A note on structure
Techne consists of an introduction, four chapters, and a coda, each of which explores issues of embodiment, writing, and representation. Each of the chapters combines video, short animation, text, and sound—as well as darkness and silence. This introduction situates our project in relation to both writing studies as well as critical theories of subjectivity and posthumanism. Next, the chapters explore several digital topoi in the articulation of “selves.”
Chapter 1, “Orientations,” draws on the work of Paul Dourish, Sarah Ahmed, Jean Cocteau, and others to explore how digital technologies orient us toward particular selves, as well as how we at times attempt to queer, disrupt, and redirect such orientations. Chapter 2, “Rhizomes,” uses Gilles Deleuze, Rosi Braidotti, and Gloria Anzaldúa, as well as Jackie’s personal accounting of growing up queer in Montana, to probe the creation of rhizomatic networks of affiliations to disrupt disabling (even deadly) forms of narrative violence. Chapter 3, “Genealogies,” offers Jonathan working through Michel Foucault and Didier Eribon to understand the mediated forms of genealogical pressures that shape subjectivity, as well as the possibilities latent in constructing countergenealogies. Chapter 4, “Mobilities,” shows how mobile technologies can facilitate the tactical assemblage of words and objects to meditate on the construction of strategic selves through a remix of public media, such as graffiti art. If the preceding chapters present very personal analyses of the flows of words, people, and objects that shape our subjectivities, then this chapter enacts multimodal composition as the possibility of working and reworking the flows of meaning always already circulating around and through us. Our coda—not a conclusion—hints at possible future directions, but also encourages a rereading/reexperiencing of Techne. We also offer opportunities for composing Techne with us, through a YouTube channel and a wiki.
Our goal, ultimately, is to create an excess of experience and observation, not always linking in predictable ways, and leaving room for getting lost—and thus asking for our readers’ active engagement in order to make sense of the changeable experience of Techne. As such, the experience of the book itself enacts a generative, multimodal techne of self, with both somatic and representational consequence. The self in text and technology must move in multiple directions at once, embracing multimodality, multigenre texts, multimedia. While we cannot deny the material need for stability and composure, we also need to make room for the kinds of writing—and the kind of subjects—that challenge such composure, that offer rich, capacious, and excessive ways of writing, reading, and experiencing. Our hope is that Techne serves as one way of making that room.
