A Critique of a Critique of a Critique … (Woolgar and Cooper on Joerges)

In the last post I summarized Bernward Joerges’ critique of Langdon Winner’s understanding of Robert Moses’ bridges. Hence, it seems suitable to summarize Steve Woolgar and Geoff Cooper’s critique of that critique … and of Winner’s understanding as well (in Social Studies of Science, vol. 29, No. 3, 1999). If it is not an Aufhebung (it is not) it is at least a fundamental shift of focus.

The aim of Woolgar and Cooper is to build on Joerges analysis and go beyond his sticking to the ‘historical facts’ and to show why this needs to be done. It is also to “clarify significant misapprehensions which Joerges attributes to ‘Woolgar’, and to ‘the discourse position’” (434). There is much more to be learned than just that Winner was wrong.

Woolgar and Cooper summarize Winner’s story of Moses’ bridges as one constituting a disjunction between what in a certain technology that seems to be (bridges that let vehicles pass over water) and the actual case of it (the bridges only letting certain groups of people over due to racist design). This disjunction follows from what led up to the technological artifact, i.e. the racist politics implemented into the design process. And, the effects of the technology are in line with the motives of the designer, i.e. the effects are (only) racist politics in action. This is what gives Moses’ bridges political qualities (artifacts thus have politics), whether or not the racist design was conscious or not (here Woolgar and Cooper seem to miss the point Winner made of this being conscious racist design).

Instead of jumping directly to Joerges critique, Woolgar and Cooper now retell some other stories of debunking the claims made by Winner. A student, named Jane Douglas, at a lecture debunks the Winner-story by claiming that she’s been riding buses over Moses’ bridges everyday when living in New York. This will become important later on.

Back to Joerges, he makes a distinction between words and things that is misleading when it comes to textual practice, claims Woolgar and Cooper. Ironically, he is here following Winner’s position. This position gives “ontological priority to things over words” (435). But, W&C argues, texts “encompass both words and things” (ibid.). If I understand them correctly, this is because words are part of the constituting of things, bringing them into the text. There are both words and things in a text, with the (once again ironically) example of Joerges’ text itself, so full of ‘words’ and (following Joerges) absent of things.

What Woolgar and Cooper does is basically to leave the question of true and false representation of things behind and ask “what does the text do?” and “how does it gain the status of truth?”. They argue that both Winner’s and Joerges’ bridges are construed through eliding the “possible auxiliary theories” that undermine the “emerging consensus” (437). This is nothing separating them from correct representations of artifacts; this is an essential ambivalence at the core of every representation. Joerges ignores this the “essential ambivalent quality of artifacts” (438), i.e. that aspects of it are always out of reach.

So, the iconic status given to Winner’s story is not to be found in the text (it is not because of an error committed or not), it is to be found in the outcomes of the story’s usage. As such, stories are like artifacts (or rather, they are artifacts), since “the properties of the artifact are the outcome, not the cause, of their reception” (439) and what is to be analyzed is its movement in and through relational contexts. This is fancy talk for: Who cares about the truth of the story? What’s interesting is how and by whom it is used!

The conclusion is that Moses’ (or Winner’s) bridges are Urban Legends for academics. If “Winner’s bridges didn’t exist you would have to invent them” (441). It tells moral stories about boundaries and boundary transgression. For some bridges seems only to be bridges. (Arguably, Joerges’ bridges could be argued to be an Urban Legend as well, telling the moral tale of those transgressing the truth-lie-boundary.) This is the usage of Moses’ bridges.

The other conclusions Woolgar and Cooper draws are that Joerges is as much on the level of intention as Winner (Moses did not intend racist bridges!), thus underplaying “the significance of the constant availability of competing versions of Moses’ ‘actual’ intentions” (442), and that Joerges by taking the middle road between Control and Contingency (such a third-way-social-democrat-fuck-strategy) draws a erroneous “conceptual geography” (why this is the case is not fully developed).

So, this is the critique of the critique of the critique. I’ve seen that there is a critique of this critique. We’ll see if I manage to take that one on as well. And then maybe with a less vulgar usage of the term ‘critique’.