“Materiality” and its effacement

Discourse and the Materiality of Its Artifacts

Minds, Things, and Materiality

In a rich and thought-provoking paper, Lambros Malafouris argues that taking material culture seriously means to be ‘systematically concerned with figuring out the causal efficacy of materiality in the enactment and constitution of a cognitive system or operation’ (Malafouris 2004, 55). As I understand this view, there are really two intertwined claims to be established. The first is that the t...

Emerging Materiality

In this article we look at how materiality emerges from complex chains of mediation in creative software use. The primarily theoretical argument is inspired and illustrated by interviews with two composers of electronic music. We argue that computer mediated activity should not primarily be understood in terms of simple mediation, but rather as chains of complex mediation in which the dominatin...

Materiality , materialization

What is materiality? And is it of a different order from semiosis? In this commentary I reflect on the place of materiality—that quality of material phenomena—and materialization—the processes by which such qualities are actualized in social life—in Matthew Hull’s brilliant book, Government of paper (GoP). The analytic materiality is central to Hull’s ethnography, both theoretically (it informs...

Mathematics, Morality, and Self-Effacement∗

I argue that certain species of belief, such as mathematical, logical, and normative beliefs, are insulated from a form of Harmanstyle debunking argument whereas moral beliefs, the primary target of such arguments, are not. Harman-style arguments have been misunderstood as attempts to directly undermine our moral beliefs. They are rather best given as burden-shifting arguments, concluding that ...