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Mobile Culture Studies | >mcs_lab> 1 (2020)
Johanna Menhard | Entanglements on and with the street 37
lead to a shift in perspective regarding the previously mentioned affective situations.53
The relationship itself is most important, not the actors involved. The feeling at the centre
of the analysis shifts the perspective from interaction to intra-action. Interaction presumes,
as Karen Barad puts it, an a priori existence of independent entities. The distinction between
“subject” and “object” and “observer” and “observed” provides the possibility of objectivity
and enacts a causal structure (e.g. the smartphone makes me feel). The concept of intra-ac-
tion assumes a specific material configuration in which the boundaries and properties of the
elements of a particular phenomenon are at the centre of interest.54 In November 2018, I wrote
an entry in my diary that let me to think in another direction after I was inspired to use the
concept of intra-action to interpret my material,
“It was Wednesday morning, and I was in a hurry. While running to the bus stop, I noticed
that I didn’t have my mobile phone with me and must have had forgotten it at home.
Questions shot through my mind: Do I still have time to run back and get it? No. Am I
expecting a call? Not that I know of. Do I have some important messages to answer? They
can wait. Do I need it for work today? Actually, no. But what if there was an emergency at
school? If somebody suddenly died? If I was attacked? Oh, wait, I thought, I’m not alone
and there are for sure other ways to contact me. And still I felt half clothed, half naked,
insecure. Something that belongs to me, something that accompanies me so closely every
day, something that is hardly ever separated from my body, was missing.”55
The phenomenon of feeling lost, insecure, or half-naked on the street emerged because of
the specific intra-action of the smartphone and the body. This means that the smartphone does
not only have the capacity to affect, or that it causes reactions independently of discourse and
body, but is entangled in ways of moving, feeling, and orienting oneself in a city.
As Koert van Mensvort illustrates in his Pyramid of Technology, there are different stages of
how technology is experienced and interwoven with our daily lives and therefore perceived quite
differently. His seven levels of the pyramid contain 1. envisioned, 2. operational, 3. applied, 4.
accepted, 5. vital, 6. invisible and 7. naturalized technologies. In stages one to three, technolo-
gies are not integrated in everyday lives and are easy to grasp as technologies people talk about
(at the moment this could be some sort of robot, artificial intelligence programme, augmented
reality tool, self-driving car, Google Glasses, and so on). But at the other stages, starting from
the fourth, technologies might not even be recognized as such, because they have become so
“naturalized” that it is not possible to think of life without them: “Technology can become so
53 As Sara M. Chidler pointed out in her text on promiscuous analysis in qualitative research:
“Analysis is affected by many things: the social/cultural/historical/material context of a project and its par-
ticipants, theoretical frameworks, one’s understanding of the literature, familiarity with the field site, and the
researcher’s personal background. Thus, analysis must respond to the pressing of context on the particular study.“
Sara M. Childers: Promiscuous Analysis in Qualitative Research. In: Qualitative Inquiry 20 (2014) 6. pp. 819-
826, here p. 820.
54 Karen Barad: Posthumanist Performativity. Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. In:
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28 (2003) 3. pp. 801-831, here p. 815.
55 Based on an entry in my diary, 14.11.2018.
>mcs_lab>
Mobile Culture Studies, Volume 1/2020
The Journal
- Title
- >mcs_lab>
- Subtitle
- Mobile Culture Studies
- Volume
- 1/2020
- Editor
- Karl Franzens University Graz
- Location
- Graz
- Date
- 2020
- Language
- German, English
- License
- CC BY 4.0
- Size
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Pages
- 108
- Categories
- Zeitschriften Mobile Culture Studies The Journal