Interesting – Antikythera is a think tank funded through the elite-philanthropic Berggruen Institute which, to me, looks like a successor shelter to the oligarch-money-funded Moscow-based Strelka Institute, where Benjamin Bratton was a key figure before it closed after the start of the war. Other organisations and individuals that seem to form part of this overlapping network of Bratton-adjacent theory / art / tech infrastructure include Trust (with Callum Bowden and and Nick Houde), The New Centre and figures such as Reza Negarestani and eflux’s Julieta Aranda, Serpentine (with Ben Vicker’s (and his unMonastery project) and HU Obrist (related, among other things, to the (Epstein-funded) John Brockman’s Edge world), and a wider Antikythera/Berggruen orbit including Metahaven, Lukáš Likavčan and Thomas Moynihan.

Hm.... this sounds a bit exaggerated to me but maybe i'm just naive...

That's interesting - I very much have located the resurgence of the "soldier-type patriot" (and groups like https://xcancel.com/RTCORGUK/) outside of academia...

That's very much the positivist output-focused scholarship that is cherished in academia

This also was the core argument of early digital humanities... and yet, we're still here

Reminds me a bit of the "Essay" function on PECE: https://colab.ws/articles/10.1007%2F978-3-030-77431-8_3

Database books :)

The idea of a double research agenda, the tensions between what researchers want to do and what the university expects them to do....

Where's experimentation located in relation to the university/mainstream discourse?

In a way, this reminds me a bit of the work we're (still) doing as part of COPIM/OBF WP6...

This is quite dated now, but simply being OA (with any further specification of what kind of OA) seemed to have been enough to not be "your typical journal" in 2005...

what a lovely new (at least for me) word!

I think this is one of the fundamental misconceptions underlaying a large part of the historical and contemporary OA and open science discourse

Claudio Aspesi makes a nice argument around content-business and data-offerings here https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1100&context=scholcom "Elsevier, Pearson and Cengage in particular are transforming themselves into data analytics companies built atop their content, effectively adding ways to monetize it. None of these companies shows any inclination to abandon its traditional content business, and for sound reasons. These businesses are very large relative to the overall size of either company, and failure to sustain their profitability would have severe consequences for their respective valuations. In addition, without content these companies would have a much harder task building credible data offerings."

Which of course appeals to neoliberal universities

I like the catchyness of this statement, even though I think it's pretty simplifying considering the entangled history of print technology, the institutionalisation of Western science, the formation of academic disciplines etc..

It might be interesting to make a similar paper-related argument in relation to the 16th/17th century transition from feudalism to market capitalism (which I think is where Ricardo locates the "origin of capitalism as we know it") that overlapped with the emergence of the first academic "journals" - even though, if i remember correctly, those mostly were for free / gifts.

So who makes these politics for him?

I struggle how he uses the word site... I'd say that these infrastructures are a result or can give a reason to discuss and experiment with all the things he suggests but they're not and do not facilitate any experimental engagement?

Hmmmmm, I don't agree that altmetrics are a critical response to the issue of research assessment/quantification... Aren't they just another side of the same attention-, impact-, and individual-productivity-economy?

I think he also defines infrastructures in a quite technical way and especially as something related primarily to research output. But he seems to understand them as less deterministic as Leigh Star - not only as sites of exclusion or inclusion but also as sites of experimentation with who and what is included why, maybe.

Hmmm... not very sure about this... who experiments with whom? which discussions does he talk about, how are they facilitated, and where do they happen? I haven't read Angela's and Leslie's article on the DOI yet but I guess it might be interesting here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003290650-26/digital-object-identifier-angela-okune-leslie-chan

I like that he here alludes to the social, practical, and situated dimensions of open access and its many versions which is, as i a bit neglected in research on OA, infrastructural or not.

I think a lot has changed in "infrastructure studies" since then... I guess also through Leigh Star's own work, Berlant etc...

Questions of scalability also inherently touch on questions of practice and relationality rather than just the physical infrastrucutres such as computer terminals?

I'm not completely sure about the connection between infrastructures and relations and practices? Are these part of or, as she seems to suggest here, still somehow external to infrastructures?

This is very much in line with Zapatista frameworks and similar struggles for buen vivir etc.. I find it a bit odd that these are not referenced here

love and friendship in lieu of competition? seems almost a bit "dated"....

I like how here the question of what the rearch militant / militant research is and can be gets tied in with the problem of value/evaluation/validation

I really like this bit - I think it is a good reminder (and mirror) for everybody engaged in "critical" research

I am not so sure about this... there has been a lot of engagement in social science in revaluating what the subjects/objects of their research practices are - also against the background of dissolving the binary between activist and academic work (for example, Casa-Cortés or Savransky)

What does this imply regarding academic formats and practices? Can they be places for militant research? And if yes:how?

I am wondering about how these "interconnections between different theaters" work in practice? In the following, the article seems to talk about academic and activist practices/actors as two separate spheres again....

I like this end....

Also, many of the younger people I know are super experienced with this stuff.... even though they haven't been trained specifically

It's a bit the Matthew Kirschenbaum argument.... and the ongoing discussion whether one needs to be / can be expert in everything or can share/pool responsibility and expertises

What I struggle a bit with is that, in the first part of the chapter, does not acknowledge that there are a lot of people experimenting with more environmentally sustainable models for (post-)digital sharing, preservation etc.. And in the second part of the chapter, she lists all these efforts making it seem as they were her own ideas, suggestions, and inputs....

could a similar climate/energy/etc argument not also be made in relation to the "good old book"?

I'm not sure what "quality digital text" is?

it's a bit weird to conflate open access with "high tech" digital publications

I find this argument a bit simplistic considering the efforts of the many initiatives concerned with the problematics with the "digital divide"..... https://varia.zone/en/the-network-we-de-served.html

Hello everybody

This reminds me of https://www.nourbese.com/poetry/zong-3/ which transports a gesture quite different from Goldsmith's

yawn enoji ;)

i find this solutionism paired with all these generalisations very annoying.

there was never a naive stage of globalisation

what kind of diversity he's talking about? and where does it come from all of the sudden?

ah yes, i missed these two in the mix so far.... but here they are! :)

blaming them for what?!!!

that's very bifo berardi.... i don't believe in it

what is this?

was another internet ever possible? or is the possibility of another internet not an incredibly elitist idea?

now i'm not sure anymore that i understood "deautomatization* correctly. I interpreted it much more technical (as in: making surfing or interacting online less seemless, more fragmented, more "hands-on").....

i like that

:))))

inversing Marxism by using Marxism? ;)...

nooooooooooo.... (at this point of the reading i'm getting increasingly annoyed by phrases like these)

this is also not exactly a new idea....

i find these exceptionalist and self-centred statements pretty difficult

this aren't exaclty opposites or "either-or-s"

Are they?

Reading groups could be hosted around different topics from the publications, tags: #ReadingGroup1 #topic; #ReadingGroup2, #topic;....

There can be diverse reading groups hosted around the publication / through hypothesis. #ReadingGroup1 #topic, #ReadingGroup2 #topic etc.....

I can't help thinking that certain people rather than pumping it up, should change down the volume... otherwise it might be to loud for hearing some of the more feeble voices emerging through the "maximisation of thought"....

maximization of thought.... weird word choice....

I haven't had time to read the entire text but it seems to be a very good explanation to why metrics are definitely NOT about research quality but first and foremost money.....

I'm not sure if this does not only lead to an "inversion of the problem" while not solving the question about the sense of metrics....

Both the rights perspective and the idea of knowledge as common good have a long tradition in Latin American discourses on open science and OA. I think this reform might include different perspectives than DORA etc.

I find that a very interesting condition - even though it migh appear as deterministic and exclusive. It seems like a bottom-up, community organised / negotiated / owned definition / control of qualitiy that I find quite interesting

Just posting some quotes from the Zaveri text we read last time here.... The authors seem to neglect all the potential pitfals to inclusivity Zaveri discussed....

• Exclusion from and inclusion in social structures imply that someone has more power over others and that there is either an explicit or implicit power relation ship influencing praxis
• social inclusion is a multidimensional, contextual and relational process
• inclusiveness and equality in participation both depend on various social cleavages such as gender, age, class, ethnicity, education, and geography. Inclusion and full and equal par ticipation usually depend on existing socially structured power asymmetries. Even if there is no explicit exclusion, there may be implicit exclusion and discrimination

What I really miss in this entire text is the component of situatedness - both in their idea of "indicating" and in their own (non-existent) positioning.

I find that very abstract... They seem to argue within a framework, in which resarchers (apart from using different (qualitative/quantitative) methods) in principle appear as one big community with an universal notion of research/knowledge at its centre that - through indicating - can be split in smaller social entities.

Does that mean that indicators, rather than tools of governance, become a "pretext" for discussing scientometrics and evaluation in general? (this is somehow related to Janneke's annotation just above=

There is a similar claim e.g. within Participatory Action Research (PAR) frameworks that includes the "objects" of a study into the research and evaluation design. https://organizingengagement.org/models/participatory-action-research-and-evaluation/ I find it a bit strange that these are not mentioned at all. But maybe it's because of the transdisciplnarity focus....

FOOTNOTES:

1. Jacques Rancière, "Politique, identification, subjectivation." In Aux bords du politique (Paris: La Fabrique, 1998).
2. Carmen Giménez Smith, "Rosa Alcalá: An Interview, a review. " Letras Latinas Blog, November 3, 1011.
3. Cristina Rivera Garza, "Desapropriademente". In the original Spanish language edition of Los muertos indóciles. Necroescritura y desapropiación. (Mexico City: Tusquets Editores, 2013)
4. Floriberto Diaz, Escrito: Comunalidad, energia viva del pensamiento mixe, eds. Sofia Robles Hernández & Rafael Cardoso Jiménez (Mexico City: UNAM, 2007).
5. Maurizio Lazarato, "Struggle, Event, Media." In The Green Room: Reconsidering the Documentary and Contemporary Art #1, eds. Maria Lind and Hito Steyerl (Berlin: Sternberg Press. 2009), 216.
6. "Intercambio entre Boaventura de Sousa Santos y Gladys Tzul Tzul en LASA 2015"; YouTube. June 16, 2015, www.youtube.com/wa1ch!v-0hqsefaXQ-8.
7. See Christian Marazzi, The Violence of Financial Capitalism (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2010).

Hello, welcome everybody to The Re-Reading Room!

Hellloooooo

Hello! Welcome to The Re-Reading Room. If you'd like to add to, adapt, or question the open terms of engagement for our collaborative undertaking, please do so by adding your annotation or note.

I love that she puts a (Re)Introduction at the end

i think there's a very thin line between letting others speak / look better and appropriation

footnote 15: what's meant here?

I would like to have a bit more "formal" references here. I would like to know in which text e.g. Appadurai wrote on the intersubjective.... I understand that formal referencing does put a weird distance between the author referenced and the writer. but it also can be a way of paying tribute of staying/makin accountable

i don't have a clue on what's meant here. and how this connects to urban (and written) space...

I am not sure what's meant there... what's the difference between storytelling and writing? and isn't every text performative (that's e.g. what johanna drucker says) in the sense that a text is understood differently by every reader and thus never fixed, unequivocal but open-ended, context-specific etc.

it's only here, in footnote 9, that i really get what the author wants,,, or at least i think i get it ;)

the reading process is quite interesting. that switching back and forth between the footnoes and the text, in a way defying the linearity of the text

I very much wonder about the author's writing process. did they write the more poetic text first and then added the footnotes? did they write them in parallel? was the more poetic/embodied writing a way to get a grip on the theoretical framings?

This footnote 8 seems quite important. here the author explains somatic inquiry / embodied writing (as a threshold experience)

distant, analytical writing vs. embodied writing (see also the adrienne rich text)

somatic encounters around/with texts? with/in space?

I am wondering a bit about the author's need to explain in a "scientific way". Can't / shouldn't somatic inquiry/embodied writing claim to be a valid method of "sense making" / world making without always having to lean on explanation to justify itself?

Also: why have these two distinct layers: the "poetic text body" and the "explaining footnotes"? Why not try to mix these layers?

a method: somatic inquiry as being in between - in between here and there, now and then, my text and your text, you and I, us and them, academia and outside of academia,

undecidedness, suspension, ambiguity

interesting thought when we think about reading and writing as relational activities.

hello

i am wondering a bit where/how Sedwick's work really is enabling. I read "Paranoid and Reparative Reading" with my art school students and they were frightened by the "academic-ness" of the text...

I wonder about how this relates to scholarly (reading, writing, research) practice as/and politics: How, in practical terms, can one – through reading (together, alone) – work reparatively against and beyond the paranoid reflexes of contemporary academia (without being able to entirely overcome them)? Or: how can a reading practice resist its instrumentalisation as a tool or a vehicle for pre-established meanings or identities and instead operate as a (performative) facilitator of “hope” or “work of love”? (the possibility for different futures, new social meanings etc.).

I'm all in for explicitly stating principles but they themselves are likely to become normative. A processual, relational, negotiated, and situated framing of openness (what Sarah Kember calls "opening out from...") might make more sense here?

I have a problem with the notion of safe space. I basically don't believe in them. I find the quite interesting what Arao & Clemens say in these regards: Certain discourses are risky, difficult and challenging. Therefore, they are likely to produce controversy and contradiction. Ruling out conflict in these situations can easily become a violent gesture in itself. As Arao & Clemens remark, the pervasive nature of systemic and institutionalised oppression – e.g. through sexism, homophobia, heterosex-ism, ableism, religio-spiritual oppression, ageism – ultimately “precludes the creation of safety in a dialogue situated, as it must be, within said system” (2013; 139). Consequently, they suggest to replace the notion of “safe space” with the idea of “brave space”. The latter is emphasizing the need for courage rather than the illusion of safety.

This i find quite useful... as some sort of checklist applied to "open" formats and processes

so who is this "we" then? and is "truly inclusive" a thing at all?

i guess it's the same as in these normative, universalist, and de-contextualised framings of openness, euqity, justice employed in a neoliberal "politically correct" rhetoric....

I would find it interesting (yet potentially confliictuous and hurtful ;)) to look at the initiatives we've been involved in against this background... It's also, among other, the reason i suggested this text as some sort of meta-reading for the online reading group... i find that, mainly because of the examples, it works quite effectively against that kind of "sleepy self-content" with regard the own work/criticallity that, i guess, no one is immune of....

also her framing of gender seems a bit binary...

This seems a bit simplicistic....

as in "open" platforms, collaborative formats etc.?

techno-legal vs. relational-behavioural, respectively the imarative of thinking these together when talking about openness (as a process)?

even though she most explicitely refers to gender equity i guess the text/the examples can be applied to diverse/ntersectional contexts of discrimination

I am not entirely sure how they imagine to approach this dilemma.... how does what appears as a mainly aesthetical/rhetoric shift translate into a politics (as practice)?

which kinds of projections do they refer to?

????? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony

Doesn't this imply the same logic as the distinction between thinking and doing the authors considered problematic previously? Also: who are these activists they're refering to? Are they practitioners (as opposed to academics)?

I was a bit irritated about this statement especially because she discussed earlier with regards to Haraway's work how important it is to name and think with others and later in this section she writes about the dangers of appropriation.... Nonetheless, she here - through her referencing - mainly positions "standpoint theory" as a white feminist idea, while ignoring several earlier/similar positions within e.g. black feminisms, "third world" feminisms, decolonial and post-hegemonial discourses....

This phrase implies that OA "needed" input from an (external) open science discourse in order to "come to reason". In reality open science and development discourses have been inherently interwoven with OA since the 1990s and similar topics and claims have been formulated within a humanities discourse on OA relatively early on too.

I struggle a bit with all that recent scholarship that essentialises Latin American OA as "good OA", and posits initiatives such Redalyc and AmeliCA as role models for (bad) “Western” OA. Fernanda Beigel and Hebe Vessuri have a much more differentiated approach on the emergence and diversification of OA in Latin America: They historically Latin American OA within an academic autonomy expansion process taking place from the 1950s-70s that got reinvigorated within academic (in-)dependency and globalisation discourses of the 1990s/2000s that were very diverse and often conflictuous. Beigel identifies four main OA trajectories that emerged from there (the following is a bit from my thesis): a) dependent integration, which ranges from publication in English only in mainstream journals, through paid publication, to the institutional or state strategy of converting journals to English and/or indexing a growing number of local journals in these systems [this is e.g. Scielo that – driven by anxieties of “falling behind” in science and technology, and losing the ability to contribute to the global knowledge base (Albornoz et al., 2018, 6) – surrendered to this pressure by employing Clarivate Analytics to create a journal citation index inside Web of Science]; b) transnational networks and circuits in open access [Initiatives such as Redalyc and Scielo, who vindicate the relevance of local, or national and regional issues within the sciences – respecting the different idiosyncrasies by area, disciplinarily specific format preferences and dynamics – instead of perceiving OA as a chance to contribute to and compete on a global knowledge market (Albornoz et al., 2018; Babini 2019; Becerril-García 2019; Becerril-García & Aguado-López 2018; Packer et al. 2014).] c) regional circulation sustained by public networks and institutions [e.g. AmeliCA, a byproduct of Redalyc’s experience in establishing and maintaining transnational networks that aims to construct a communication system for Latin America’s and the Global South’s journals. AmeliCA, as part of the Radical Open Access Collective, also participates in infrastructures that reach beyond Latin American / Global South contexts] d) resistance including boycotts, non-indexed university journals, transfer and dialogue with the social demands of the community, to strongly inbred local circuits (Beigel 2018, no pag.)

This is so old news.... I find that there's a strong tendency throughout this article to "sell" generalising and indifferent platitudes/commonplaces as novelties.

there's no such thing....

infrapolitics & infraphilosophy https://infraphilosophy.com/2021/01/18/the-war-for-the-earth/

openness as infrapolitics?

For Lugones the infrapolitical is not a politics that “has an easy inhabitation of public contestation. Infra-politics marks the turn inward, in a politics of resistance, toward liberation. It shows the power of communities of the oppressed in constituting resistant meaning and each other against the constitution of meaning and social organization by power. In our colonized, racially gendered, oppressed existences we are also other than what the hegemon makes us be. That is an infra-political achievement” (Lugones 2010, 746).

William's writes: “infrapolitical excess or difference from the political—in a kind of a-principial, non-subjectivist politicity that traverses both necessity and care, and that remains both prior and posterior to ‘real politics’—offers the basis for a posthegemonic practice of democracy capable of challenging the inherited determinations of the biopolitical, and of doing so in the name of existence, or… of love in spite of everything” (2017)

I find these three case studies and the practices around openness / openness as a practice quite interesting. I wonder what we can draw from them with regards to our own projects (COPIM, Pirate Care etc.) but also with regards to our everyday academic practices (reading, writing etc.)

Maybe what Fernanda Beigel says is interesting to consider here: she notes that so-called ‘peripheral’ scientific communities are often regarded as lacking in autonomy, as permanently under siege by the state, by political instability, or by intellectual dependence on foreign models. Beigel disagrees with such an image of peripheral science, because it is based on a myth, which is the myth of the sovereignty of mainstream science. This is also the myth of “pure”, “universal”, “disinterested” knowledge. Clearly, mainstream science is not autonomous or sovereign in this sense, since it is subjected to commercial and geopolitical interests. The problem for Beigel, however, is that even peripheral scientific communities have contributed to the reproduction of that myth, by accepting and obssessively pursuing an uncritical sense of knowledge and knowledge sovereignty. This is the myth of “excellent science” by means of inclusion in global commercial databases, often in the name of national progress and prestige.Moreover, even decolonial perspectives within peripheral science, she says, reproduce the myth of mainstream sovereignty by assuming a simple dichotomy between complete autonomy on the side of empire, and complete heteronomy on the side of the non-West.

Beigel, M. F., Gallardo, J. O., & Bekerman, F. A. (2018). Institutional Expansion and Scientific Development in the Periphery: The Structural Heterogeneity of Argentina’s Academic Field. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-017-9340-2

Beigel, F. (2013). Centros y periferias en la circulación internacional del conocimiento. Nueva Sociedad 245, Mayo - Junio 2013

Can you think of a situation where this has happened to you?

I think that the following pages - how she unravels terms like optimism, hope and emapthy - are an excellent example of affirmative critique through academic writing.

What are the elements, perspectives, considerations etc. that Fitzpatrick's affirmative critique consists of here?

Where do you belong to with regards to your practice?

With regards to the writing excercise in this Seminar session: What does this imply? Who is part of processes of building shared vocabularies? Is the aim of these processes to create ONE language or engage in a negotiation / translations between different languages?

Can "conversation" here be replaced with any other practice? E.g. writing, reading, researching, creating,….

Where do you see possibilities to "insert" generosity? In your work, in your study environment?

Dear SIS students, welcome to this collaborative annotation experiment. Let's hope that it works.

I am always quite suspicious about the notion of freedom. What kind of freedom (if any at all) does commoning entail/engender?