Comments on: Between Stability and Instability: Using ANT and ANTa as Analytical Perspectives Telling Information Technology Stories | Pirjo Elovaara http://feministtechnoscience.se/2007/02/06/between-stability-and-instability-%e2%80%93-using-ant-and-anta-as-analytical-perspectives-telling-information-technology-stories/ Open Peer Review Journal ISSN 1654-6792 Sat, 19 May 2012 05:34:25 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 By: Claudia Koltzenburg http://feministtechnoscience.se/2007/02/06/between-stability-and-instability-%e2%80%93-using-ant-and-anta-as-analytical-perspectives-telling-information-technology-stories/#comment-3 Claudia Koltzenburg Thu, 10 May 2007 08:18:30 +0000 http://feministtechnoscience.se/2007/02/06/between-stability-and-instability-%e2%80%93-using-ant-and-anta-as-analytical-perspectives-telling-information-technology-stories/#comment-3 This article is tackling a very interesting issue which may be relevant for a variety of studypractice contexts (am alluding to Haraway's natureculture here). Using ANT/ANTa to look critically at academic writing (as storytelling) seems convincing to me. One of your passages I put to use immediately. Aim: use it for my own reflection on academic writing. Action taken: print and cut out [49], then pin it up on the wall above my computer screen. Indeed, figure 1 („Moving between ANT and ANTa“) is helpful in many respects. Maybe you could redo the graphics (spreadsheet) to become less static itself in order to indicate visually what is being talked about in both the main text and in the figure subtitle: „Moving between...“. I particularly like the way in which you make explicit your questions and actually show them in the text as phrases with question marks, sometimes a whole bunch of them [abstract, 22, 34, 35, 54]. This makes for an openly structured text and I suppose it made me as a reader feel invited to reflect on what would be my own questions in such a setup. I think this is a very nice stylistic strategy for an academic article, especially so for one that is up for review in an open access open review journal. Reconsidering what Peter said in his feedback above about this being a difficult entry for newcomers to the field (and I guess your abstract has already been updated accordingly?), I would like to suggest that you place right in the abstract one of your more general sentences about what ANT/ANTa is useful for. Take one sentence, maybe, from [2], where you talk about what the classical ANT metaphors are. If these show already in the abstract, maybe as its second sentence, there is a better chance of making the article attractive for readers who have no idea about what makes ANT/ANTa interesting in the first place, what it has been used for etc. Or maybe you use some of the words from your title again, in order to link the rather opaque acronym to a practical context. I think this is pertinent because technoscience as a field of study is very transdisciplinary with no field being at centre stage (and this is great, but it requires a lively translation practice), so I guess not everyone who is interested in technoscientific issues will have a background in sociology, and/or in storytelling as storytelling, and/or in analysing interviews in this way. One minor point occured to me: Could you explain a bit what you mean by „a one-dimensional medium“? [54] Your previous uses of „dimension“ in combination with „of the expression“ [footnote 29], „project“ [34], „use“ [37], „shape“ [39], „story“ [49], „writing“ [54] seem to me to go down well. But with „medium“ I got stuck somehow. Maybe a simple example would be helpful here. I would like to recommend that for the next version you ask for some language editing, e.g. to be different *from* sth. [abstract, 4], slight mistakes which can be distracting sometimes, especially since this is a text about relational issues, I presume :-) As my concluding remark I would like to add that I think having a conclusion (by way of a down-to-earth summary) would be good. The last passages rather seem to open up new perspectives (and I do like those). I'd rather you do a tedious but quick job by answering in a nutshell the questions you raised in your abstract/introduction. But maybe this seemingly rather non-conclusive style of your instance of academic storytelling is in fact intentional and I am just missing the point by asking for a „proper conclusion“ in a more traditional fashion? This article is tackling a very interesting issue which may be relevant for a variety of studypractice contexts (am alluding to Haraway’s natureculture here). Using ANT/ANTa to look critically at academic writing (as storytelling) seems convincing to me. One of your passages I put to use immediately. Aim: use it for my own reflection on academic writing. Action taken: print and cut out [49], then pin it up on the wall above my computer screen. Indeed, figure 1 („Moving between ANT and ANTa“) is helpful in many respects. Maybe you could redo the graphics (spreadsheet) to become less static itself in order to indicate visually what is being talked about in both the main text and in the figure subtitle: „Moving between…“.

I particularly like the way in which you make explicit your questions and actually show them in the text as phrases with question marks, sometimes a whole bunch of them [abstract, 22, 34, 35, 54]. This makes for an openly structured text and I suppose it made me as a reader feel invited to reflect on what would be my own questions in such a setup. I think this is a very nice stylistic strategy for an academic article, especially so for one that is up for review in an open access open review journal.

Reconsidering what Peter said in his feedback above about this being a difficult entry for newcomers to the field (and I guess your abstract has already been updated accordingly?), I would like to suggest that you place right in the abstract one of your more general sentences about what ANT/ANTa is useful for. Take one sentence, maybe, from [2], where you talk about what the classical ANT metaphors are. If these show already in the abstract, maybe as its second sentence, there is a better chance of making the article attractive for readers who have no idea about what makes ANT/ANTa interesting in the first place, what it has been used for etc. Or maybe you use some of the words from your title again, in order to link the rather opaque acronym to a practical context. I think this is pertinent because technoscience as a field of study is very transdisciplinary with no field being at centre stage (and this is great, but it requires a lively translation practice), so I guess not everyone who is interested in technoscientific issues will have a background in sociology, and/or in storytelling as storytelling, and/or in analysing interviews in this way.

One minor point occured to me: Could you explain a bit what you mean by „a one-dimensional medium“? [54] Your previous uses of „dimension“ in combination with „of the expression“ [footnote 29], „project“ [34], „use“ [37], „shape“ [39], „story“ [49], „writing“ [54] seem to me to go down well. But with „medium“ I got stuck somehow. Maybe a simple example would be helpful here.

I would like to recommend that for the next version you ask for some language editing, e.g. to be different *from* sth. [abstract, 4], slight mistakes which can be distracting sometimes, especially since this is a text about relational issues, I presume :-)

As my concluding remark I would like to add that I think having a conclusion (by way of a down-to-earth summary) would be good. The last passages rather seem to open up new perspectives (and I do like those). I’d rather you do a tedious but quick job by answering in a nutshell the questions you raised in your abstract/introduction. But maybe this seemingly rather non-conclusive style of your instance of academic storytelling is in fact intentional and I am just missing the point by asking for a „proper conclusion“ in a more traditional fashion?

]]> By: pgiger http://feministtechnoscience.se/2007/02/06/between-stability-and-instability-%e2%80%93-using-ant-and-anta-as-analytical-perspectives-telling-information-technology-stories/#comment-2 pgiger Thu, 26 Apr 2007 08:16:06 +0000 http://feministtechnoscience.se/2007/02/06/between-stability-and-instability-%e2%80%93-using-ant-and-anta-as-analytical-perspectives-telling-information-technology-stories/#comment-2 Pirjo, I am reading your article as an ANT novice, trying to learn more of ANT and how to translate it into a practice. Actually, your introduction caught my interest. I find the introduction somewhat fuzzy in the beginning. I would have liked the structure to be more straightforward: "What is ANT and who where its proponents", and then "What is ANTa, who are its proponents and what are they criticize in ANT", and then "What is your stake in this". As it is now I have to read the beginning several times to get clarity about the relation between ANT and ANTa. Perhaps I have to add that I am a sucker for chronological structures, so my initial confusion might be individual. I am looking forward to continue the text... Pirjo, I am reading your article as an ANT novice, trying to learn more of ANT and how to translate it into a practice. Actually, your introduction caught my interest.

I find the introduction somewhat fuzzy in the beginning. I would have liked the structure to be more straightforward: “What is ANT and who where its proponents”, and then “What is ANTa, who are its proponents and what are they criticize in ANT”, and then “What is your stake in this”. As it is now I have to read the beginning several times to get clarity about the relation between ANT and ANTa. Perhaps I have to add that I am a sucker for chronological structures, so my initial confusion might be individual.

I am looking forward to continue the text…

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