against solutionism

for the chapter above, one of the reviewers had a request that I provide an absolute resolution, a clear map forward.

Clarify whether this is a critique from within or outside computational social science. At times the chapter seems to reject the entire epistemic foundation of computation; at other points, it suggests computational tools can be salvaged or redirected. It would help to more clearly state: what remains possible within computational social science, and what must be left behind.

as reasonable as this request might seem, i immediately recognized it for what it was. it's a request i've become very familiar with, one that i started receiving aggressively once i began writing critiques against my discipline's research practices and frameworks.

it's the scientific requirement/demand for solutions; solutionism. never can we pause at diagnosis. never can we remain in the wreckage or dis-solution that follows from diagnosis, even for a moment. the shared (possibly forced) impulse to immediately try to glue the pieces back together, to keep one's (our?) world intact. but i don't share that impulse, i'd rather we sift through the rubble, allowing ourselves to question whether any of it is worth keeping at all; not always/only impulsively trying to find possibilities, but also seeing and sitting with the impossibilities. i’d rather we refuse the demand to move forward, in a clear direction, or in any direction, and instead sink into disorientation so that we become aware that we can/should question our very foundations and their pre-given compass.

a necessary unlearning made possible by sitting with diagnosis, with the wreckage.

here was my response:

This is exactly the tension I want the field to grapple with, it must be a collective effort to figure out what is salvageable and what isn’t. And, in fact, something I left out is that maybe its the field itself that is unsalvageable. To the extent that computation must necessarily mean measurement that’s tethered to Man’s epistemic foundations, then maybe the best thing is to not measure. A difficult part of epistemic systems is that it is hard to think outside of them, they provide the rationality that shapes what is possible to think in the first place. If the chapter seems to waffle between rejecting or suturing the fields of computational & social science, it is because that is exactly where my thoughts are. I see glimmers of unformed potential while also seeing wholesale refusal as a way forward too. And it is all a bit of a trap. I know that the impulse in social science is that critiques must always provide some kind of solution if it is to be seen as worthwhile and useful. One thing I appreciate about black studies is that it asks people to sit with the discomfort of not having an immediate solution or answer, and that the answer itself might be something that seems unthinkable.

Here is a direct quote from Rizvana Bradley who wrote Anteaesthetics which reveals the antiblack foundation of modern aesthetics. She was asked on a podcast to comment on her decision to remain in the critique, to stay with the negative in the face of an intractable problem:

“As for negativity, this is a great question. Understandably, many of us are disquieted by the specter of the negative. We want something to hold on to. But negativity is something we bear whether or not we acknowledge it. Black studies at its best is committed to thinking with this unthinkability. For those who have not read the book, Anteaesthetics opens with a call to attune to and stay with what I call the negativity of Black art. The book argues that Black artistry advances a thought of negativity without recuperation or address. Rather than acceding to the presumption that Black art should advance a reparative politics, Black artistry's negative power lies and perhaps always has resided in its incisive critique of the social order. That is, Black art challenges predominant political grammars by disclosing and unsettling their very foundations… The obvious question that emerges is why it is that Nelson's [a white author] refusal to offer, in her words, quote, what can only be false or moralistic solutions to intractable ethical and esthetic problems, end quote, elicits showers of praise from the literary establishment, whereas black critical interventions that emphasize negativity, or which refuse forms of affirmation or amelioration that, in fact, function to conceal and perpetuate our ongoing captivity, are instead met with anxiety, apprehension, or uncertainty at best, an outright dismissal or denunciation at worst.”
Rizvana Bradley, "Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and the Critique of Form" (Stanford UP, 2023)

Rather than provide a premature solution or stance on what exactly needs to change (I’m still grappling with all of these ideas), I’d rather take the lesson from black studies and sit with the negativity, alongside my readers. I want readers to think deeply for themselves too, to have unanswered questions and to explore gaps, this is a collective effort to what currently is or seems like an intractable problem. My chapter simply points to the critique, advances a diagnosis of a hidden problem, only hints at some ways others are moving forward, and it is now up to all of us to work on what happens moving forward - that is where exciting and clarifying work will happen. In this way, I hint at the potential for computation in liberatory futures, but I do not want to promise it.