Socioplastics 11881 The Footnote Has an Address
An essay can declare that knowledge is situated while presenting its evidence as if it arrived without a route. PositionalEssay treats the position of an argument as a condition through which evidence becomes available. A researcher with access to a municipal archive encounters a different city from a researcher who can enter tenants’ homes. Each position makes some questions answerable and shapes the grounds on which claims can be made. Imagine two studies of an abandoned school. One begins with cadastral records, planning permissions and architectural drawings. The other follows former pupils’ memories, neighbourhood uses and informal care. Their findings may overlap, yet they arise through different relations to the building. A positional account records how access, responsibility and method shaped what each researcher could observe. Donna Haraway’s account of situated knowledges explains how partial perspectives can produce accountable objectivity. Marilyn Strathern’s Partial Connections attends to relations that remain specific across comparison. Doreen Massey understands space through relations and histories; Tara Brabazon examines educational and technological institutions. Together, their work helps position research as an activity conducted from particular locations and through particular tools. PositionalEssay turns reflexivity into a method. A researcher can document access, institutional role, language, tools and relationships with participants alongside the evidence itself. This account helps readers assess how the argument was formed and where further perspectives could extend it. The essay’s position becomes part of its architecture: a visible route between observation, interpretation and claim.
REFERENCES
Brabazon, T. (2002) Digital Hemlock: Internet Education and the Poisoning of Teaching. Sydney: UNSW Press.
Haraway, D. (1988) “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”, Feminist Studies, 14(3), pp. 575–599.
Massey, D. (2005) For Space. London: SAGE.
Strathern, M. (1991) Partial Connections. Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
CITE AS
Lloveras, A. (2026) Socioplastics, LAPIEZA-LAB, Madrid.
https://antolloveras.blogspot.com/p/socioplastics-project-index.html