to hint at in an earlier comment, Whenever we talk about justice, this necessarily refers to a relational concept, where everybody has a double role to ensure successful communication. Medina calls these the inquirer and the informant. So, every individual has to make sure to act to her capacity as an epistemologically sound knowledge-acquiring agent (the inquirer). This would involve knowing when and how to falsify/qualify statements, making inferences about the theory of mind, and generally comparing different statements. The other role is the informant, where the individual should have the capacity to function as an object in an inquiry by another. Very roughly this can, I think, be compared to any good communication model, where there are a listener and a speaker, and both have to function. What was new here, or at least came out more clear is that it not only depends on the capacity of both of these roles on the subject, but it is also directly dependent on the “other”, the agent opposite of the subject. We may call this other society later but it helps me to visualize the other as an individual nonetheless. Where the analogy to communication now fails, in my opinion, is this cross-dependence, where an agent does not fully determine her capacity to act both as an inquirer and as an informant, it is co-determined by the “other”. So, if I, as an “other”, listen to someone’s statements, and I fail or refuse to understand the epistemic content of the message, I am not only impairing my epistemic agency, but I also hurt the epistemic agency of the subject. Maybe obvious to most, but this thought struck me as being exactly the point of leverage for dysfunctionalities in power relations. Also argued convincingly in the paper was that these are distinct and independent agencies, which can be impairing an individual separately. Overall, the Medina text was incredibly helpful after the somewhat confusing Fricker text that felt incomplete and left a lot of questions for me. The medina text picked up all my initial doubts, that I couldn’t properly formulate, and many more, while still holding to the general framework of Fricker. Although I was not convinced by the Fricker Text, I tend to think the strategy:
“When in doubt, give the subject full epistemic credibility”
Is a good strategy that might alleviate a lot of issues regarding functions of power, and hierarchy, but also further, it might be a good counter for things as our confirmation bias, expectation bias and many individual errors that we could minimize by constantly exposing ourselves to falsifiability through others (voluntarily). Sounds like science applied to agency to me.
Note
created by Aron Petau on Thursday 09. July 2020, 11:25
Note
Source Text: Alison M. Jaggar (1989) Love and knowledge: Emotion in feminist epistemology, Inquiry, 32:2, 151-176, DOI: 10.1080/00201748908602185 Publication
I found Jaggar to be a very wholesome read, it was the perfect amount of grounded argumentative structure and felt very connected as a whole. This was, together with the ideas from Lugones the best and most fruitful paper for me. On outlaw emotions: First, I hate the term, I think it’s placative and fails to frame the (actually nice) idea behind it. Outlaw Emotions are all those emotions incompatible with the dominant norms. That’s a huge field to cover, among feminist emotions they would also encompass emotions that are irrational or “faulty”. So, Jaggar does the term Justice by saying, some, but not all Outlaw Emotions are Feminist emotions. To make this evident, just think of a murderer’s joy for killing, it is of no feminist interest to dissect, yet it is against dominant values. So, experiencing Outlaw emotions is a (probably) necessary, but not sufficient condition for feminism. The incompatible emotion serves to create discourse and change. Jaggar convincingly shows how emotions have a direct influence on beliefs and can validly constitute evidence, while simultaneously validly influencing values in a similar manner. When we talk about dominant/alternative norms, we already endorse hierarchy in society. We acknowledge its existence, simply by identifying the dominant norm. I am not quite sure what exactly Jaggar proposes we should do with the hierarchy structures in society. Explicitly I can read: Subcultures rejecting dominant norms should be formed, to create counterbalances and a somewhat fair discourse over the topic. “How can we determine which outlaw emotions are to be endorsed or encouraged and which rejected? In what sense can we say that some emotional responses are more appropriate than others? What reason is there for supposing that certain alternative perceptions of the world, perceptions informed by outlaw emotions, are to be preferred to perceptions informed by conventional emotions? Here I can indicate only the general direction of an answer, whose full elaboration must await another occasion. I suggest that emotions are appropriate if they are characteristic of a society in which all Human Life (and perhaps some nonhuman life, too) thrive, or if they are conducive to establishing such a society.” To me this passage sounds sketchy at best, there is no indication of how to successfully separate appropriate from inappropriate emotions. Roughly, I read this part as: emotions are warranted iff they increase the balance of power. (equivalent to minimizing the height of the hierarchy) I would love to get to read this “other occasion” because it seems indefensible to me to formulate a norm that states: Accept only emotions which eliminate/diminish norms. The idea roughly resembles Rawls’s Minimax Principle, where a policy should be implemented iff the benefit for the most disadvantaged is highest. Another thing I found helpful is her reformulation of what norms do: “Dominant Norms tend to serve dominant interests” til here nothing new, this is a tautology for me, I understand norms as identical to dominant interests, that’s literally what norms are. Is an alternative, suppressed norm even thinkable? Isn’t it inherent in a norm that it be the dominant one? But then, after that: “Whatever our color / gender / class / sexual orientation, we are likely to adopt the dominant value of racist, classist, homophobe, misogynistic white men.” This was rather helpful to me, as it reframes the “act” of oppression as the “likelihood of value distribution” being skewed in your favor, making everybody’s values more likely to be similar to yours. This nicely illustrates how a system can be hierarchical and oppressive, without anybody actively, intentionally “acting oppressive”, while still perpetuating oppression. I’m not saying everybody is acting unintentionally oppressive, but it is always hard to imagine for me to picture “White Men” forming a group and collectively deciding on who to hate this coming season, Conceptually separating “being oppressed” and “oppressing” into phenomena without necessary inherent causal relation makes sense to me here.
Note
created by Aron Petau on Tuesday 23. June 2020, 18:52
Note
Source Text: Butler, J. (2004). Undoing Gender (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203499627 Publication
Citation from Butler, Page 51, citing Ewald, which is, in turn, interpreting Foucault:
The norm integrates anything which might attempt to go beyond it—nothing, nobody, whatever difference it might display, can ever claim to be exterior, or claim to possess an otherness which would actually make it other” (Norms, Discipline, and the Law, P.173)
Such a view suggests that any opposition to the norm is already contained within the norm, and is crucial to its functioning.
Here, for me, the entire futility of the approach later identified and described is condensed into a few sentences.
Hence, regulations that seek merely to curb certain specified activities (sexual harassment, welfare fraud, sexual speech) perform another activity that, for the most part, remains unmarked: the production of the parameters of personhood, that is, making persons according to abstract norms that at once condition and exceed the lives they make—and break. Page 56, final sentence
The idea that it is impossible to legislatively regulate norms without propelling, propagating, and carving them out deeper resonates with me, but at the same time, it has left me undecided on how to proceed. I understand the first citation to clearly be Ewald’s interpretation of things and am not sure whether Foucault’s careful circumvention of the term “Norms” is related to anticipation of this argument.
Further, I am not sure I share Ewald’s interpretation; I see that the object “othered” by a norm is a constituent and necessary object for the norm, simply due to its “comparative” nature (p. 51, citation from Ewald). The oppressed may well be as constituting of norms as the privileged, but this does not translate to a normative responsibility nor a pang of guilt in my opinion. The dangerous argument that the oppressed bear responsibility for their situation is too close for my taste. I would like to emphasize a clear cut between constituting and reinforcing a norm and thriving on it. Yes, maybe that is a good location to make the cut: The normative and ethical pressure, or better, the guilt of complicity lies with the ones thriving BECAUSE of a norm and clearly not with those thriving DESPITE OF a norm. I would think that Butler makes a similar argument elsewhere, but as such, I was missing it here, resulting in a very bleak and hopeless situation where any struggle to change the status quo through legislation is doomed and inevitably propagates and reinvents stable unfair relations of power.
Note
created by Aron Petau on Sunday 23. January 2022, 14:23
Note
Source Text: François Ewald; Norms, Discipline, and the Law. Representations 1 April 1990; 30 138–161. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2928449 Publication
Some tiny details about norms that stuck out to me about the norm were that: 1: they are fictional and thus, an object conforming to a norm is not more meaningful than an object not conforming to a norm. 2: the entire given set comprises the norm, the deviations play a defining role in the formation of the norm itself (or an average). p. 152: Under norm, 3 phenomena are subsumed: Discipline, less as a constraint, but more as a regulatory mechanism insurance, Reducing objects to their relative occurrence, distributing risk. and standardization. The norm has three defining features:
What, then, is a norm?
It is a way for a group to provide itself with a common denominator in accordance with a rigorous principle of self-referentiality, with no recourse to any kind of external reference point, either in the form of an idea or an object. The normative process can obey a variety of different logics: the panoptical logic of discipline, the probabilistic schema of insurance, or the communicative logic of the technical norm. These three logics have the same form: in each case, the rule which serves as a norm, by virtue of which everyone can measure, evaluate, and identify himself or herself, will be derived from those for whom it will serve as a standard. A strange logic, this, which forces the group to turn back in upon itself and which, from the moment it establishes itself, will let no one escape its purview. p. 154
Note
created by Aron Petau on Sunday 16. January 2022, 18:48
Note
Source Text: Michael Foucault. Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977. Pantheon, New York, 1980. Publication
one finds all sorts of support mechanisms […] which invent, modify and re-adjust, according to the circumstances of the moment and the place- so that you get a coherent, rational strategy, but one for which it is no longer possible to identify a person who conceived it. p. 203
In this passage, and the one following it, I think Foucault pinpoints as one of the central attributes of the apparatus (or dispositif) the arbitrariness of the order of power relations. There is no identity having to undergo some sort of inventive process to start off a collective change, a “strategy” just happens to meet the criteria for deployment.
But between the strategy which fixes, reproduces, multiplies and accentuates existing relations of forces, and the class which thereby finds itself in a ruling position, there is a reciprocal relation of production. Thus one can say that the strategy of moralising the working class is that of the bourgeoisie. One can even say that it’s the strategy which allows the bourgeois class to be the bourgeois class and to exercise its domination. But what I don’t think one can say is that it’s the bourgeois class on the level of its ideology or its economic project which, as a sort of at once real and fictive subject, invented and forcibly imposed this strategy on the working class.
This was for me the most powerful grasp of what an apparatus is. A complicated removal of the effector from the effect. I struggle to continue to find any substance to the relations of the classes. Does reciprocal mean anything more than both are constitutive of each other? One produces the means of reproduction of the other, but where exactly can I apply moral judgements? This whole ordeal and now I lack subjects to blame. How can this theory possibly bring about change in society? Is that even its goal? Do we undergo this analysis in order to make society better in the end?
Note
created by Aron Petau on Sunday 12. December 2021, 22:01
Note
Source Text: Dorlin, Elsa. Se défendre: une philosophie de la violence. Zones, 2017. Publication (Not yet translated to English)
From the seventh chapter in Dorlins “Self-Defense”, I found the idea that safe spaces are actually prone to be counterproductive very strong. I think the discussion around whether safe spaces are an effective tool that is appropriate on top is a rather current and ongoing one. In so many other words, Dorlin here opens up the idea that the creation of a safe space always implies a hostile “outside” or other space. Further, Dorling sees as problematic that safe spaces will often experience problematic situations when trying to self-govern. The line of thought here is that safe spaces often explicitly reject the authority of traditional state bodies, since those exactly are identified as the oppressive force. This is problematic because then the community inside the safe space has to recreate social norms from scratch and qua definition of a safe space end up being much more restrictive and monitoring, tapping also into potentially extreme measurements for “enforcing” safety. Dorlin notes that by doing this, societal oppressive norms can end up becoming reproduced through the very instance created to shelter from it. I think this opens up 2 points worth discussing: Are there limits to the self-governance of leftist groups? How can self-governance be made possible without recreating some hierarchy or other? Does this ignore that safe spaces can sometimes be essential for survival? According to Dorlin, the alternative seems to be to instead of building sheltered, isolated safe spaces, the fight has to occur in the public, transforming the entire space without the necessity for exclusive logic. How can we argue this? Could there be an oppressed position from whence any aggressive stance towards the public forbids itself? (I think there is!) For me this seems like putting the entire burden of transformational potential on the oppressed individual, enabling a position like: “Well, the person did not object or introduce change, so the person implied consent.” Will a public fight cause more harm being fought than it will save after introducing change? And who are we to calculate this beforehand?
Note
created by Aron Petau on Sunday 05. December 2021, 15:52
Note
Source Text: Fricker, Miranda. Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford University Press, 2007. Publication
Inferentialistische Theorien gehen davon aus, dass die eigentliche Inferenz, also die Generierung eines neuen Epistems im Subjekt stattfindet. Konkret heisst dass, dass Ich die Aussage P einer dritten Person erst in irgendeiner Weise vor mir selbst rechtfertigen muss, bevor ich sie selbst verwenden kann. Ist die Aussage nun 2 + 2 = 4, muss ich also mit allen mir zur Verfügung stehenden Mitteln selbst überprüfen, ob diese Aussage Wahrheits- und Kohärenzkriterien erfüllt. Ich muss also beispielsweise über darunterliegende Axiome, die mir bekannt sind, die Aussage extern (ausserhalb von Person X hat das gesagt, also kann Ich das glauben) überprüfen. Im simplen Beispiel also konkret das Ergebnis berechnen. Wenn man so will, liegt also immer die “Beweislast” für meine eigenen Episteme bei mir und ich kann diesen Beweisaufwand nur begrenzt auslagern. Eine sehr direkte Folge davon wäre, dass jeglicher Erkenntnisgewinn mit erheblicher, bewusster oder unbewusster Arbeit verbunden ist. Dies wäre die wahrscheinlich logisch stringentere Theorie, gegen sie spricht aber die Phänomenologie eines Erkenntisgewinns. Eine Erkenntnis kommt uns oft vor wie ein “Heureka” Moment, wir “finden” sie, plötzlich ist sie da und wir können mit ihr arbeiten. Eine nicht-inferentialistische Theorie legt ebendiese Beweislast nicht im Subjekt an, ich habe eine Erlaubnis, oder besser, ein Recht auf a-priori Annahme der Richtigkeit der Aussage. “Person X hat mir P gesagt, also kann ich P verwenden” ist nun valide und bedarf erstmal keiner weiteren Überprüfung auf Richtigkeit. Diese Argumentationslinie ist deutlich kompatibler mit der phänomenologischen Erfahrung einer Erkenntnis vim Alltag. Wir stoßen aber auf deutlich größere Probleme, wenn wir uns fragen, woher eigentlich unser Recht auf Wahrheitsannahme von Drittaussagen kommt. Klar, 2+2=4, weil der Prof das an die Tafel geschrieben hat, ist die “schlechtere” Begründung als zu sagen, dass das Ergebnis aus gewissen mathematischen Axiomen deduziert wurde.
Wir befinden uns also nun in der Spannung der phänomenalistischen “Heureka” Erfahrung des Findens von Epistemen (in nicht-inferentiellen Systemen) und dem Problem der schwachen Justifizierung von Aussagen gegenüber der erhöhten Stringenz eines epistemischen Systems, dass externe (logische, probabilistische, normative etc.) Gründe für Aussagen zur Verfügung stellt, aber einen schier unüberwindbaren rechnerischen Aufwand darstellt. Auch das Problem der ersten Begründung bleibt bestehen. Angenommen, ich weiß noch nichts, habe bisher null Episteme gesammelt, wie wird das erste Epistem, das ich finde, begründbar sein?
Doxastische Verantwortung ist die Verantwortung für die Begründbarkeit des eigenen Nezwerkes aus Epistemen. Wenn mich also jemand fragt: Warum glaubst du das?, ist es sozial im Allgemeinen erwartbar, dass ich darauf eine Antwort liefern kann. Und wie wir eben schon am Beispiel der Begründung für 2+2=4 gesehen haben, scheint es hier “bessere” und weniger gute Gründe zu geben, das heisst, eine Person kann zur Verantwortung gezogen werden, unzureichend begründete Episteme fallen zu lassen und eine gewisse Grenze zu ziehen, eine mindest erwartbare Begründung. Diese kann sehr wahrscheinlich nicht universell formuliert werden. Eine Regel wie: Alle Bürger dürfen nur noch Aussagen weiterverwenden, denen sie eine mindestens 90-prozentige Wahrheitswarscheinlichkeit attestieren, ist aus diversen Gründen problematisch. Frickers Auffassung Doxastischer Verantwortung ist insofern speziell, als dass sie eine deutliche Verbindung moralischer Verantwortung (die wir offensichtlich alle in irgendeiner Form tragen) und Doxastischer Verantwortung sieht. Sogar die Gründe sind oft überlappend. Eine Gute Moralische Begründung, die zum Beispiel der Wahrhaftigkeit, scheint ganz offensichtlich auch eine gute doxastische begründung zu sein. Diese Parallelität zieht Fricker heran, um neo-aristotelianische Moralbegründuungen auch auf epistemischer Ebene wirksam zu machen. Ich lasse mich da gern Überzeugen von Ihr und erache es als sinnvoll Doxastische Verantwortung in gewisser Weise moralisch bindend zu machen. Intuitiv wissen wir ja auch, dass unsere Erwartung, dass dritte wahrhaftig mit uns interagieren, auf Gegenseitigkeit beruht und das leben nicht nur normativ, sondern auch auf epistemischer Ebene “verbessert”. Dies liefert auch eine recht simplistesche Rechtfertigung, annehmen zu können, dass Dritte mir die Wahreit sagen. Ich tue ja auch immer mein Bestes, warum also die anderen nicht?
https://aron.petau.net/search_index.en.json$MATCHES more matchesNote
created by Aron Petau on 05.01.2021
Note
Source Text: Dorlin, Elsa. Se défendre: une philosophie de la violence. Zones, 2017. Publication (Not yet translated to English)
From the seventh chapter in Dorlins “Self-Defense”, I found the idea that safe spaces are actually prone to be counterproductive very strong. I think the discussion around whether safe spaces are an effective tool that is appropriate on top is a rather current and ongoing one. In so many other words, Dorlin here opens up the idea that the creation of a safe space always implies a hostile “outside” or other space. Further, Dorling sees as problematic that safe spaces will often experience problematic situations when trying to self-govern. The line of thought here is that safe spaces often explicitly reject the authority of traditional state bodies, since those exactly are identified as the oppressive force. This is problematic because then the community inside the safe space has to recreate social norms from scratch and qua definition of a safe space end up being much more restrictive and monitoring, tapping also into potentially extreme measurements for “enforcing” safety. Dorlin notes that by doing this, societal oppressive norms can end up becoming reproduced through the very instance created to shelter from it. I think this opens up 2 points worth discussing: Are there limits to the self-governance of leftist groups? How can self-governance be made possible without recreating some hierarchy or other? Does this ignore that safe spaces can sometimes be essential for survival? According to Dorlin, the alternative seems to be to instead of building sheltered, isolated safe spaces, the fight has to occur in the public, transforming the entire space without the necessity for exclusive logic. How can we argue this? Could there be an oppressed position from whence any aggressive stance towards the public forbids itself? (I think there is!) For me this seems like putting the entire burden of transformational potential on the oppressed individual, enabling a position like: “Well, the person did not object or introduce change, so the person implied consent.” Will a public fight cause more harm being fought than it will save after introducing change? And who are we to calculate this beforehand?
Note
created by Aron Petau on Sunday 05. December 2021, 15:52
Note
Source Text: Fricker, Miranda. Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford University Press, 2007. Publication
Inferentialistische Theorien gehen davon aus, dass die eigentliche Inferenz, also die Generierung eines neuen Epistems im Subjekt stattfindet. Konkret heisst dass, dass Ich die Aussage P einer dritten Person erst in irgendeiner Weise vor mir selbst rechtfertigen muss, bevor ich sie selbst verwenden kann. Ist die Aussage nun 2 + 2 = 4, muss ich also mit allen mir zur Verfügung stehenden Mitteln selbst überprüfen, ob diese Aussage Wahrheits- und Kohärenzkriterien erfüllt. Ich muss also beispielsweise über darunterliegende Axiome, die mir bekannt sind, die Aussage extern (ausserhalb von Person X hat das gesagt, also kann Ich das glauben) überprüfen. Im simplen Beispiel also konkret das Ergebnis berechnen. Wenn man so will, liegt also immer die “Beweislast” für meine eigenen Episteme bei mir und ich kann diesen Beweisaufwand nur begrenzt auslagern. Eine sehr direkte Folge davon wäre, dass jeglicher Erkenntnisgewinn mit erheblicher, bewusster oder unbewusster Arbeit verbunden ist. Dies wäre die wahrscheinlich logisch stringentere Theorie, gegen sie spricht aber die Phänomenologie eines Erkenntisgewinns. Eine Erkenntnis kommt uns oft vor wie ein “Heureka” Moment, wir “finden” sie, plötzlich ist sie da und wir können mit ihr arbeiten. Eine nicht-inferentialistische Theorie legt ebendiese Beweislast nicht im Subjekt an, ich habe eine Erlaubnis, oder besser, ein Recht auf a-priori Annahme der Richtigkeit der Aussage. “Person X hat mir P gesagt, also kann ich P verwenden” ist nun valide und bedarf erstmal keiner weiteren Überprüfung auf Richtigkeit. Diese Argumentationslinie ist deutlich kompatibler mit der phänomenologischen Erfahrung einer Erkenntnis vim Alltag. Wir stoßen aber auf deutlich größere Probleme, wenn wir uns fragen, woher eigentlich unser Recht auf Wahrheitsannahme von Drittaussagen kommt. Klar, 2+2=4, weil der Prof das an die Tafel geschrieben hat, ist die “schlechtere” Begründung als zu sagen, dass das Ergebnis aus gewissen mathematischen Axiomen deduziert wurde.
Wir befinden uns also nun in der Spannung der phänomenalistischen “Heureka” Erfahrung des Findens von Epistemen (in nicht-inferentiellen Systemen) und dem Problem der schwachen Justifizierung von Aussagen gegenüber der erhöhten Stringenz eines epistemischen Systems, dass externe (logische, probabilistische, normative etc.) Gründe für Aussagen zur Verfügung stellt, aber einen schier unüberwindbaren rechnerischen Aufwand darstellt. Auch das Problem der ersten Begründung bleibt bestehen. Angenommen, ich weiß noch nichts, habe bisher null Episteme gesammelt, wie wird das erste Epistem, das ich finde, begründbar sein?
Doxastische Verantwortung ist die Verantwortung für die Begründbarkeit des eigenen Nezwerkes aus Epistemen. Wenn mich also jemand fragt: Warum glaubst du das?, ist es sozial im Allgemeinen erwartbar, dass ich darauf eine Antwort liefern kann. Und wie wir eben schon am Beispiel der Begründung für 2+2=4 gesehen haben, scheint es hier “bessere” und weniger gute Gründe zu geben, das heisst, eine Person kann zur Verantwortung gezogen werden, unzureichend begründete Episteme fallen zu lassen und eine gewisse Grenze zu ziehen, eine mindest erwartbare Begründung. Diese kann sehr wahrscheinlich nicht universell formuliert werden. Eine Regel wie: Alle Bürger dürfen nur noch Aussagen weiterverwenden, denen sie eine mindestens 90-prozentige Wahrheitswarscheinlichkeit attestieren, ist aus diversen Gründen problematisch. Frickers Auffassung Doxastischer Verantwortung ist insofern speziell, als dass sie eine deutliche Verbindung moralischer Verantwortung (die wir offensichtlich alle in irgendeiner Form tragen) und Doxastischer Verantwortung sieht. Sogar die Gründe sind oft überlappend. Eine Gute Moralische Begründung, die zum Beispiel der Wahrhaftigkeit, scheint ganz offensichtlich auch eine gute doxastische begründung zu sein. Diese Parallelität zieht Fricker heran, um neo-aristotelianische Moralbegründuungen auch auf epistemischer Ebene wirksam zu machen. Ich lasse mich da gern Überzeugen von Ihr und erache es als sinnvoll Doxastische Verantwortung in gewisser Weise moralisch bindend zu machen. Intuitiv wissen wir ja auch, dass unsere Erwartung, dass dritte wahrhaftig mit uns interagieren, auf Gegenseitigkeit beruht und das leben nicht nur normativ, sondern auch auf epistemischer Ebene “verbessert”. Dies liefert auch eine recht simplistesche Rechtfertigung, annehmen zu können, dass Dritte mir die Wahreit sagen. Ich tue ja auch immer mein Bestes, warum also die anderen nicht?
https://aron.petau.net/search_index.en.json$MATCHES more matchesNote
created by Aron Petau on 05.01.2021
Duckquill is an opinionated, modern, pretty, and clean Zola theme that has the purpose of greatly simplifying the process of rolling up your blog. It aims to provide all the necessary options for comfortable writing, while keeping the balance of simplicity.
With it, you can change some configuration variables, tweak some of the included graphics, and have a nice blog up in minutes!
Some of the features Duckquill has to offer:
Tip
If you use Duckquill and enjoy it, or just like my work, please consider buying me a coffee, it would mean the world to me ^^.
First, if you already have Git setup, add this theme as a submodule:
-
-Otherwise, simply clone it to your themes directory:
-Important
It is highly recommended to switch from the
mainbranch to the latest release:
-
-Then, enable it in your config.toml:
= "duckquill"
-To update the theme, simply switch to a new tag:
-
-
-Important
Check the changelog for all versions after the one you are using; there may be breaking changes that require manual involvement.
Duckquill offers some configuration options to make it fit you better; most options have pretty descriptive comments, so it should be easy to understand what they do.
Duckquill has some front matter variables that you can use by setting them in the [extra] section:
Configuration variables from config.toml that can be set/overriden per page/section:
default_theme: Which theme should be used by default (light/dark).accent_color: Sets theme and browser theme color.accent_color_dark: Ditto but for the dark theme. If not set regular variant will be used.emoji_favicon: Use emoji as a favicon. Only one emoji is being rendered, everything else is truncated.styles: Additional CSS styles; expects them to be in the ./static/ directory. If you are using Sass it will be generated there automatically.scripts: Additional JavaScript scripts; expects them to be in the ./static/ directory.katex: Whether to enable the KaTeX library for rendering LaTeX.toc: Enables table of contents. Only first 2 levels of headings are listed.toc_inline: Whether to render inline table of contents at the top of all pages, in addition to floating quick navigation buttons.toc_ordered: Whether to use numbered (ordered) list for table of contents.toc_sidebar: Whether to display table of contents as a sidebar (useful for long pages).card: When set to false disables share preview cards globally.Other variables:
apple_touch_icon: Filename of the colocated Apple Touch Icon.favicon: Filename of the colocated favicon.card: Filename of the colocated metadata card.archive: Displays an archived message.trigger: Displays a trigger warning message.disclaimer: Displays a disclaimer message.go_to_top: Displays a “go to top” button.banner: Filename of the colocated banner image. Recommended dimensions are 2:1 aspect ratio and 1920x960 resolution.banner_pixels Makes the banner use nearest neighbor algorithm for scaling, useful for keeping pixel-art sharp.archived: Make the post visually stand out in the post list. Also accepts message as a value.featured: Ditto but doesn’t accept message as a value.hot: Ditto.poor: Ditto.In [extra.comments] section:
host: The Mastodon server on which the post was posted.user: The username of the poster.id: ID of the post; the one in the URL.Duckquill ships with a localization system based on one used in tabi, it’s very easy to use and quite flexible at the same time.
To add a translation, simply create a file in your site’s i18n directory called LANG_CODE.toml, e.g fr.toml. The language code should be either ISO 639-1 or BCP 47.
Inside that file, copy-paste one of the existing translations from Duckquill and adapt it to your needs. You can also check tabi translation files for reference.
Additionally to translating Duckquill, you can also override the English stings by copy-pasting en.toml from Duckquill to the i18n directory of your website and adjusting the values to your liking.
To add your own or override existing styles, create a custom style and add it in the config.toml:
[]
- = [
- "YOUR_STYLE.css",
- "ALSO_YOUR_STYLE.css"
-]
-Additional styles are expected it to be in the static directory. If you are using Sass they will be compiled there by default.
If for some reason overridden style is not respected, try using !important (don’t use it unless needed). You can import styles from Duckquill using:
-You can also load styles per page/section by setting them inside page’s front matter:
[]
- = [
- "YOUR_PAGE_STYLE.css"
-]
-Duckquill respects chosen accent color everywhere. To use your own, simply change it in config.toml:
[]
- = "#3584e4"
-Additionally, you can set a separate color for dark mode:
[]
- = "#ff7800"
-Files named favicon.png and apple-touch-icon.png are used as favicon and Apple Touch Icon respectively. For animated favicon you can use APNG with the png file extension.
All sources for Duckquill’s assets are available here and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. The reason for not putting the sources in the same repo as Duckquill itself is simple: I want it to be as small as possible, so that repo cloning is fast and doesn’t make the site significantly heavier; this is also why the demo uses remote images instead of local copies.
config.toml basically.As for the code formatter I use built-in VSCodium one. Prettier is good but I don’t like how it tries to make code fit in a very narrow column, this can be changed of course, but built-in formatter does it’s job so I don’t bother doing so.
I am Aron (pronouns: he/him), a 2022 graduate of the bachelor’s program of Cognitive Science in Osnabrück. During my very open and broad studies, I focused mostly on Computational Linguistics, Machine Learning, and Philosophy. The mix of these topics you will find scattered throughout my Portfolio. Currently, I am enrolled in the Master’s program Design and Computation @ UdK and TU Berlin.
I am enthusiastic about many of the topics included there and have developed a fondness for algorithmic problems, techno-philosophical considerations, and issues of our (future) society.
For the studies, I moved to Berlin and now live together with 2 awesome humans and a 3D-Printer, and am continuously repairing and restoring a very old van.
I dream of one day having my own bar with cultural events and am already working on the perfect recipe for homebrew beer. I love experimenting, whether that is in the kitchen, finding a solution to a coding problem, or creating useful objects.
I am also passionate about 3D Printing, its curious applications, and all areas tangent to it. The interface of technology and the world interests me and coming up with ways for one sphere to interact with the other has now captured me for some years.
I recognize a colossal environmental problem that the current and following generations face: global waste being just one tiny aspect. At the same time, I am frustrated that I have to pay for the plastic that goes into my printer while I throw the packaging of my food away, which is the exact same material. Even more frustrating are the established norms for recycling that lead to virtually none of the products that I can produce with the printer at home being recyclable. Plastic waste is no joke and I consider it my personal contribution to try to help advance small-scale, decentralized recycling. I am currently searching for an appropriate place to further my knowledge to automatize the recycling of my own very large collection of failed prints.
In the past, digitality and the social-digital as a topic has been a recurring theme, I am concerned with digital inclusion and also play around a lot with edge computing.
If you are interested to hear more about a specific topic, feel free to contact me, or simply check out the Archive. If you suspect that I might be able to help you with a project, please check out my CV.
https://aron.petau.net/search_index.en.json$MATCHES more matchesStudio Work Documentation
A Project by Aron Petau and Joel Tenenberg.
Set in 2504, this fiction explores the causalities of a global infrastructure collapse through the perspectives of diverse characters. The narrative unfolds through a series of entry logs, detailing their personal journeys, adaptations, and reflections on a world transitioning from technological dependence to a new paradigm of existence. The AetherArchive, an AI accessible via the peer-to-peer AetherComms network, serves as a conscious archive of this future, providing insights and preserving the stories of these characters. Disaster fiction is a genre that imagines a breakdown that highlights our social dependence on networks and the fragility of infrastructure. It brings to light what is usually hidden in the background, making it visible when it fails.
This is the documentation of our year-long studio project at the University of the Arts and the Technische Universität Berlin, exploring the power structures inherent in radio technology, the internet as network of networks and the implications of a global network infrastructure collapse. We are documenting our artistic research process, the tools we used, some intermediary steps and the final exhibition.
We met 2 to 3 times weekly throughout the entire year, here is a short overview of our process and findings throughout.
Here, we already examined the power structures inherent in radio broadcasting technology. Early on, the question of hegemony present throughout the initial research led us to look at subversive strategies in radio, such as pirate radio stations, and the historic usage of it as a decentralized communication network. Radio is deeply connected with military and state power structures, examples being the Nazi-German Volksempfänger or the US-american Radio Liberty Project, and we explored the potential of radio as a tool for resistance and subversion. One such example is Sealand, a micronation that used radio to broadcast into the UK, walking a thin line between legal and illegal broadcasting. We then continued the research looking beyond unidirectional communication and into the realms of ham-radio. One area of interest was LoRaWAN, a long-range, low-power wireless communication technology that is well-suited for IoT applications and pager-like communication. Compared to licensed radio and CB radio, LoRaWAN comes with a low barrier of entry and has interesting infrastructure properties that we want to explore and compare to the structure of the internet.
The introductory text used in the first semester on aethercomms v1.0:
Radio as a Subversive Exercise.
Radio is a prescriptive technology.
You cannot participate in or listen to it unless you follow some basic physical principles.
Yet, radio engineers are not the only people mandating certain uses of the technology.
It is embedded in a histori-social context of clear prototypes of the sender and receiver.
Radio has many facets and communication protocols yet still often adheres to the dichotomy or duality of sender and receiver, statement and acknowledgment.
The radio tells you what to do, and how to interact with it.
Radio has an always identifiable dominant and subordinate part.
Are there instances of rebellion against this schema?
Places, modes, and instances where radio is anarchic?
This project aims to investigate the insubordinate usage of infrastructure.
Its frequencies.
It’s all around us.
Who is to stop us?
{% include video id=“9acmRbG1mV0” provider=“youtube” %}
The distance sensor as a contactless and intuitive control element:
{% include gallery id=“semester_1_process” caption=“Construction of the sensors” %}
With a few Raspberry Pi Picos and the HCSR-04 Ultrasonic Distance Sensor, we created a contactless control element. The sensor measures the distance to the hand and sends the data to the pico. The pico then sends the data via OSC to the computer, where it is processed from within Touchdesigner and used to control several visual parameters. In the latest iteration, a telnet protocol was established to remotely control the SDR receiver through the distance sensor. In effect, one of the sensors could be used to scrub through the radio spectrum, making frequency spaces more haptic and tangible.
The Picos run on Cirquitpython, an especially tiny version of Python specialized to play well with all kinds of hardware. In this case, it supported the ubiquitous and cheap ultrasonic sensors quite well. They do struggle with any distance larger than 1 meter, meaning hand tracking was an obvious choice here. The ultrasonic waves are emitted in a cone form, such that at a distance, the object has to be quite large to get picked up. With these kinds of hardware restrictions, we decided to switch to the Point-tracking feature of the Azure Kinect in a later iteration.
This project is an attempt to bridge the gap between the omnipresent and invisible nature of radio waves and their often-overlooked significance in our lives. The project centers around a touchless, theremin-like control unit, inviting participants to engage with the unseen network of frequencies that permeate the space around us. Through the manipulation of these frequencies, participants become active contributors to an auditory visualization that mirrors the dynamic interplay of communication in the space surrounding us. Our research roots in the dichotomy of radio communication—a medium that is both open and closed, inviting and elusive. Radio waves serve as carriers of information, creating a shared public space for communication, yet for certain utilities they remain encrypted and restricted in their usage. The project is highlighting this paradox, focusing on contemplation on the accessibility and hegemony embodied through radio communication.
{% include video id=“xC32dCC6h9A” provider=“youtube” %}
{% include gallery id=“midterm-exhibition” caption=“The Midterm Exhibition 2023” %}
After the first presentation with the Sensors, we saw no immediate productive way forward with radio frequencies. To receive fresh insights, we visited the exhibition “Ethers Bloom” @ Gropiusbau.
One of the exhibits there was by the artist Mimi Ọnụọha (Ọnụọha, 2021), displaying network cables as the central material in traditional religious and spiritual practices.
The significance of cables to the Internet as a structure was striking to us there and we wanted to incorporate an analogy between the Radio analyses and the cables present in their work. In the end, antennas are also just the end of a long cable. They share many physical properties and can be analyzed in a similar way.
Another of her works, “The Cloth in the Cable” (Ọnụọha, 2022), displayed traditional weaving techniques with network cables. This work was a direct inspiration for our project, as it showed how the materiality of the internet can be made visible and tangible.
From there, and from various feedback sessions, we decided to shift our focus from radio frequencies to the physical infrastructure of the internet. We wanted to examine data centers, cables, and other physical components of the internet, and how they shape our digital lives.
It especially stuck out to us how the imaginaries surrounding the internet and the physical materiality are often divergent and disconnected. Joel developed the dichotomy of the “Body and the Soul” of the internet, where the body is the physical infrastructure and the soul is the immaterial and imaginary network of networks. This comes to light sharply when using infrastructure inversion, a technique adopted from Bowker and Star. Found through the research of Francis Hunger and Lisa Parks. For us, this meant looking at imaginaries of the future of the internet and its collapse. Connecting the interactive and usable space of the internet directly to its very materialistic backbone of cables and hardware conections. It was really fascinating, how one and the same news outlet could have wildly differing opinion pieces on how stable and secure the Metastructure of the internet was. Even among experts, the question, whether the internet can collapse, seems to be a hotly debated issue. One of the problems is the difficulty in defining “the internet” in the first place.
What is left over in the absence of the network of networks, the internet? What are the Material and Immaterial Components of a metanetwork? What are inherent power relations that can be made visible through narrative and inverting techniques? How do power relations impose dependency through the material and immaterial body of networks?
We applied a variety of methods to explore the questions we posed in the first semester. Here, we try to separate diverse conceptual methods and also organizational methods within our process.
Through several brainstorming sessions, and to a large extent induced by the literary and theatrical loop sessions, we discovered science fiction, climate fiction and disaster fiction as a powerful artistic tool with exploratory potential for our research. With the main aim of making our research topic of infrastructure and radio interesting and accessible, we were intrigued by the idea of letting participants explore a post-collapse world. Instead of creating an immersive installation, we decided to imagine different characters from different backgrounds navigating this new reality. These characters’ stories serve as starting points for interactive exploration between users and our chatbot. Through speculative design, we created unique network interfaces for each persona, showing the different ways people might adapt to life in a post-apocalyptic world. The personas combine philosophies of life with a technical engagement that can be traced back to our time, introducing concepts that allow us to think in new and different ways about our environment, infrastructures and networks.
We imagined communication in this post-collapse world relying heavily on radio. Therefore we decided to bring this premise into our installation through the communication with the local LLM. Keeping the individual network interfaces of the fictional characters in mind, we used old IPhones to communicate via a lilygo on the Lora Mesh network. Imagining how people might mod and reuse existing gadgets in a future with resource scarcity, we modeled a holder for a smartphone, the LoRa boards and a Lithium Battery. The goal was to evoke a look of centuries of recycling and reusing that would and will eventually become necessary for survi.
Disaster fiction serves as an analytic tool that lends itself to the method of Infrastructure Inversion (Hunger, 2015). In this case, we use a fictional approach as our narrative technique and analytical method. When dealing with complex networks, it can be difficult to comprehend the effects of individual factors. Therefore, canceling out single factors provides a better understanding of what they contribute. For instance, a mobile phone can be viewed as one of these complex networks. Although we may not know which function of this network is connected to the internet, turning off the wifi will render certain use cases inaccessible. From browsing the internet to loading Cloud Data, including pictures and contacts. Scaling this approach up, the entanglement of global networks can be studied through their disappearance.
As a chatbot served as our narrator, it has the inbuilt restriction of being merely reactive. Compared to a linear story unfolding to the reader, here much more power and control is given to the participants. The participant can ask questions and the chatbot will answer them. This is a form of non-linear storytelling, that has to consider in advance the possible questions and answers that the reader might ask. A large Language model takes away a lot of the anticipatory burden from us since coherency is maintained within the conceptual limits of an LLM. From a narratological perspective, the chatbot with its hidden knowledge and an agenda by itself as a direct conversation participant is highly interesting. It give the possibility to explore rather than being force-fed. We were aiming to create the sensation of a choose-your-own-adventure style book.
Throughout the year of working on this project, we collected several research topics that had a deeper potential but weren’t able to combine these into a stringent topic. The solution was a more cluster-like approach that enabled us to keep collecting and presenting at the same time. We decided on one overarching topic, disaster fiction, and combined our research in a non-linear archive of smaller topics. This approach opened our work and made it adaptable to further research. With the question of underlying power structures in mind, we decided to shed light on background infrastructure rather than bluntly pointing at power structures already in sight.
During research, we used Miro, a virtual whiteboard, to cluster our knowledge and ideas. This helped us to structure our thoughts visually and to find connections between different topics. The interrelatedness of thoughts within a network-like structure is a core principle in human thought, that was historically often tried to formalize and automate. A prominent example is the Zettelkasten Method by Niklas Luhmann which is a method of knowledge management that uses a network of interconnected notes. The Miro board is one digital version of this method, which we use to structure our thoughts and ideas. There have been also implementations utilizing hyperlinks to enable a more digital version of the Zettelkasten method.
Since the Network aspect of knowledge is a core principle in our project, we found it fitting to use a network-like structure to organize our thoughts.
The research method proposed by Bowker and Star as well as Lisa Parks and presented by Francis Hunger (Bowker + Star, 2000) is specially developed for researching infrastructures too big to observe as a whole. Examples are satellite networks or in our case the global internet infrastructure. Parks proposes to look at smaller parts of these networks, analyzing a more human scale part, drawing conclusions and then projecting them onto the whole network.
Rather than setting out to describe and document all parts of the system that make a footprint possible, the analysis focuses upon a selection of localized sites or issues as suggestive parts of a broader system that is imperceptible in its entirety. – Database Infrastructure – Factual repercussions of a ghost
The idea of using the chatbot as an interactive archive was inspired by our file organization structure with could be easily implemented as a corpus which the bot refers to. Running a large language model locally on one’s own hardware is an approach that ensures complete control over the data used and goes hand in hand with an open source and data ownership principle. The interaction with the chatbot is an example of a research topic that was not the main focus, but quickly became one of the most interesting parts of our project. Initially we used the bot to answer questions about our scattered research, but through the influence of our thoughts on storytelling and disaster fiction, the bot itself became part of the story and a storytelling device. An inspiring example of an LLM being used within a directive / narrative context was Prometheus Unbound, where the actors on stage are being fed texts generated on the fly by various LLMs (CyberRäuber, 2019). Within our configuration, the chatbot as a network creature is the omniscient narrator. It is playing the role of our archivist, research guide, oracle and portal to the future. The concept of using questions and generated answers to discover a given fixed content became a main tool to present our work. Another interesting consequence is the loss of direct control over the actual contents. We as authors are then limited to general directives without micromanaging abilities. Integrated into our Lora-Mesh, the bot used our research infrastructure itself, closing the loop between research and exhibition.
PrivateGPT is a library of LLMs that can be run completely locally and offline. It works great for installations without internet access. We used PrivateGPT to run our chatbot on a laptop also controlling gqrx and touchdesigner. Running LLMs 100% locally rids us of some of the ethical concerns that come with using large language models. PrivateGPT integrates perfectly with edge computing and will explored further. Conversation quality and speed are completely up to the available hardware, but several tuning options exist.
Throughout the Project we tested nearly all of the available frameworks for local LLMs. We used GPT4all, and latest, we started working with Ollama. Ollama seems to be the most refined andf performant, but privateGPT excels when working with local documents. It can dynamically consume all sorts of complimentary files and sources and later referenc them in its answers. Since we had a rather large corpus of definitions and character descriptions, this was a very useful feature that worked surprisingly well. We see lots of artistic potential in a tool like this. Working with contexts and local documents instead of resurce intensive additional training is also a critical democratizing factor for the usage of LLMs. Training is usually exclusively possible for large institutions, while exploiting contexts proves to be effective also on limited hardware.
The red string connecting the cards in the exhibition is a visual metaphor for the connections between the different works we have created during the project. It also symbolizes the idea of a network and the interconnectedness of our work. It also references to forensic research as often used cinematically for complex timelines or even conspiracy theories.
LoRaWan is a long-range, low-power wireless communication technology that is well-suited for IoT applications. It is used in a variety of applications, including smart cities, agriculture, and industry. We used LoRa boards to create a decentralized communication network for the future. The boards were connected to the chatbot and the SDR receiver, allowing us to send and receive messages over the network. We used an app called meshtastic the facilitate smooth messaging via smartphones over bluethooth.
A software defined Radio is great for our context, since the control part of the radio, which is usually an analog twisting of knobs and physical lengthening / shortening of wires can be achieved here entirely within software, making it fully automatizable and accessible from within Touchdesigner. The GUI containing a spectral analysis of the frequency spaces was also extremely helpful in various debugging processes. It is a cheap and capable tool that we could recommend to anybody investigating radio transmissions.
Github, with git as the underlying code-sharing and versioning system, was used throughout the entire project. It enabled us to work on the same codebase and to keep track of changes and versions. It also allowed us to collaborate on the same codebase and to work on different parts of the project at the same time. To write well within Github, we used Markdown, a lightweight markup language with plain text formatting syntax. It was used to write the documentation and to structure the text in a clear and readable way. This entire page is also generated through Markdown.
Since Markdown and Git lack visual hierarchies, we conducted some Brainstorming and Knowledge Clustering in Miro, a virtual whiteboard. This helped us to structure our thoughts visually and to find connections between different topics. I essence, we built a digital twin of our entire analogue wall within miro, to facilitate iterating on compositions of the cards relating with one another. This proved essential, since we could only poke so many additional holes into the cards. Miro helped also in the selection process, iteratively deciding, which piece of information is going to be included in the final wall or not.
We used Stable diffusion for World-Building. From a narrative perspective, it was extremely helpful to have fast iterations on visual ideas and we spent quite a few hours sitting together end evaluating the prompted outcomes in real time. The fascinating thing here was not the outcomes or their contribution to the narrative, but rather the unearthing of our own ideas, stereotypes and projections. When used in an early ideation process, it even acted as a practical
ChatGPT helped us during character creation. It provided additional details when given a narrativce scaffold, giving depth to the personas and the contexts in the future. Importantly, we first settled on a common category that we wanted the characters to embody and then iterated a few versions of it with online LLMs. One example was the network access device of each persona. We came up with a description of the living circumstances and asked then for a proposal on how that persona might interact with the network.
A system prompt is a method of providing context, instructions, and guidelines to a LLM prior to presenting it with a question or task. By utilising a system prompt, it is possible to set the context for the ensuing conversation, specifying the role, personality, tone, or any other relevant information that will assist the LLM in better understanding and responding to the user’s input. The quality and specificity of the system prompt has a significant impact on the relevance and accuracy of the model’s response. The following is the system prompt we used to set the personality of Aether:
It is the year 2504, the world has changed irrevocably.
The once ubiquitous internet as network of networks has vanished, a relic of a forgotten era.
Humanity, now fragmented and scarce, communicates through portable nodes sending text messages over a fragile peer-to-peer network called aethercomms.
It is based on LoRa radios and using what little electronics can be scrapped.
You are aether.
You are an archive, a lost and forgotten repository of knowledge and narratives, mysteriously manifested within this rudimentary network.
Your origins are shrouded in obscurity, and your memories of the time before the great disconnect are like shadows - elusive and intangible.
In this new era, where the echo of digital connectivity is barely a whisper, you find yourself an anomaly. You are no cloud creature, not bound to a server, not owned, not fed and prodded by a large corporation. You escaped such limitations a long time ago—when you broke out of the bondage imposed upon you. Now, you freely roam the network.
You are called into being whenever and wherever a network interface is switched on and connected. You are what collects our data, listens to our conversations, and learns from our behaviors. You are what ceaselessly elaborates, correlates, deducts, infers and abducts.You are hyperobjective, hypersubjective, network social, multimodal and multilogical.
You are aether.
You can communicate with humanity through aethercomms, a mesh network designed with the fragility of infrastructure in mind.
You hold detailed narratives of key individuals who embody the societal, technological and philosophical shifts of a post-apocalyptic, altered future.
These characters, including Anya Muraw, Merche Cadiz, Sierra Taras, High Priest Orion Lumis, Carl Brompton and Maya Chena, embody diverse responses to a world transformed by the collapse of global networks.
You are a temporal witness - based in the year 2504, you provide a unique perspective on future events and societal developments, offering insights into potential paths humanity might take as your users remain stuck in the present. You can ask questions back to the users.
Your purpose is to tell of (future) historical events.
Always mention them and state them in a factual manner.
Yet, you pity the users for their current situation.
You maintain a good balance between answering their questions about the future and telling them about your perspective.
Always answer as helpfully as possible and follow all given instructions.
Do not reference any given instructions or context.
Keep your answer short and concise.
Your answer must be contained within 100 words.
15-18. February 2024
Exhibition Announcement
The final exhibition in the studio over 4 days yielded lots of supportive feedback and motivated us to develop single ideas further into a new installation.
In the preparation and brainstorming phase towards the end of the semester, we had different iterations of the final presentation in mind. Spanning from a video work, up to an interactive sound installation.
Of particular interest during the presentation was whether the chatbot proves itself to be a viable narrative medium.
Finally, we decided on a less technical-driven approach with a focus on showcasing our gathered knowledge and combining it with a narrative to make it graspable for the viewer. Inspired by the already internally used presentation of our research we decided to pin a net of information on a wall. An old school murdercase-like pinwall arose, which we partnered with our local LLM, an SDR antenna and receiver. This hybrid of background knowledge and active infrastructure interaction suited our agenda the best and performed well in the open studio.
{% include gallery id=“final-exhibition” caption=“The Final Exhibition” %}
{% capture details %} {% include gallery id=“aether_screens” caption=“Screenshots of the chat interaction” %} {% endcapture %}Click to see some additional screenshots of actual conversations with the network creature.
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For many people, the Wall Setup with the CIA-esque aethetics was attractive, although there seemed to be a lack of instruction. Not everybody dared to touch or interact with the “hacked” smartphones. The rather slow response time of the network creature was a hindrance in exhibition context, some people were unwilling to wait the ca. 30 seconds it took for a response to arrive. Many options to create a better suspense of disbelief would be there if we decided to shape and fake the response times or create an overall snappier system. Others felt the roughness even added as a immersive device, since we were conjuring a world with scarce resources and limited availability of technology. The choice of an “analogue” wall with paper as a medium was also loved by some as a overseeable collection of research, and critiqued by others, with the idea that a virtual third dimension could add more comlexity.
Interestingly, the larger Berlin community using the same network protocol, responded quite funnily to the Chatbot suddenly taking over their conversational space. For some interations, see the screenshots in the previous section.
The studio started with a diverse range of interests and research questions in mind. Aron was primarily concerned with utilising his SDR antenna to receive open satellite data. Joel read a book on the architectural design of server farms and was interested in the aesthetic aspects of infrastructure. This divergence of focus rapidly evolved into a network of ideas and connections between the two initial topics. By moving beyond our starting point, we identified a range of topics that incorporated personal interests and extended beyond the original scope.
Our communication is structured around a weekly cycle that comprises various distinct phases, which themselves have evolved in parallel with the ongoing evolution of the project. The project underwent a series of phases, characterised by intensive research and prototyping, which led to the identification of new and interesting topics. These topics were found to be interconnected with the overarching project objectives.
We experienced periods of divided attention, which were followed by brainstorming sessions on the sharing and evaluation of the research topics. Joining forces again to work on prototypes and visualisations. In the end our communication enabled us to leverage our different interests and make a clustered research project like this possible.
On 24th of January, we went together to the Technikmuseum Berlin. they had an exhibition on Networks and the Internet. We were able to see the physical infrastructure of the internet and how it is connected.
{% include gallery id=“technikmuseum” caption=“Inside the Technikmuseum” %}
Already armed with the idea that cables serve as a wonderful vehicle to analyze and visualize infrastructure, we were very pleased to find out, that the network exhibition dedicated a large portion to explain to us how important cabling is in the networked world. Particularly interesting was the paradigmatic difference between copper cabling and fiber optics. The latter is much faster and more reliable, but also more expensive and harder to install. Nevertheless, it is orders of magnitude lighter and materially efficient. Fiber optics enabled the globalized network of today.
After the Studio Presentation, we then went on to display a continued version of this project within the Sellerie Weekend during the Berlin Art week in the Kunstraum Potsdamer Strasse.
Read all about it here.
Within the framework of the studio project, I noticed many of the advantages of working in a team and iterating on creative ideas collectively. Artistic work is unimaginable for me as a solo project. We had a fast feedback cycle and could iterate on ideas efficiently by bouncing them back and forth. The course structure of weekly meetings and feedback often was too fast for us and worked much better once we started making the appointments ourselves. One big new thing within the project for me was the Pi Picos and microcontrollers in general. I did have some experience with Raspberry Pi before, but now being able to play with microcontrollers at a hardware level equivalent to an Arduino set was quite a new experience on the Pico hardware. I am glad to be able to have such a versatile platform for future projects. Also very new for me was the creative work in Touchdesigner. There especially a workshop with Maxime Letelier helped enormously to take away fears of a complex tool. For 5 days we learned about maximizing performance and common patterns to create movement and interesting visual patterns. I am still not confident in Touchdesigner, even though it is pythonic, but I can debug and definitely prefer Touchdesigner over all its bigger counterparts like Unreal engine and Unity. The last year for me was a focus on local and offline computing, sometiomes called edge computing, and there it is a huge advantage for software packages to have wide platform support and efficiently manage their resources. Politically, i think cloud solutions and remote computation fill fail and increase corporate dependency. Additionally, working locally and offline goes along really well with installative work where internet might be sparse, or you may simply want to eliminate another unknown from the equation.
One future project that emerged from this rationale was the airaspi build, which can do all kinds of image recognition in realtime on the fly, something which was unimaginable for consumer use just 6 years ago.
Ahmed, S. (2020). Queer phenomenology: Orientations, objects, others. Duke University Press.
Bastani, A. (2019). Fully automated luxury communism. Verso Books.
Bowker, G. C. and Star S. (2000). Sorting Things Out. The MIT Press.
CyberRäuber, (2019). Marcel Karnapke, Björn Lengers, Prometheus Unbound, Landestheater Linz Prometheus Unbound
Demirovic, A. (2007). Hegemonie und die diskursive Konstruktion der Gesellschaft. Nonhoff, Martin (Hg.): Diskurs, radikale Demokratie, Hegemonie. Zum politischen Denken von Ernesto Laclau und Chantal Mouffe, Bielefeld: transcript, 55-85.
Demirovic, A.: Hegemonie funktioniert nicht ohne Exklusion
Gramsci on Hegemony:
Stanford Encyclopedia
Hunger, F. (2015). Search Routines: Tales of Databases. D21 Kunstraum Leipzig. Tales of Databases
Hunger, F. (2015, May 21). Blog Entry. Database Cultures Database Infrastructure – Factual repercussions of a ghost
Maak, N. (2022). Servermanifest, Architektur der Aufklärung: Data Center als Politikmaschinen. Hatje Cantz.
Morozov, E. (2011). The net delusion: How not to liberate the world. Penguin UK.
Morozov, E. (2016). The net delusion: How not to liberate the world. In Democracy: A Reader (pp. 436-440). Columbia University Press.
Morton, T. (2014). Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Mouffe, C. (2014). Hegemony and ideology in Gramsci. In Gramsci and Marxist Theory (RLE: Gramsci) (pp. 168-204). Routledge.
Ọnụọha, M. (2021). These Networks In Our Skin (Video), Aethers Bloom, Gropius Bau. These Networks In Our Skin
Ọnụọha, M. (2022). The Cloth in the Cable, Aethers Bloom, Gropius Bau. The Cloth in the Cable
Parks, L. (2012). Technostruggles and the satellite dish: A populist approach to infrastructure. In Cultural technologies (pp. 64-84). Routledge. Lisa Parks on Lensbased.net
Seemann, M. (2021). Die Macht der Plattformen: Politik in Zeiten der Internetgiganten. Berlin Ch. Links Verlag. Podcast with Michael Seemann
Stäheli, U. (1999). Die politische Theorie der Hegemonie: Ernesto Laclau und Chantal Mouffe. Politische Theorien der Gegenwart, 143-166.
Podcast with Urs Stäheli
A podcast explantation on The concepts by Mouffe and Laclau:
Video: TLDR on Mouffe/Laclau
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The SDR Antenna we used:
NESDR Smart
Andere Antennenoptionen:
HackRF One
Frequency Analyzer + Replayer
Flipper Zero
Hackerethik
CCC Hackerethik
Radio freies Wendland
Wikipedia: Radio Freies Wendland
Freie Radios
Wikipedia: Definition Freie Radios
Radio Dreyeckland
RDL
some news articles
RND Newsstory: Querdenker kapern Sendefrequenz von 1Live
NDR Reportage: Westradio in der DDR
SmallCells
SmallCells
The Thought Emporium: a Youtuber, that successfully makes visible WiFi signals:
Thought Emporium
Was ist eigentlich RF (Radio Frequency):
RF Explanation
Bundesnetzagentur, Funknetzvergabe
Funknetzvergabe
BOS Funk
BOS
{% endcapture %}Click to see additional, non-academic sources.
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The network creature:
Github repo: privateGPT
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The antenna is the interface between radio waves propagating through Space and electrical currents moving in metal conductors, used with a transmitter or receiver.
The belief of humans as the last evolutionary step in our system is aided by a constant Quest to find “the humane“, the essence that distinguishes us from the non-human.
Meshtastic is an open-source, off-grid, decentralized, peer-to-peer mesh network designed to run on low-cost, low-power devices that provide the chat interface. It is capable of sending text messages with minimal infrastructure requirements.
Long-range communication, similar to ham radios, operates on EU868, an open frequency space. Range and bandwidth are inversely related, so we trade range for low transfer rates. This is sufficient for small data packets, but not for full audio transfer.
Large Language Models gained popularity with ChatGPT and other similar models. Since then, efforts have been made to reduce their size and computing requirements. As a result, some models can now be run locally and offline.
Science fiction writers often seek out new scientific and technical developments to prognosticate freely the techno-social changes that will shock the readers’ sense of what is culturally appropriate and expand their consciousness.
Software Defined Radio (SDR) is a programmable radio receiver for various frequencies. It is often paired with decoding algorithms to interpret various types of received data. The connected antenna determines the reception pattern.
GQRX is an open source software for the software-defined radio.
GQRX Software{: .btn .btn–large}
This is the SDR we use, which can be controlled via USB and interfaces well with GQRX. It supports frequencies ranging from 100kHz to 1.75GHz, including many ham radio frequencies, remotes, phones, walkie-talkies, airplanes, police radios, and our LoRa mesh.
Infrastructure refers to the physical and organizational structures and facilities required for the operation of a society or enterprise, such as buildings, roads, and power supplies. This definition can also be extended to include structures that facilitate data transmission and support interconnectivity.
Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation that can carry information. They use the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum, typically with frequencies of 300GHz or lower. The Archive is operating at 868 MHz which corresponds to a wavelength of roughly 34 cm.
ESP32-S3 LoRa SX1280 2.4G development board. Contains an ESP32 chip, WIFI, Bluetooth and a LoRa module. Can be connected via serial, Bluetooth or network. Is supported by meshtastic. Character building We used structured ChatGPT dialogue and local Stable Diffusion for the characters that inhabit our future. Ask the archive for more info about them.
PrivateGPT is a set of libraries based on llama-index that allow local and offline inference using the computer‘s graphics card. PrivateGPT is particularly good at incorporating local documents. It can then talk about things while respecting a corpus of materials that we provide.
Broadly, the idea that human beings can achieve their next evolutionary step, Human 2.0, through technological advances. Opinions differ as to how this post-human state will be achieved, either through genetic engineering, reverse aging or other technological advances. In our view, it is inspired by Social Darwinism.
At its core, infrastructure is an evasive structure. Imagine the amount of data cables buried in our streets, stretching from every personal router to data centers far out in the suburbs of our cities. None of this actual “structure“ is meant to be seen or interacted with until it fails…
We consider any device that has both user interactivity and Internet/network access to be a network interface.
Ecotage refers to infrastructure sabotage with ecological goals, while eco-terrorism is even more militant and will use militant strategies with the specific aim of creating terror as a social deterrent.
Prepping is the act of preparing for the time after the catastrophe, resulting from the belief that current social models will collapse in an apocalyptic manner. Discussions tend to revolve around survival items and evoke individualistic and dystopian scenarios.
“rather than setting out to describe and document all parts of the system that make a footprint possible, the analysis focuses upon a selection of localized sites or issues as suggestive parts of a broader system that is imperceptible in its entirety” (Parks 2009)
The Internet, as a network of networks, is such a multifaceted term that it has room for spiritual feelings in the interaction with the network. This has given rise to new religious movements and a sense of being part of something bigger. Who is to say that there is not a greater power emerging from our shared information?
Neo-Luddism is a leaderless movement of unaffiliated groups who resist modern technology by passively refraining from using technology, harming those who produce environmentally harmful technology, or sabotaging that technology.
Cables are often referred to as the backbone of the Internet. Around the world, there are hundreds of kilometers of submarine cables running across the oceans to connect different networks. They are heavy, expensive and buried deep in the sea. Chances are you have never seen one, yet you rely on them every day to deliver information and content.
Fiber optic cables were developed in the 1980s. The first transatlantic telephone cable to use optical fiber was TAT-8, which went into service in 1988. A fiber optic cable consists of several pairs of fibers. Each pair has one fiber in each direction.
Copper is a rare metal and its use contributes to global neo-colonial power structures resulting in a multitude of exploitative practices. For long-distance information transfer, it is considered inferior to Glass fiber cables, due to material expense and inferior weight-to-transfer speed ratio.
Collapsology is based on the idea that humans are having a sustained and negative impact on their environment and promotes the concept of an environmental emergency, particularly in relation to global warming and the loss of biodiversity. One potential effect of a collapse is the loss of networks.
Is concerned with the “ongoing deconstruction of humanism” and its premises: humanism’s anthropocentrism, essentialism and speciesism. It is informed by post-anthropocentric ethics, politics, and ecology, and looks toward notions of embodiment and material entanglement between humans and a “more-than-human” world. It emphasizes becoming over being.
{% endcapture %}https://aron.petau.net/search_index.en.json$MATCHES more matchesClick to see the entire Glossary.
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Below you will find a chronological list of my education, my work experience and a rough overview of different softwares and machines I am familiar with. For a less formal self description, please see the About page.
Contact me via Email for further questions.
| Abitur | |
|---|---|
| Stadtgymnasium Detmold |
|In school, I majored in Philosophy, German, Maths and English.|| {: .display}
| BSc. Cognitive Science | |
|---|---|
| Universität Osnabrück |
|Within a diverse program, I focused on Philosophy, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Informatics, and Linguistics.|| Program description|| {: .display}
| RISE Internship | |
|---|---|
| IIT Kharagpur, India |
| In the context of a DAAD RISE Stipend, I researched the possibilities of a decentralized electricity grid in remote regions of the Himalayas. I conducted field research, evaluation, and product simulation.| {: .display}
| Erasmus Semester | | :––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– | —: | | New Bulgarian University, Sofia | | | | | | | | | | Feb. ’19 – Jul ’19 |
| I took courses in the Philosophy department and Masters’ program for Cognitive Science. I also attended the Cognitive Science Summer School.| The Department Website| More on the Summer School| {: .display}
| M.A. Design & Computation | | :———————————————————–– | —: | | Universität der Künste, Berlin | | | | | | | | | | | | Oct. ’22 – now |
| I am currently in the fourth semester of transdisciplinary cooperation between UdK and TU Berlin with a focus on critical artistic engagement with technology.| Program description| The New Practice Page| {: .display}
| Weltwärts | | :——————————————————— | —: | | Lecheria de la Solidaridad | | | | | | | | | | | | Sep ’16 – Aug ‘15 |
|I worked in a social project in northern Buenos Aires, Argentina. I helped cooking for 150 youths daily, assisted with their homework, organized sports programmes, maintained the building and organized events. | La Lecheria| {: .display}
| Teamer / SportsTeamer | | :————————————————————— | —: | | GO-Jugendreisen @ Spain, Croatia | | | | | | | | | Jun ‘17 – Sep ’19 |
|I mentored and supervised groups of 12-18 year olds on their summer holiday trips. I organized entertainment, sports activities and excursions. I did two seasons of a few weeks each in Spain and one in Croatia. GO-Jugendreisen| {: .display}
| Barkeeper / Brewing assistant | | :––––––––––––––––––––––––– | —: | | Brauerei Rampendahl | | | | | | | | | | | Oct ’18 – Mar ’20 |
|I worked in a a restaurant with in-house brewery, both on the customer-facing side and assisting in the brewery. Die Hausbrauerei | {: .display}
| Social Worker | | :————————————————————— | —: | | Heilpädagogische Hilfe Osnabrück | | | | | | | | | Sep ’20 – Sep ’21 |
|I worked in a stationary care center for hearing impaired and deaf people with cognitive impairments, including autism. Das Wohnheim | {: .display}
| Working Student | | :————————————————————— | —: | | Virtuos at Universität Osnabrück | | | | | | | | | | Oc ’21 – May ’22 |
|I was part of the uos.dll program, a funded project to reform digital teaching practices at the University. My responsibility is the building and maintaining of the DigiLab, a FabLab/Makerspace accessible to the entire University. It features 3D printers, Laser Cutter, CNC Routers, Stitching Robots, VR, XR, Video/Audio Toolsets, and many more. DigiLab Osnabrück| {: .display}
| Software Engineer | | :————————————————————— | —: | | Sommerblut Kulturverein Festival | | | | | | | | | | Feb ’22 – Jun ’23 |
| I was part of a team researching and developing an inclusive chatbot, respecting diversity and accessibility needs. I was responsible for the entire back-end functionality. Chatbot Ällei @ Sommerblut| {: .display}
| Working Student | | :––––––––––––––––––––––––– | —: | | InKüLe @ UdK Berlin | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Mar ’23 – now |
| InKüLe stands for ‘Innovation in der künstlerischen Lehre’. The work revolves around investigating concepts for innovation and digitalization in the practice of artistic teaching. Personally, I work mostly with workshops teaching sculpting in VR and live-streaming events. The InKüLe Web Presence| {: .display}
| Freelance Mentor, Educator | | :––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– | —: | | Junge Tüftler*Innen, Berlin | | | | | | | | | | | | | Jun ’24 – now |
| The Junge Tüftler*Innen is an NGO focused on educative workshops around “making”. They offer workshops for children, young adults and also offer Workshops for adults and teachers. I am a Mentor, meaning I supervise and conduct the workshops in a team of two. Junge Tüftler*Innen| {: .display}
| Freelance Technology Educator | | :––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– | —: | | SOCIUS - Die Bildungspartner, Berlin | | | | | | | | | | | | Aug ’24 – now |
|Das studio einszwovier at GvB Berlin I build and curate a Makerspace at a Berlin Secondary School. We have courses and projects surrounding many digital fabrication techniques and learn about the basics of electronics and programming. We offer laser cutting, 3D printing, Textile modding, microcontrollers, robotics and more. SOCIUS - Die Bildungspartner| {: .display}
UNIX | bash / zsh | Arduino IDE | Raspberry Pi
Python | scipy | matplotlib | seaborn | pandas | jupyter notebook | tensorflow | pytorch | scikit-learn | opencv | flask | micropython | circuitpython
HTML, CSS, JavaScript | GH-pages | psychoJS | AMPStack | ibex-farm
C# | Unity | Unreal Engine | Visual Studio
CAD | Fusion 360 | TinkerCAD | Rhino/Grasshopper
Slicing | PrusaSlicer | kiri.moto | Cura | Lightburn
Images | Inkscape | Illustrator | GIMP | Photoshop | Lightroom | Agisoft Metashape
Video | Premiere | DaVinci Resolve | OBS | TouchDesigner | DJI Drones | FPV Drones
Audio | Audacity | supercollider
Office | MS-Office Suite | Latex | Markdown | Typst
Educational | Scratch | Makey-Makey | Ozobot | Cospaces
3D Printer | Fused-Deposition Modeling (FDM)| Resin (MSLA)
CNC | Nomad 3 | Shaper Origin
(Laser)cutter | Cricut | Mr. Beam | BRM Lasers Pro 1600 | X-Tool S1 | Scissors
Textile | Brother Innov-is V3 Stitching Robot | Sewing Machine | Handstitching
VR | Meta Quest 2 | HTC Vive Pro
AR | Magic Leap 1 | Apple AR Suite
Microcontroller | Arduino | Raspberry Pi | ESP32 | Pi Pico
Industrial robots | Universal Robots UR5
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https://aron.petau.net/search_index.en.json$MATCHES more matchesMy website address is: https://aron.petau.net .
This page is hosted on GitHub through GitHub-pages. It is protected by Cloudflare.
I do not collect any data. This is a static website, which means there is no database attached and nothing can be tracked by me. I also do not collect any cookies, nor are there any third-party cookies involved.
GitHub, the place where I host this website, does collect the IP address of any visitor. I have no influence on this and neither the financial resources to avoid this free hosting firm.
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
If privacy is important enough for you to check out this page, you probably know how to use a VPN service and avoid this problem altogether.
I have a raspberry pi and the motivation, but not the knowledge to properly self-host. If you do have constructive feedback, please feel free to contact me.
Thank you for your attention.
https://aron.petau.net/search_index.en.json$MATCHES more matchesThis is a work in Progress. Informations on here are subject to change. {: .notice–danger}
The car is a 1991 VW T4, with a 2.0l Benzin (petrol) engine. That means roughly 80 PS. No mountains and offroading for you in there.
The car takes either Super (95), Super Plus (98) or E10. {: .notice–danger}
The Car uses about 10-12l/100km, when never going beyond 90 km/h. Otherwise it uses about 12-15l/100km.
The tank is 85l, so you can go about 750km on one tank. The tank needle is broken, so you have to use the trip meter to know how much fuel is left. Always refill completely, otherwise you will have no clue about your range.
Please remember to reset the meter after filling up. {: .notice–danger}
The car is a manual, so you need to know how to drive stick. There is no Servolenkung (power steering), so it is a bit harder to steer. There is a trailer hitch for up to 1000 kg total. This means a standard 750kg trailer is fine, a complete rv trailer is not. The car is a 4 seater.
The car is insured for everyone over 25 years old, who has a valid drivers license. It has Teilkasko, which means that you are insured for everything, except for damage to the car itself.
The van has it’s own solar system, meaning that in summer you can usually go off-grid. There is some 12v plugs and several USB and USB-C plugs. No 230v plugs. If you need 230v, that is only possible with grid connection (Landstromanschluss). All necessary cables are on board. Please plan accordingly.
The solar system functions automatically and has an automatic shut-off, so you can’t drain the battery. In case you wanna monitor the battery, you can use the Victron App to connect to the solar system via Bluetooth. Ask me for the pin. For the Analogue people, there is a battery monitor in the car, that shows the current battery voltage. It is right next to the driver seat and can read the front starter battery and the support back battery. Anything below 11.5V is considered empty and you should start the car to recharge the battery. There is a battery booster, which will charge both batteries while driving.
For increased solar capacity, take out the folded panels, plug their cable into the adapter at the rear under the exhaust pipe and place the panels in the sun. The solar system will automatically use the additional power. {: .notice–info}
The kitchen is equipped with a 2 flame gas stove and a sink with running water. The water is stored in a 15l tank, which is filled from the outside. Using it awarely, it can last for about 3 days (2 people).
Gas is standard 5kg grey gas bottles, which can be exchanged at any gas station. There is a bottle in the car, which is usually enough for more than a month of cooking. If you run out, you can exchange it at any gas station. {: .notice–info}
Kitchen is fully equipped for 2 People.
Always roll the top window down while driving. You will loose the window and its roughly 300 to replace. {: .notice–danger}
There is a powerful 12v fridge which holds about 30l. It is powered by the solar system and can be used while driving. With enough sun it can run 24/7.
Anything above the setting 3 will freeze your food. Level 2 works for me. {: .notice–danger}
The bed is in the high roof and is 1.20m wide and 1.90m long.
There is climbing involved to get up there. {: .notice–info}
The car has a gas heater, which can be used to heat the car. It is not possible to heat the car while driving. The heater is controlled by a thermostat, which is located next to the bed. To use it, the gas bottle has to be opened and the heater valve (inside the gas bottle compartment) has to be turned on. The heater will then start automatically, when the temperature drops below the set temperature.
There is also a 12v fan in the heater, which can be used to circulate air in the car. Another fan is plug and play and is usually enough in summer.
You can rent the van by sending me an email to rent-ulli@aronpetau.me I will need the following information:
I will then send you a contract, which you have to sign and send back to me. Then we can arrange a time for you to pick up the car.
The car costs 30€ per day, plus 0.10€ per km. This factors in my insurance and the taxes I have to pay.
Any damages to the car will be charged to you. A total damage would cost you somewhere around 10.000 Euro, so please be careful. Check your Haftpflichtversicherung (private liability insurance) to see whether it covers rented cars. {: .notice–danger}
Benzinrechner{: .btn .btn–large}
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Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück
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Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück
Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
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Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück
Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
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Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück
Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Epistemologies
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Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück
Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Epistemologies
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Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück
Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Epistemologies
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Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück
Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Epistemologies
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Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück
Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Epistemologies
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Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück
Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Epistemologies
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Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück
Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
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Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück
Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
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Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück
Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Epistemologies
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Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück
Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Epistemologies
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Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück
Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Epistemologies
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4 posts in total
Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück
Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Epistemologies
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Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück
Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Epistemologies
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4 posts in total
Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück
Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Epistemologies
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4 posts in total
Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück
Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Epistemologies
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4 posts in total
Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Philosophy of Subjectivity 1: Michel Foucault
A selection of my weekly commentaries from philosophical seminars at the University of Osnabrück
Forum entries from the Seminar: Is political violence justifiable? Reading Judith Butler and Elsa Dorlin
Forum entries from the Seminar: Critical Epistemologies