Remaining in confusion: An unfocused manifesto?! *

0.
This is an attempt at exploring anthropological uses of twitter, exploring modes beyond (1) public critique or (2) the archive of experiences – like in the great recent threads by @allegra_lab and @somatosphere or @kaisirin ’s field-note experiments https://t.co/JJIqEE2X2W

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 30, 2020

2.
Of course, we all want do to… something
Something, yeah, because, er, something is a lot more than nothing… ain’t it? pic.twitter.com/dv1xTWZNQl

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 30, 2020

4.
But, dunno, is that it? Shouldn’t we feel concerned to participate in the worlding of the world as it unworlds unworldly

Hmm, we would really like to undo the doings of the, wait, you’re gonna love this one: the Anthro-po-cene.
Say it again, please. The an-throooo-po-seeen pic.twitter.com/o0MTzH12QP

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 30, 2020

6.
(silence)

No, no, sorry, it should be the… oh, bummer, now this is a difficult one: th-k… oh dear, ch-th… Damn. The ka-th…
Ah, I know what you mean: You’re saying it * wrong * it’s the chth-hoo-looooo-seen?
There you go, that…

* Cough *

Right, that! pic.twitter.com/nRzqbE2P2E

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 30, 2020

8.
(Gasp)
So we r-e-d-o our methods, yeah, and we forge interdisciplinar-i-t-y , and we undertake in collaborative woohooo, and we co-articulate the blah, and so on, and to do so too we stay with the trouble

(silence)

Or, rather, should we trouble how we stay … i-n i-t? pic.twitter.com/E4b7pb7y6h

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 30, 2020

11.
Oh, really? Tell me more…
So, we do, we do a lot of hashtags, #-this #-that and we do open – fancy, fancy, yeah – access?!

Wow, I like the sound of it too.
Yeah!
Let’s u-n-d-o it a lot, a lot! pic.twitter.com/eFWvPovg7p

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 30, 2020

13.
“I don’t know about you, but I am completely out of tune”
“Well, I’m gonna say this, I’m spaced out. Rather, I’m burnt out”,
“I’m burn out too”

All (chorus):
“burnt-out too, burnt-out too, burnt-out too, burnt-out too…”https://t.co/RaJPaeL7Sz

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 30, 2020

15.
Well, if you feel a bit meh, like that, if you also are confused by the contemporary state of affairs in which ‘we’ are…

Greetings, traveler, you’ve come to the right place!

Let's start with a proposal, a manifesto: What if we tried to remain in confusion TO-GE-THER?

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 30, 2020

17.
Er, palate it, taste it. Not wanting to go too far away from it, but also not remaining stuck in – oogh! – it. Because otherwise we could go bzzzzzzz or grrrrrrrr, and nobody wants that, do they?

(Silence)

Mmm pic.twitter.com/RaNR14tlng

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 30, 2020

19.
We don’t tend to pay too much, er… attention (Yeah, that thing we lack now)

I mean, we regularly don’t pay much attention to speculating (except the financial kind)

It’s true, most of the times it’s as if already knew w-h-a-t-t-o-d-o, and… https://t.co/EuFIP3U20H

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 30, 2020

21.
I know, when we do, well, the eyes of confusion stare back at us, and we suddenly become very little, and we lose o-u-r v o i c e

(gasp) pic.twitter.com/3lfvrafCnM

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 30, 2020

23.
Maybe we just need to try… I mean to, to, to find… like the appropriate way, the route, the… manifesto (like boats had one) for the task at hand and not to, er…

Well not to err, that’s for sure.

(long sigh) pic.twitter.com/K7T0HQADs0

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 30, 2020

25.
Join!

We could have fun, and perhaps someone will say something interesting (or not). That’s even better than the regular Q&A of any single conference you might have attended lately…

(silence) pic.twitter.com/YaTthCI9EX

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 30, 2020

27.
What kind of equipment, what sort of devices (ethnographic, fieldwork, or otherwise) should we repurpose, import, or devise to address ‘this’? Or… none at all?https://t.co/adDrJQVDnM

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 30, 2020

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thx to #colleex @eevabee @adolfoestalella for their comments & their continues encouragement to experiment with anthropology's adventure of relevance (cf. @SavranskyMartin ) documenting & archiving our attempts: https://t.co/jmhmY7asSq | https://t.co/hFGeU4NipA

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 30, 2020

DISCLAIMER

i. This is NOT a call for ‘nihilism’ or ‘doing nothing’. It is also not a critical or distancing move. Rather, it mobilizes humor and puzzlement to experimentalize our modes of engaging with an unfolding emergent situation…

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 31, 2020

iii. This call for speculation stems from the European situation of confinement or lockdown – with dispersed loved ones & peers in despair – trying to think about the major political and epistemic challenges this poses to anthropological endeavours (practical care issues aside)

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 31, 2020

v. Also, morality is a political technique that knows what happens, an analytic of path dependency, an epistemic technique of principled action particularly ill-equipped to deal with ‘the new’. What politics is needed for the emergent here and now?

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 31, 2020

vii. Being in lockdown highlights the relevance of some ethnographic skills & techniques over others: hermeneutics of online documentary analysis; ‘grounded’ (pun intended) self-exploratory meditations (auto-ethnography?). A new golden age of digital ethnography?

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 31, 2020

ix. We are forced to operate within heavily scripted state and expert discourses within media whose algorithmic agenda setting & material rendering we suspect, but practically know very little about… How to do research through platforms that engineer their unresearchability?

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 31, 2020

END *

And now for better readability: As a blog posthttps://t.co/kRWutMQrGa

— Tomás S. Criado (@tscriado) March 31, 2020