Aircraft Stories: Decentering the Object in Technoscience (Science and Cultural Theory) [Paperback]

John Law (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0822328240 | ISBN-13: 978-0822328247 | Publication Date: April 24, 2002

In Aircraft Stories noted sociologist of technoscience John Law tells “stories” about a British attempt to build a military aircraft—the TSR2. The intertwining of these stories demonstrates the ways in which particular technological projects can be understood in a world of complex contexts.
Law works to upset the binary between the modernist concept of knowledge, subjects, and objects as having centered and concrete essences and the postmodernist notion that all is fragmented and centerless. The structure and content of Aircraft Stories reflect Law’s contention that knowledge, subjects, and—particularly— objects are “fractionally coherent”: that is, they are drawn together without necessarily being centered. In studying the process of this particular aircraft’s design, construction, and eventual cancellation, Law develops a range of metaphors to describe both its fractional character and the ways its various aspects interact with each other. Offering numerous insights into the way we theorize the working of systems, he explores the overlaps between singularity and multiplicity and reveals rich new meaning in such concepts as oscillation, interference, fractionality, and rhizomatic networks.
The methodology and insights of Aircraft Stories will be invaluable to students in science and technology studies and will engage others who are interested in the ways that contemporary paradigms have limited our ability to see objects in their true complexity.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Through this lively text, John Law guides us on a tour of the TSR2 that will be a rich resource for anyone interested in the question of how new artifacts come into being. Writers, readers, engineers, and aircraft are inseparable components of the project, which involves simultaneously achieving the singularities and recovering the multiplicities of stories and things. Crafting together a complex architecture of subject/object relations, Aircraft Stories offers a prototype for a new form of technoscience storytelling.”—Lucy Suchman, author of Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication

“What is a military aircraft? John Law shows in his beautiful analysis that it is a constant oscillation between multiplicity and singularity. It (sometimes) flies, it (possibly) drops nuclear bombs, it (certainly) reproduces a very conservative social order, it interpellates and entices young men, and yet it still remains a military aircraft. John Law invents what could be a monadology in which there is no longer preestablished harmony.”—Michel Callon, CSI Ecole des mines de Paris

From the Publisher

"Through this lively text, John Law guides us on a tour of the TSR2 that will be a rich resource for anyone interested in the question of how new artifacts come into being. Writers, readers, engineers, and aircraft are inseparable components of the project, which involves simultaneously achieving the singularities and recovering the multiplicities of stories and things. Crafting together a complex architecture of subject/object relations, Aircraft Stories offers a prototype for a new form of technoscience storytelling."—Lucy Suchman, author of Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication

"What is a military aircraft? John Law shows in his beautiful analysis that it is a constant oscillation between multiplicity and singularity. It (sometimes) flies, it (possibly) drops nuclear bombs, it (certainly) reproduces a very conservative social order, it interpellates and entices young men, and yet it still remains a military aircraft. John Law invents what could be a monadology in which there is no longer preestablished harmony."—Michel Callon, CSI Ecole des mines de Paris

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books (April 24, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822328240
• ISBN-13: 978-0822328247
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,353,833 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Best example of pomo flatulence, October 7, 2004

By 

Saul Boulschett "Anyway" (Dry land) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Aircraft Stories: Decentering the Object in Technoscience (Science and Cultural Theory) (Paperback)

Content - 0.13 star.
As a superb example of idle, pointless, academic inanity - 5 stars. So, 3 stars.

The "professional" reviews were seductive. So I bought it. And read it -- groaning most of the way through. Happily, it's a short book, with the text taking up only about 200 pages. Six stories in all, one of them self-consciously devoted to the problem of the author's own "reflexivity" -- that is, how the writer's subjectivity affects and intereferes, for better or worse, the subject of study. How very considerate and so... Stuart Smalley of you.

No doubt, this book has much to offer, especially to those people who might think that thinking about, and living in, a universe in which 'x' can "oscillate" into other states of identity -- 'y' and/or 'z' -- is so "radical." However, so much of what is said in the name of postmodernity and "Other" is said with so much parochial ignorance of others (that is, other cultures' far more exhaustive work on this topic -- Hello! Buddhism?), and received with enthusiasm as if there is something genuinely new here.

In this book, if you remove all the tedious academic jargon ("singular multiplicity," "coherence without a center," "oscillation," etc), the argument boils down to something very obvious -- and (I'll be generous here) highly 'mediocre' in insight value -- that has not only received more thorough treatment in various philosophical traditions, but also available to plain common sense: Namely, that no thing has a fixed identity in and of itself.

Forget the technobabble: Really, is it so damn hard to say that a large "table" can also be used as a "bed" or as a small "stage"? Or, that 'John Doe' can be simultaneously a soldier, husband, brother, father, etc? Where is the "Johnniness" in John? Well, there isn't any, since even John is a composite of flesh, nerves, bones, water, memory, desires, etc. Same for an aircraft: sometimes it excites young men, sometimes it flies, sometimes it drops bombs, sometimes it's called by other names --like a 'weapons system'... 'Nuf said.

Law's style of prose is at once flaccid, flatulent, and fastidious. And the content piggy-back rides on the names of some famous people (like Deleuze) and their concepts (like rhizome) without getting anywhere.

Despite my own disappointment with this book, I think the author wrote it in good faith. I think Professor Law really believes that he has something new and interesting to say. Well, he might, but I think only for three types of readers:

One: Undergrads who need to be told, and learn how to say obvious things in respectable academese (convoluted prose).

Two: Assistant profs looking to secure tenure someday in the so-called burgeoning field of Technoscience Studies -- as they have to incestuously quote (and praise) one another's work. (Scientists could not give a rat's arse about what these people have to say about their work.)

Three: People who cannot figure out why an "aircraft" cannot just remain an "aircraft"; and cannot understand that the name a thing goes by is NOT the thing "itself" as no thing has a specific, absolutely determined "selfhood."

Now, I will take that vote of "Not Helpful" for having said Not Nice things about your friend or colleague's book.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sublime stories on things in their making, March 9, 2004

By 

Katrine Lotz (Hellerup Denmark) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Aircraft Stories: Decentering the Object in Technoscience (Science and Cultural Theory) (Paperback)

While at no point downspeaking to its reader, this book poses a large number of essential questions on technology, science and design. Based on the case of the TSR-2 aircraft, it keeps on asking stubbornly like a detective investigating a crime, uncovering bit by bit how objects are not singular, homogeneous entities, but just as heterogene and active in the formation of society and things as the subjects. It makes very clear that the 'interpellation' between human and nonhuman actors is crucial to investigate, and is itself a paradigmatic example on how to conduct such studies. Its points on the relevance of oscillating between modernity and postmodernity are lucid, imaginative and very informing.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I was dubious at first, July 15, 2003

By 

S. Fialkowski (Maryland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Aircraft Stories: Decentering the Object in Technoscience (Science and Cultural Theory) (Paperback)

Unless you are very used to post-modern theory, you will not find Law's idea lucid at first. I believe that I shook my head in disbelief. His explanation of a fractal reality fell on death ears, but then I read more. Once I finished the book and discussed it in class, I realized that Law had altered how I viewed technoscience. This book is highly recommended and Law should be commended for his approach to a reconciliation of the modern and post-modern.