Interview with Don Ihde

ES: Don, you have a background in Continental philosophy; but if one does a quick survey of works being published in Continental philosophy today, one finds very little on either the topics of science or technology. Even if one finds treatments of these issues, they are often very dystopian, presupposing science, technology, and their advancements are somehow encroaching on the lifeworld, damaging more productive forms of living and styles of existence. Why do think that is the case and how is it that you, coming out of a Continental background, seem to be taking a different path?

DI: I think that you are right about it largely or dominantly being the case. There are some people of course who do philosophy of technology out of Continental backgrounds. I suppose the two most prominent would be Andy Feenberg and Albert Borgmann. Andy comes out of critical theory. Albert comes out of a Heideggerian background. I think part of it has to do with a very bad habit. In my estimation this bad habit of Continental philosophy tends to first of all narrowly select some standard set of godfathers, or people who are widely known, and vertically cite them. For example, when it comes to technology, Heidegger and Marcuse are probably still the people who are most talked about in the field. It used to be a wider set, but other people have sort of dropped off. Both of these people tend to be highly dystopian. On the other hand, as you know, the Dutch have been reading American philosophers of technology. They read us as being at least less dystopian than the European forbearers. My own take is that the more I study particulars kinds of technologies, the more dissatisfied I am with traditions that would make vast generalizations about technology, particularly on a dystopian basis. I think technologies can do very bad things; but they can also do very good things.

SM: In the interview with Kuhn that we read, he clearly expresses dissatisfaction with the fact that philosophy departments did not treat him fairly. This points to the problem of disciplinarily within science studies. We have history and philosophy of science departments, sociology of science, and people from cultural studies contributing as well. Where do you see science studies going now and where do you place yourself? You clearly come from a Continental tradition and yet your work interests people like Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, and Andrew Pickering.

DI: That is really an interesting question because not only was Kuhn badly treated by the philosophers, but Latour was as well. Many of the people in contemporary science studies have been treated badly by the philosophers. Sometimes Iāve been treated badly by the philosophers. There is a long tradition of dismissal. Of course part of it has to do with what philosophers we are talking about. The English speaking situation is one in which there have been two very large phases in philosophy of science. One being the early positivist phase in the early part of the century in which, ironically, most of the participants came from Europe. The second being its transformation into a more analytic, linguistic analysis version of science dominated by English and American philosophers. Both of those traditions ended up in a kind of a battle that Peter Galison characterizes as the positivist/anti-positivist controversy. Both of them together had arguments about what really was central to the philosophy of science. What was not central had to do with things like laboratory life, instrumentation and technology in science, and the sort of sociology of science and scientific knowledge production. That gap-- which I think still exists, with a few exceptions, in the dominate philosophy of science-- was taken up by what I call the post-Mertonian sociologists of science: the people out in the strong program, the Bath school, actor-network theory, and Bruno Latour. If my own travels are indicative, one of the interesting things is that precisely because of the empirical studies and the emphasis upon practice that has come out of science studies, it is my estimate that old-fashioned philosophy of science has lost ground. Even somebody like Hacking, who is a kind of exception to standard philosophy of science, reluctantly admits that all of the action now seems to be in science studies. These are people who do cultural, sociological, and anthropological studies of science. It is here that I have to admit being moderately happy because one of the good things coming out of the phenomenological, hermeneutic tradition is an emphasis on praxis. It looks at human actions, particularly embodiment and perception. In my own case, it incorporates the role of technologies, such as instruments. It turns out that there is a lot more in common between the way in which I think of the philosophies of science and technology with the currents trends in science studies then there is in the dominate English speaking or American philosophy of science traditions.

ES: You just pointed to a positivist appreciation for science studies. But what if we consider a contrary question concerning disappointment? You are widely regarded as one of the first, if not the first, American philosopher of technology. It seems to me that despite the ubiquity of technology in the American landscape, philosophy of technology, as a specialized subdivision of philosophy, never quite achieved a large following. Why do you think that is?

DI: I think that observation is correct. It is not one that lacks support. In fact, in Joe Pittās 1995 addition of New Directions in Philosophy of Technology, a fair number of the founders of the American Society for Philosophy of Technology admitted the same thing. It seemed to hit a level, a plateau, and hasnāt grown. I have made the same point, comparing the movements in feminist philosophy of science with Continental philosophy, as it exists in the Society for Phenomenological and Existential Philosophy. Both of which have, in the same period of time, multiplied their memberships by very, very large numbers. SPEP is now the second largest single interest or special interest philosophical society in the country. Feminist philosophy has a wide adherence. Yet the membership list of SPT stayed relatively constant. Why? That one is harder to address. My own theory is that it failed to attach itself to progressive movements. We just talked about a little earlier the general dystopian character of Continentally derived philosophy of technology in America. While SPT isnāt necessarily totally dystopian, it tended to arrange itself according to what I would call non-progressivist movements. Its earlier associations, for example, were with movements like alternative technologies vis-à-vis post-colonial situations. I think that was a bad move. Similarly, it has been concerned with a number of environmental issues. In many cases the environmental issues have tended to side with, in my estimation, more conservative takes upon environmentalism. However, the spirit of the times has changed. For example, one of things that characterized early-European technological dystopianism was the dominance of technologies that could be called war technologies and large industrial technologies-- what we in America term rustbelt technologies. Now if that is the only thing that technology is, then of course may of the points we made about things like global pollution and the escalation of Cold War policies hit home. But on the other hand, the Cold War is-- if not gone-- at least highly dissipated and distributed. Secondly, the technologies that are coming on-line now are largely electronic information technologies. Those movements that originated with the previous technologies have either not kept with or adapted themselves to the new type of technology. For example, in my 14-year-old child Markās generation, there can hardly be a better word than technology. Technology means electronic music, computers, e-mail, laptops etc. They think itās great stuff. If you suddenly bring back somebody like Marcuse who argues that we donāt have any genuine choices, or Heidegger who wants to say weāre all standing reserve, it doesnāt ring a bell anymore. I think that is partly where SPT has not been flexible enough or quick enough to see what is happening in terms of the world of technological change.

JJ: Now that you are talking about time to some extent, Latour claims we have never been modern. How would you say this claim fits into your philosophy?

DI: That is a nice, but hard question to answer. About seven or eight years ago, a young woman at McMaster Univeristy in Canada did a thesis on the oeuvre of my works on the philosophy of technology. Part of her thesis was that I was the first "post-modern philosopher of technology". While I like her characterization, I also have deep misgivings about certain aspects of post-modernism. But if by modernism you mean the attachment to modernist epistemologies such as those that came out of Galileo, Descartes, and that particular period, which hold that knowledge is the true representation of an external world, then I am clearly not modernist. I have no sympathy with that. I am clearly post-modernist in the sense that techniques mostly from phenomenology, but also from deconstruction and variants on multi-perspectivalism are where I would stand epistemologically. Epistemologically, I suppose I am closer to a post-modern position. If by modernism you mean the movement towards a secular world, a world in which you try to evolve principles of relations between religions and ethnic groups that allow them to function within a spirit of toleration and mutual respect-- what could be called Enlightenment modernism-- Iām thoroughly modernist. It seems to me that the problem with the contemporary world is a kind of throw back to a pre-modernist situation in which ethnic terrorism and conflicts.

ES: Remaining with the topic of history, I want to ask you a question about one of the protocols for the techno-science research seminar you lead. You stipulate that only living authors should be read in these seminars. Why did you make that choice and what does it suggest to you about the use and value of the history of philosophy? To extend the question a little bit, one of the more dominate analytic departments in our country-- the philosophy department at New York University-- doesnāt have a history requirement for its graduate students, such as a comprehensive history examination. Some traditionalists have found that to be somewhat problematic, while others have clearly ranked the program as one of this countryās best. Can you comment on why you select only living authors? How does that decision reflect your underlying convictions about history of philosophy and its value? Finally, how do you see your approach in relation to approaches taken by programs like the one at NYU?

DI: I think I would start on that question by going back to my discovery about the myth of Stony Brook. When I first came to Stony Brook in 1969, there were two standard stories. The first was that the Long Island Rail Road was going to be electrified and that it would take us only forty-five minutes to get from Stony Brook to Manhattan. The second myth was that Stony Brook was the Berkley of the East and that it would only be a matter of time before we would be recognized as such. Well, as you know, it still takes an hour and forty-five minutes in the somewhat updated diesel locomotives to get from Stony Brook to Manhattan. Furthermore, whereas there are thirteen or fourteen extant Nobel Laureates currently existing at Berkley, our only one has retired. During a visit to Berkley a number of years ago, I decided to take a look at the bulletin board in the philosophy department to see what they were offering. As you know, they had a very large graduate program with some very eminent people. I looked at what was offered and found there were two courses that could have been termed historical. There was a course on Kant and one on Descartes. All of the other courses followed the rubric of living authors only. This anecdote is a partial response to your question. It is not only NYU. I think the dominantly analytic schools have been largely ahistorical or non-historical. In fact, if you go to English universities, many of them assign all of the historical figures like Plato or Kant to the classics, not philosophy department. In some sense, I suppose Iām slightly reflecting part of my own early analytic training that was in this mood. But that is not really the purpose. The purpose here at least is to promote balance by creating a perspective that I think is highly needed in our department. Our department tends to either be historically oriented, with standard courses on the major figures and texts of the history of philosophy, or is Continental in the sense that I described before of studying the godfathers. Youāve got to do your Husserl and youāve got to do your Heidegger. I donāt think that is bad. I think its good. On the other hand, it misses the sense of what is going on here and now in a cutting edge discipline. Science studies itself is only a few decades old. Most of the best-known principals are in fact still alive, Kuhn exempted I suppose; but he belongs to the pre-science studies era in one sense. I do it in part as a kind of sense of balance as over against the heavy weight of history and Continental thought. It is interesting because the thrust has been even more toward the progressive elements and that is, as you know, we end up reading a lot of peopleās recently published books; but we also read a lot of things that arenāt even published. It is almost like we are participating in a living internet because we are in fact on the net with our various interlocutors. We have been on the net with the three that occur in this volume: Pickering, Haraway and Latour on a quite frequent basis. It is a semi-deliberate design to live in a very contemporary setting.

JH: A related question to that. How does history work in within your writings and what is your relationship to the history discipline as it is made up here at Stony Brook?

DI: This is coming from a historian so I have to be careful. First of all, I have to say that I affirm history, particularly in the areas that I read: the history of science and the history of technology. I happen to think that most of the recent and contemporary history of science and technology is considerably superior to its older forms. In that sense I am not against history in any respect. I admire and appreciate the more sensitive and precise kinds of studies that are coming out of the contemporary world. In science studies, for example, I am quite sure that if I made the claim that Shapin and Schafferās Leviathan and the Air-pump, might well be the most important piece of socio-historical work in that field in the twentieth century, I probably would not find too many people that would divert from my assessment. Now that is a kind of history that seems to be more or less unique to contemporary approaches where you are dealing with the social/cultural aspects of science and technology as they develop as well. You can see I am reading history again through living authors, Shapin and Schaffer who are very, very smart guys. This is an aside. I have from time to time thought about doing a book entitled, Against the History of Philosophy that would maybe raise a few eyebrows. It has to do with the fact that I donāt think that philosophers should really do the history of philosophy. I think what philosophers do is read historical texts and pretend in some respects that they are contemporary. I donāt think that they are contemporary and I donāt like the pretense.

JH: How specifically do historical actors figure in your work? This is something that is absent from the Matrix as I have read it so far. There is no discussion about how history plays within these different institutions. Could you comment on that and your own take on Shapinās and Harawayās books.

DI: Thatās pretty interesting, of course, because Haraway and Latour, in particular, have made extensive comments and responses to Shapin and Schaffer. Pickering has also made some responses, but not as extensive as the other two. All of us would be different. Bruno Latour, being his usual contrary self, both says that he has no disagreements and yet goes about disagreeing with a whole series of particulars. My take upon it would be probably slightly more a take upon what he calls the instrumental technology or the machinic technology. I would look at the air-pump itself and look at the way in which it becomes a kind of interpretive device which then provides the structuring of the experimental life as they are calling it through its technological selectivities. I would probably emphasize that more than either Donna or Bruno, although I can see Andy might well do the same kind of thing with the devices. I tend to focus in upon those. In fact, one of the terminological inventions that I have used in the last few years is what I call epistemology engines. An epistemology engine is a technology or a set of technologies that through use frequently become explicit models for describing how knowledge is produced. The example I have used over and over again is the camera obscura. Both Descartes and Locke deliberately use it as a model of the mind. The analogy is that the camera obscura is to the eye as the eye is to the mind. If you look at the way it is constructed and used, you can basically say the whole structure of subjectivity is inside a body trying to discern what is outside in the external world. That is not the only epistemology engine-- although it is perhaps the most dramatic-- which can be historically derived. That is the kind of special take I would have upon those histories.

ES: Another question about history since we are on the subject. In the Dutch interpretation of what they call American philosophy of technology, the claim is that what separates American philosophy of technology from its European ancestry is a turn to historically situated, particular empirical technologies. I want to ask you a question about that. On the one hand, your works have been, from start to finished, filled with particular historical vignettes of concrete empirical technologies which you use as way to overcome metaphysical determinist positions of technologies and reified discussions of technologies that refer to different empirical technologies, as Technology, capital "T". But on the other hand, compared to other philosophers of technology, it seems that one might say youāve been less empirical in so far as the early Dreyfus drew himself into a particular empirical research trajectory, artificial intelligence, in order to delineate what computers can and cannot do. More recently Feenberg seems to have gotten directly involved with distance learning and is working on the intricacies of it in relation to his own social theory. Do you see yourself as making as much of an empirical turn as these other two?

DI: That is a good observation. I think that of the people that you mentioned, Dreyfus is the most extreme. He has made an entire career out of looking at artificial intelligence, expert programs, and computerization. As a result, with the keen analysis that he has been able to employ, he is probably the single most influential philosopher upon one strand of technological development. There are so many Heideggerian, Dreyfussian computer designers these days that it is almost amusing; but that came out of a very, very long time of work. You probably are not aware that my use of perception and instrumentation had actually been built into a set of airport approaches to keep pilots from having perceptual illusions upon approaching airports. That was not something I deliberately did; rather it is an interesting kind of illustration and adaptation of some of my early work on perception and instruments. The fact of the matter is that maybe I am just coming to it late because, as you know, the last few years I have been focusing quite narrowly upon imaging technologies: mostly visual imaging technologies across a wide stretch of sciences, such as astronomy, medicine, spectroscopy, chemistry, etc. I have been focusing a lot of research on the history and use of imaging technologies. In recent times this interest has accidentally reverberated onto an earlier interest of mine: auditory experience. I am now adumbrating the visual stuff with a re-interest in auditory technologies, including electronic music, computerization, etc. There is a particular thing that I am after. I am quite convinced that if one looks at the practices of science vis-à-vis the production of knowledge, that the use of these kinds of instruments no longer fits the modern epistemological model as we are not really talking about true representations of an external world. I donāt think that scientific images are either texts or pictures. I am trying to create a phenomenological, hermeneutic framework for understanding how these images and their production work in their production of scientific knowledge. One of things that keeps cropping up is the way in which these instruments are in fact not representational. They are much more constructed kinds of imaging processes. The interesting thing is that this is exactly the same, whether you are talking about producing visual images, or whether you are talking about producing computer music. What computer music does now in terms of its digital and synthesized aspect is move away from "reproducing" sounds or imitating natural sounds-- instead producing machinic sounds per say. I find that to be a quite distinct parallel with a lot of the topographic or computer design images that try to make composite images of projections for greenhouse gases and earth warming. None of those things are just simple pictures. They are composite, compound, complex images that allow you to see trends and tendencies at a glance.

JJ: You talked a little bit about the importance of examples you choose. Feenberg discusses Minitel. Winner discusses nuclear power. Your examples are basically about imaging technologies. How do the examples you choose reflect your philosophy? Could you have focused on something else and would you have still come to the same philosophy you have now?

DI: Well, I guess I would get caught in that question because if you choose a different technology you obviously come out in a different place÷to some degree. On the other hand, what I do find-- and this is perhaps a little higher altitude observation÷is that the style of phenomenology I developed reflects and revolves largely around variational method. I think that one has to go through, as early Husserl even claimed, a series of variations to find out what is variant and what is invariant-- if there is any such thing as the invariant. If you remain interested in epistemology then each set of technologies provides a perspective. You need to have a series of multiple perspectives to recognize the shape, structure, and complexity of the phenomenon you are investigating. In that sense, I guess my variational theory is one which reads instruments in that particular way. That in turn leads me to such things as imaging technologies. On the other hand, I have recently become impressed with two convergent tendencies. One tendency is within science itself. Old fashioned science wanted to say that the way in which you could be more reliant--not certain-- upon scientific conclusions was by replicating the same experiment over and over again in the laboratory. If you canāt get your gene to express correctly in lab one, or lab two, or lab three, it is probably unlikely that the claim that it did express itself in that way was true. That is the standard approach of science. But when you get to super-macro-scale things, like Gallisonās How Experiments End Early, and you need to run experiments to find out whether or not there is a neutral current, the cost and complexity of these experiments is so incredibly expensive that no single country can afford to repeat at an ad infinitum basis these kinds of experiments. Consequently, a lot more resides upon the single complex experiment. But what has developed, it seems to me, in contemporary science, which I find very impressive, is what could be called convergent instrumentation. If you want to find out the date of this anthropological remains, you donāt just use one method of measurement, Carbon-14 or something like that. What you do is use as many methods of measurement as possible, usually three to five, and if they all converge upon pretty close parameters, then you know you have really got something solid. We use this multiple perspective, multi-variant kind of instrumentation increasingly in things that are not repeatable. A recent author that I have been reading, who has a book on genes, people and languages, makes the point that if you can get genetic patterns, linguistic patterns, and archeological patterns to converge upon say the movement of Middle Eastern farmers into Europe, at a certain time period, then those multiple disciplines with their multiple methods are doing the same kind of thing-- producing a convergence phenomenon, which gives you greater assurance that you have gotten something solid in the process. One of things that I am interested in is where can you find these kinds of variant convergences which give you better results than say earlier kinds of either standards replication experiments or single linear kinds of approaches.

NP: My question has to do with the answer that you gave to Evan before. In Representing and Intervening Ian Hacking distinguishes different kinds of realists. Do you consider yourself a realist?

DI: I have often been accused of being a realist and plead partially guilty to that. I donāt have a problem with being a realist in one sense. But that doesnāt answer much. You have to ask: What kind of realist are you? I think I am a Hacking kind of realist. If you can interact with the thing you are investigating in such a way that you can determine, to use Merleau-Pontyian language, that it is questioning you back, then you have something real. Hackingās famous point is that if you can spray it with electrons then it is real. I think one other thing needs to be said. This goes back to imaging technologies. The trajectory of visualism in science is to equate seeing with believing÷even though it may be a complex, instrumental seeing. It seems to me that what Hacking does is to use a kinesthetic, tactical indicator. I like this because it is in line with John Deweyās kind of realism. I am not a mono-sensory person. I am a whole bodied perception person. If you can get something to react as mediated through instrumentation or immediately through touch, then it is real.

JG: In your Technology and the Lifeworld you write about the cultural transformation of technologies. Your current work focuses on epistemology engines and electronic music. Yet, in neither of these periods do you do what science studies do: follow the actors around in the laboratory. What do you think you gain and lose by not entering the laboratory?

DI: What Iāve lost is clearly not doing that type of research. This is why I am appreciative of laboratory studies, especially the pioneering works of Latour, Woolgar, and Knorr-Cetina. It is an obvious place to see what the scientists are doing. But it is not true to say that I have not entirely done laboratory studies. Again, as concerns imaging technology, Iāve taught a seminar on this topic three times, with one more coming up this Spring. In these cases I bring the image-makers and image-users to the seminar, or else we go to them. We do therefore go to their native lairs. We also do something else that I donāt think Latour does as much. After analyzing them in their layer, we analyze ourselves, and ask: What do we think they have done? This is an interdisciplinary, critical approach. At the same time, I want to be able to see what the inter-technological situations are. Hence my interests in computer generated music and computer topography processes which converge on similar effects.

ES: Let me follow up on Jariās question concerning following the actors around. It is a variation of a question you are usually asked. You are frequently asked to clarify whether phenomenology is a subjective philosophy. Most people think that what phenomenology does is provide descriptive, first person, experiential accounts. But rather then having you answer this question, let me ask something else. The criticism of phenomenology as subjective entails the belief that phenomenologists begin and end with the givens of experience. Even though this may not be the case with phenomenology, as you argue, it seems to hold for attempts to follow the actors around. The people at Pasteurās lab found nothing disagreeable with Latourās account. Their attitude seemed to be: Thatās just the way things are. What do you think is going on with that type of description÷the kind provided by the early Latour? It seems to begin with the givens of what scientists are doing and ends with them having no objections to the observations made. Nevertheless, while phenomenology has been criticized for its treatment of the given, Latourās accounts have been highly praised. Why?

DI: I like this question because I donāt think phenomenology returns to the given. This is one of things that differentiate a critical phenomenological approach from a more social science oriented approach. Once you have been able to discover the possible multi-stability of a phenomenon, you can never return to it as given. This is an intransitive or asymmetrical direction that arises out of varational method. Right now I am reading a book called the Sun and the Cathedral. It is a history of the use of meridian lines in European cathedrals. The purpose of this was to set the very hard to set the calendar date for Easter, which is supposed to after a certain moon in the cycle, and on the first Sunday after that moon. This is in fact stimulated the first dissatisfaction with the first Julian calendar, the recognition that Ptolemyās tables were in fact in error, and believe it or not, they also discovered that Copernicus was in error. Technologies began to raise questions about how observations of the heavens were being made. They led to all sorts of discoveries in what we now call early modern science. One thing that the book reiterates is that it was very hard for people to shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric universe. This is where phenomenology comes in. The given is that you see the sun rising and setting and intuitively take as given the solidity of the earth, which any fool can plainly see that the sun is rotating around the earth. Suddenly, it occurred to me that this is not a given at all. The question is: How is the context situated such that seeing the sunrise and set is taken as an intuitive thing? What I have to do is dream up a thought experiment to show that you can perceive this differently. I have some clues to this end. This is a myth about experience that has been holding steady for centuries, which I think is simply wrong.

ES: Do you see a connection between your early insistence on multi-perspectivalism and that the fact that the Techno-Science Research Group often involves Visiting Scholars from different parts of the world. This is a fairly unique approach to any academic discipline. Is there a connection between the two?

DI: I think that in my own history the first movement in this direction began almost twenty years ago. As you has pointed out, Technics and Praxis was identified as one of the first philosophy of technology books per se. The result of that book is that I went to Colombia South America in 1982. I was supposed to be conducting a faculty seminar on the philosophy of technology. In America one of the big questions had to do with differentiating the relationship between science and technology. As a result, you come prepared to address this question. This was designed to be my second lecture. I went down and announced this and was attacked. The faculty in the seminar claimed this position was nonsense since science is not different from the technology used. Moreover, technology is an instrument of destruction of our indigenous culture. After this attack, I realized I needed to redo my presentation, in the direction of techno-science as cultural. The point of the story is that different cultural contexts, in this case, North American views on technology moving into South America, have different perceptions. Having participants in this seminar from different parts of the world is a necessary corrective feature to our limited biases.

SM: Post-humanism is a frequently endorsed position these days. We find it in theorists like Katherine Hayles. Yet your focus on human embodiment seems to run in a different direction. While you are a post-subjectivist, you probably are not post-human.

DI: I am very happy to be described as a post-subjectivist. Phenomenology is a kind of albatross. When I used this metaphor in Denmark last year, everyone wanted to know why I was discussing an albatross. I grew in America where all elementary school children had to read the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. This is a story by Coleridge in which an unlucky guy presumably dooms a boat by killing an albatross. The crew makes him wear this dead albatross around his neck for the rest of the voyage. Phenomenology is my albatross because I cannot get rid of it. It has been tagged on me. It is always marked as something it isnāt, such as subjectivism. So, Iāll bear my albatross for the moment until I invent a better term to describe what I am doing. I have a lot of problems with the terminology of post-human. Does post-human mean post-humanist? If by that you mean we are using an implicit modernist description of humans as highly autonomous, subjective individuals, atomistically linked to society, then I am obviously a post-humanist. If on the other hand, you mean the there is any kind of flexibility to retaining some sense of what it means to be experiencers, to be in a world, to perceptually take into account that world, then I am clearly not post-human. You are perfectly right. The key is embodiment. The move into science studies brought with it a new list of interlocutors. As with any change of conversationalists, a new emphasis is brought to bear. The notion of embodiment and being a body has for a long time been present in my work. With this new set of interlocutors, it has been amplified. This is what I see missing, a lacunae, in some other work, especially in those who want to use a strictly semiotic, symmetrical model. For me embodiment does not mean going to the limits of your skin, but also incorporating instruments and technologies.

JJ: You call yourself a critical phenomenologist. How normative is this? Haraway is very normative. Pickering is much less so. Where to you fit in?

DI: And Latour wants to claim not being critical at all, wanting to eliminate the notion of the critical. The first thing I want to say is that in the early days I constantly experienced the critique of being a descriptive phenomenologist. I was continually asked why I was not normative and failed to develop axiological notions. What I mean by critical is epistemologically critical. What phenomenology does, when you practice it along the lines of multi-perspectival theory, is eliminates the ability to make certain kinds of claims. I also call myself a non-foundational phenomenologist because I do not believe I can make absolute claims about a lot of things that early phenomenology wanted to claim. This because rigorous phenomenology shows that ambiguity exists around things like technologies. In the discussion earlier where I spoke of transplanting plants, I mentioned how plants can change location, while their ecology is left behind. The plant can become something quite different, even a menace or die, depending on the relationship between environment and organism. This is what critical phenomenology must take into account. The other question is more difficult. I do think there are normative dimensions in phenomenology, but they have to be normative dimensions that arise out of phenomenology. For example, many times I have used the metaphor of multiple cuisines. There is no way that one could phenomenologically establish that there is a best cuisine. On the other hand, I am equally clear that one can tell the difference between good and bad Cantonese cooking, and good and bad nouvelle French cuisine. Within genres you can easily tell what is better and worse.

ES: How can you then defend your asserting that pluriculture is better than monoculture to traditionalists who emphasize the value of custom?

DI: I run into this all the time. Especially, when I visit European countries. What I call pluriculture, Europeans call a surface phenomenon. The ability to pick and choose, the bricolage of cultures, they claim is not too deep. To return to my plant metaphor, they insist that plant is what it is only in its indigenous environment. Now in certain circumstance this makes some sense. In other circumstances this makes no sense at all. I argue, for better or for worse that in our highly connected contemporary environment you cannot avoid contact with plural cultures. To take the whole thing and transplant is impossible because there are indigenous plants coming into that environment at the same time as that environment goes elsewhere. The metaphor then is always between surface and depth. But donāt forget that depth can also mean digging your own grave.

RE: One difference between your work and Harawayās is pragmatic. She finds herself situated, economically and politically, in a specific way. I think that while you would agree that you are situated, your phenomenological descriptions, do not take these pragmatic aspects into account. Haraway sees all of her descriptions as working towards the projects she is engaged in. Do you see your descriptions as pragmatic as moving toward projects you are situated and engaged in?

DI: I would like to affirm yes, but will have to answer with a firm maybe. I am not entirely sure. I donāt have a program that I am trying to follow in which I want this, that, or the other thing. Haraway and Feenberg do have programs. They think that greater democratization of science is a desirable thing. In theory and in general I thoroughly agree with them. But to agree with them is to then ask: How is that possible?