unnecessary, unwanted and uncalled- for: a workshop on ...•there is no theory of uselessness •...
TRANSCRIPT
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Unnecessary, Unwanted and Uncalled-for: A Workshop on Uselessness
UVA, 28-30 March, 2017
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‘Uselessness’ as a response to ambiguity: diminished things and
marginal places
Neil Maycroft
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• There is no theory of uselessness
• Nothing is designed to be useless
• Uselessness is a charge made against ambiguous objects
• Ambiguity is due to unfamiliarity, lack of functional knowledge, brokenness, obsolescence
• Uselessness is a declaration against uncertainty
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Nothing is designed to be useless
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Chindogu and contraptions
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‘Designs on Jerry’
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Consumer nonsense
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‘…allows pets to retain their natural look, self esteem and aids the pet's owner with the trauma associated with altering’
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Useless things in everyday life
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Broken things as useless things?
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A broken thing
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Broken for whom?
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Broken things…may be useful
• May provide substitute functionality
• May provide multi-functionality; partially broken
• May allow adapted, secondary use
• Are often ‘waiting’ for repair or moving on
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“Strictly speaking there ‘is’ no such thing as a useful thing. There always belongs to the being of useful things a totality of useful things in which this useful thing can be what it is. A useful thing is essentially ‘something in order to…Useful things always are in terms of their belonging to other useful things: writing materials, pen, ink, paper, desk blotter, table, lamp, furniture, windows, door, room. These ‘things’ never show themselves initially by themselves, in order then to fill out a room as a sum of real things…A totality of useful things is always already discovered before the individual useful thing” (Heidegger, ‘Being and time’).
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Uselessness and ambiguity
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Ambiguity
• Not a property of objects
• Not a category of things
• Arises from uncertainty
• Interpretive frames of classification and ordering
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• What is it?
• What does it do?
• How does it work?
• Where does it go?
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Unfamiliarity: what is it, what does it do, how does it work?
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A unfamiliar thing
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How does it work?
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A thing of unknown function
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Obsolescence
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An obsolete thing
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Where does it go?
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Matter in place
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The ‘rammel’ drawer
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Matter: in place or out of place?
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Matter out of place, or stuff that ‘might come in handy’?
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Uselessness…a response to ambiguity?
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Coda
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A broken, unfamiliar and obsolete thing of unknown function
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