Critical theory and the return to the particular Catherine Howell Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies, University of Cambridge 16 Mill Lane, Cambridge CB2 1RD, UK [email protected] Reading recent discussions of intimacy, affect and emotion in the HCI literature, one is struck by an enduring sense of awkwardness, self-consciousness, and even inadequacy in researchers’ attempts to translate from lived experience to “scientific knowledge”. Even strongly collaborative and ethnographic research approaches tend, it appears, in HCI to reach a point where individual singularity and agency falls away (or is effectively sidelined), and research participants become “subjects” for examination and evaluation. At this point, the “particularity and sensuality” that Elspeth Probyn speaks of, qualities that are so central to our identities and to lived experience, seem paradoxically to become less and less evident (Probyn 1996: 20). Characteristic rhetorical gestures of disavowal and distancing appear, whereby the researchers seek to disassociate themselves from their subject by using the language of the laboratory or the clinic to speak of intimate human relations. This brief position paper argues for critical theory’s ability to open a discursive space in which alternative understandings of affect and other aspects of subjective experience may be considered in relation to HCI. Critical theory may help us to bridge the gap identified by Button and Dourish, Anderson, and others between design practice and qualitative enquiry (Button and Dourish 1996, Anderson 1994). Certainly, the need to reclaim the particular experiences of individuals is becoming ever more pressing, as the social contexts for technology use continue to broaden. In a recent workshop on interaction design, for example, Jason Zalinger and Nathan Freier argued that mood remains underrepresented in HCI research, and that “ubiquitous computing and communication systems ought to account for people’s shifting moods […] by increasing presence and facilitating imagination” (Zalinger and Freier 2008: 1). Recent research in philosophy (in particular, aesthetics, phenomenology, and philosophy of mind), intercultural studies, and gender studies, among other fields, provides a sophisticated set of languages with which to discuss complex social phenomena and issues around intimacy and distance, desires and values, identity and belonging. In this respect, critical theory has great potential to complement critical design (e.g. Dunne 1999; Martin and Gaver 2000), which has increase the visibility of research approaches that are less utilitarian or “product-oriented”, and more concerned with “provoking questions, reflecting on design and […] shaping future possible directions” (Taylor, Swan, and Durrant 1997). Critical theory cannot be considered solely as an analytic toolset to be “applied” to HCI. Critical theory implies engaging with complexity: it can help us to return to the “minuteness of the social surface” (Probyn 1996: 20). Paying attention to individual experiences and modes of expression, or what Barthes has termed “the grain of the voice”, can help us to resist collapsing individual experiences into a set of normative propositions. It can help us become more alert to alternative forms of being and belonging, which resist or oppose “the implicit power to generalize…to produce sociological stability” (Bhabha 1994: 155). For the individual researcher, in particular, reclaiming point of view and “narrative gesture” can help to recover the transformative dimensions of research practice (Stewart 1993: 3). References

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Anderson, R. J. Representations and Requirements: The Value of Ethnography in System Design. Human-Computer Interaction, 9 (2), 1994, 151-182 Barthes, R. The Grain of the Voice. In: Image-Music-Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. Hill and Wang, New York, 1977, 179-189. Bhabha, H. The Location of Culture. Routledge, London, 1994. Button, G. and Dourish, P. Technomethodology: Paradoxes and possibilities. Proc. CHI ’96, ACM Press, 1996, 19-26. Dunne, A. Hertzian tales: Electronic products, aesthetic experience and critical design. RCACRD Publications, London, 1999. Martin, H. and Gaver, W. Beyond the Snapshot: From Speculation to Prototypes in Audiophotography. Proc. DIS ’00, ACM Press, 2000, 55-65. Probyn, E. Outside Belongings. Routledge, London, 1996. Stewart, S. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Duke University Press, Durham, 1993. Taylor, Alex S., Swan, L., and Durrant, A. Designing Family Photo Displays. Proc. ECSCW ’07, Springer, 1997, 79-98. Zalinger, J. and Freier, N. To Be Continued: Technology, Mood, and Darkness. Night and darkness: Interaction after dark. Workshop. CHI 2008. Available online: http://research.microsoft.com/~ast/chi/darkness/papers/Zalinger_Freier.pdf [Last access: 11/07/08]

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