I’m starting out this blog resurrection by responding to the first book I read this summer: Robert Rosenberger’s Callous Objects (2018).
Before I break down the argument of the text, a discussion about publications from the University of Minnesota Press. I’m a huge fan for a few reasons. They’re pretty cheap when compared to the price of most academic texts – about eight vs. 20-30 dollars a text. This is likely an outcome of the typical size of the books. They’re typically smaller academic works – both in book size and length – which makes them an easy target for readers who want a slightly faster take on an academic subject. I’ve previously read Steven Shaviro’s No Speed Limit (2015) and have Jussi Parikka’s The Anthrobscene (2015) and Andrew Culp’s Dark Deleuze (2016) on my to-read list. I’d welcome comments/suggestions about any of those texts below.
Rosenberger’s book works well for readers interested in either urban design or science and technology studies (STS), since it considers the moral, ethical, and political implications of everyday objects (“mundane artifacts” for the Latour-fans in-the-house) – specifically a few cases in the Montreal subway, and on the streets of Chicago and Berlin, but also in major cities generally. There are three distinct theoretical arguments that I appreciated in Rosenberger’s book: (1) its general introduction to a “multistable” understanding of everyday technology, (2) its emphasis on how this understanding allows us to see the impact of urban design on homeless individuals, and (3) the development of a moral critique against designs that seek to obscure such populations from the view of average citizens.
In identifying public urban objects, Rosenberger highlights how these technologies find multiple uses by different groups of individuals living in the city. To unpack this theoretically, Rosenberger relies on Don Ihde’s concept of multistability, defined as “a technology’s capacity to be taken up for different uses and to be meaningful in different ways” (4-5). He also introduces concepts from phenomenology and Latour’s network-actor theory to give the reader a theoretical framework for understanding how objects interact with human beings at the experiential level.
For an example, Rosenberger focuses our attention on the bus stop bench. One “stability” of such an object is using such a bench to sit as you wait for the city bus to arrive. Rosenberger even concludes that this may be the “dominant stability,” or the main purpose, of such an object. However, when we understand the bus stop bench as a multistable object, we appreciate how a network of individuals approach the same object in different ways. A teenager might use the bench as a place to carve their name (e.g. KR + AD 4 EVR), or businessperson might use the bench as a place to set their briefcase down while they engage in a phone conversation. The stability that Rosenberger is most interested in, however, is that afforded to homeless individuals (often referred to as “unhoused” people).
Someone who is unhoused may find that a traditional bus bench offers them a unique stability typically unanticipated by others – a surface to sleep on. Not only this, but one that gives them plausible deniability in case of a confrontation with the police – giving them the rhetorical licence to claim they were just waiting for the bus.
However, as Rosenberger points out, city bus benches join a legion of public objects that are being designed specifically to discourage unhoused individuals from using them. Trash cans are covered and locked to preventing picking. Spikes (see featured picture above) are installed in locations that homeless have used previously as respites from the outdoor elements. As seen in the picture below, this San Diego bus stop bench has foreclosed on the stability that homeless populations might seek it out for by simply including small handles to divide the bench. The dominant stability, the ability to sit remains.
Rosenberger relies on these practical examples of urban design and STS theory to develop a ethical critique of the impact of such changes on the visibility of homeless populations. Altering a design to take away an unhoused person’s place to sleep does not describe the total effect on such a population. The true immoral effect of “hostile architecture” – a term some scholars use to refer to the larger trend of such design against different populations – might be better understood by considering how such alterations obscure groups of people from our view. When a bus stop bench is redesigned to prevent a unhoused person from sleeping there, such a decision is an ethical choice throughout a network that implements the change – from the designer to the city.
However, it is difficult to levy a moral critique against every individual in this network. Some may do so unknowingly (Rosenberger calls attention to an artist who unintentionally designs a callous object in the Montréal subway), and some may never reveal their immoral intent. Thus, this pamphlet calls on the reader to calibrate their own moral response to these objects by criticizing their current and altered stabilities using the framework previously discussed. Those most debilitated by the design changes above are best served by a calibration of our own moral compass – a calibration specifically to how these alterations obscure unhoused people’s very presence.
With Rosenberger’s theoretical view, informed by both phenomenology and network-actor theory, we can begin to unpack the multitude of stabilities present in objects that surround us everyday. We can also rely on such an understanding to guide us in developing a moral understanding of mundane technology.
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