Apparatus

Whitney Stark

An apparatus is a technology, structure or medium through which legibility or the measurement of a property is enabled. It is, however, not objective or neutral. It influences measurements in ways that the apparatus itself cannot detect; it is a part of the objects it enables as legible. When apparatuses shift, they can change history across spacetime (quantum erasure). Apparatuses are not only what has been traditionally understood as the mechanical parts of a system of measurement (Barad, 1998, p. 101-2). They include systems of thinking, objects, spatio-temporal properties, people and more-than-people; they are extremely localized. Apparatuses are phenomena.

Synonym: situated knowledge, making legible, structural operations, systematic understanding, medium, measurer, technology, definition-maker
Antonym: objectivity
Hypernym: understanding, technology, system, epistemology
Hyponym: language, theory, experiment machine, teleology, Cartesian sciences, ‘us’

References
Barad, K. (1998). "Getting Real: Technoscientific Practices and the Materialization of Reality." Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, no. 10 (2), pp. 87-128.

COST Action IS1307 New Materialism: Networking European Scholarship on 'How Matter Comes to Matter'.

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With the changing of societies on local, national and international scales owing to economic, ecological, political and technological developments and crises, a reorganized academic landscape can be observed to be emerging. Scholarship strives to become increasingly interdisciplinary in order to grasp and examine the unfolding complexity of ongoing ecological, socio-cultural and politico-economic changes. Additionally, academics forge... Read more or find out Who's Who

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Working Groups focus on four key areas of research

Working Group One

Genealogies of New Materialisms; examines and intervenes in canonization processes by compiling a web-based bibliography, coordinating the OST 068/13 8 EN... Read more

Working Group Two

New Materialisms on the Crossroads of the Natural and Human Sciences; seeks to develop new materialisms at the boundaries of the human and natural sciences. The group focuses on how European new materialisms can rework the ‘Two Cultures' gap... Read more

Working Group Three

New Materialisms Embracing the Creative Arts; brings together European researchers, artists, museum professionals, and other activists with a keen interest in the material... Read more

Working Group Four

New Materialisms Tackling Economical and Identity – Political Crises and Organizational Experiments... Read more

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COST Action IS1307

New Materialism —
Networking European Scholarship on 'How matter comes to matter’

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