Kelly Oliver

This paper argues that Arendt's conception of non-human animal appearance can be put into a productive dialogue with recent developments in critical animal studies (CAS) and animal rights theory (ART), especially with the so-called political turn in ART, where notions such as (dependent) agency, zoopolis, and animal agora play an important role. Critically examining the animal condition in Arendt's account of the human condition, and focusing on the animal condition in Arendt's work means exploring her potential contribution to political theory in a world where non-human-animals and nature are seen as making claims of entry into the political community. Can Arendt's work help us rethink the boundaries of the political community beyond the human species? And, more specifically, how might her conceptual resources be used to think the political agency of non-human animals?

Wearable electronics is a nascent sector of technology that is already generating a lot of excitement and speculation as a clear candidate for (yet another) disruptive innovation. Data from the (social) Internet in combination with various deployments of ubiquitous computing such as the Internet of Things (IoT) together a promise of unprecedented intersection of the online and offline worlds, a new dimension rich with ambient information. Wearables present therefore an incredible opportunity to re-invent how we connect to ourselves and the world around us. And perhaps this is a timely intervention for modern civilisation.

The technological aspect of modern socio-technical systems enables great flows of information, vastly extending human agency as well. Essential social processes are enabled and carried out over communication technologies; fundamental social structures are changing. However, the opportunities to witness one another, already tenuous in physical presence, do not smoothly transition into the new generation of technology-mediated interactions, be it person-to-person or person-to-system.

It is only through the act of witnessing one another that people establish presence and develop trust, in ever- expanding merging biological, social and algorithmic realities. As a technological medium acting at the very boundary of the individual in both the physical and digital world, it would be interesting to design wearables that enhance witnessing in modern network(ed) societies.

This work approaches the effort simultaneously from Policy Analysis, sociology and Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspectives. Key references include Marshall McLuhan (Medium Theory), Barry Wellman (Networked Individualism) and Caroline Nevejan (Witnessed Presence). This is coupled with a case-study of an upcoming wearable called BOND by Kwamecorp, a new media agency. BOND utilises the touch modality that wearables uniquely can harness, to send tickles between a pair of synced devices. The product is targeted at intimate couples. As such, both the wearable form-factor as well as the novel communication channel make BOND ideal for investigating witnessed presence in wearables.

It was found that wearables in their mobility and portability can be imagined as technological organs on the modern human being. A useful design mantra for wearables was condensed as contextual embodied augmentation. Context- sensitivity demands specialised affordances; embodiment refers to intuitive extensions and calls to action that keep users immersed in the real world, as opposed to the reality-in-a-screen; and finally augmentation is recommended as a design principle such that wearables provide ways the enrich reality with information. Touch-modality is seen as a promising new avenue unique to wearables; digital stimuli can be ‘affective’ on users.

Wearables in their selective and portable enhancement divorce traditionally conflated social function and physical place, condensing expertise into portable devices. In bridging the digital-physical world, wearables become the offline equivalent of digital ‘avatars’, which gain value by storing valuable personal information and furthermore using them to provide pointed affordances for (inter)actions in both online and offline worlds.

An ethnographic study of Kwamecorp and a design history of BOND contributes an insider look at new technology development in a contemporary startup setting. Interviews conducted with nine designers from Kwamecorp are analysed to elucidate the design intentions of BOND.

BOND’s Touch module is confirmed to facilitate witnessed presence by enhancing co-presence among interacting parties. This is enabled by a ‘quantum of presence’ interaction. This discretised form of connectivity is in line with a general trend of affordances to counterbalance the greater frequency of connection and communication in modern living. These kinds of communications, in their reduced format, are both easily deployable in wearables and, while the reduction in complexity can be ambiguous, it is a feature that invites more creative participation from both parties.

Ultimately, the thesis is useful to anyone interested in developing both industrial and consumer applications with wearable electronics, those interested in how sociological insights can help actively in the design of new technologies for socio-technical systems, or as a primer for witnessed presence.

On Dorothy Cross's spurs, animal and sexual differences.

As I've been saying in several classes since writing this - I have a more considered reading of the 'carrier bag theory of fiction' now after remembering to go back to Donna Haraway!

La última niebla [The Final Mist] (1935) by María Luisa Bombal presents a female protagonist traumatized by the restrictive gender norms of 1930s Argentina. One would expect that the protagonist’s increasing alienation throughout the novel and her ultimate surrender to an identity that she loathes would generate a compassionate response from readers. However, the text has generated a significant body of notably unsympathetic—and even censorious—criticism from scholars. In an effort to analyze why Bombal’s novel and the protagonist’s performance have been problematic for critics, I turn from literary theory to philosophy. By combining Richard Rorty’s vision of a “literary culture” with Kelly Oliver’s theory of “witnessing,” I argue that we’ve been asking the wrong questions of this text. Rather than asking if the text, the author, and/or the protagonist are socially committed enough or experimental enough or feminist enough for us to care, we should be asking what this text reveals about the process of human subjectivity in general, marginalized subjectivity in particular, and how we can create more ethical relationships between self and other.

Abstract: The Old Christian Captive, Ruy Pérez de Viedma, and his Algerian traveling companion, Zoraida, make their appearance on Spanish soil at the height of Spain’s polemical debate on the place of the Moors within the Spanish nation. Starting from Dorotea’s notorious question as to Zoraida’s identity, this article offers a focused examination of the arrival scene in Chapter 37. First, I seek to re-contextualize Dorotea’s question within her own story of displacement and the text’s historical context of absolutist interpretive practices. Second, I explore Ruy Perez’s initial response, positing that he sets up the rhetoric of paradoxy that he will use throughout his longer retelling of their tale two chapters later. Finally, I examine Zoraida’s own brief yet critical introduction as an exemplar in discordia concors. Taken together, Dorotea’s question, Viedma’s response, and Zoraida’s interjection model a rhetorical paradoxy that seeks to move us beyond the dogmatic recognition of Zoraida, and countless converts like her, as either a Christian or a Moor.

Resumen: El cristiano cautivo, Ruy Pérez de Viedma, y su compañera argelina de viaje, Zoraida, llegan a España en la cumbre del polémico debate sobre el lugar de los moros en la nación española. A partir de la pregunta notaria de Dorotea acerca de la identidad de Zoraida, este trabajo examina detalladamente la llegada de la pareja en el capítulo 37. Primero, trato de re-contextualizar la pregunta de Dorotea dentro del marco de su propia historia de desviación y el contexto histórico de las prácticas interpretativas absolutistas de la novela. Segundo, exploro la respuesta inicial de Ruy Pérez, sosteniendo que él establece la retórica de paradoja que usará a lo largo de su historia dos capítulos después. Finalmente, examino la auto-presentación breve pero imprescindible de Zoraida como una figura ejemplar de discordia concors. En su conjunto, la pregunta de Dorotea, la respuesta de Viedma y la presentación de Zoraida ejemplifican una retórica paradójica que intenta llevarnos más allá del reconocimiento dogmático de Zoraida, y de los demás nuevos cristianos como ella, como simple cristiana o mora.

This essay reflects on the constitution of subjectivity in relation to transcendence specifically through an analysis of responsibility. The openness to re-thinking transcendence in continental philosophy led to a corollary re-thinking of subjectivity as constituted in response to otherness or transcendence, in such a way, however, that emphasized the utter passivity of the subject. This essay attempts to forge a path forward for thinking about the constitution of responsible subjectivity, beyond the ruinous alternative of either the subjugating or subjugated self, to a subject able to respond to transcendence in such a way that does not threaten the inviolability of transcendence. Deliberating with, and beyond, Jean Wahl, Emmanuel Levinas, and Kelly Oliver, this essay argues that the various accounts of responsibility found in Jewish and Christian scriptures can provide an articulation of subjectivity as constituted by its relation to transcendence, in which transcendence is understood as both a movement and an end—a movement undertaken by a self towards that which remains ever other.