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Short abstract:

Materiality is an important framework for understanding how knowledge is produced through interactions between mathematicians and their tools and contexts. I use preliminary archival research on Benoit Mandelbrot to consider the political implications of focusing on different forms of materiality.

Long abstract:

Scholars of both mathematics and STS more broadly have brought attention to the material aspects of knowledge production in the sciences. Materiality is an important framework for understanding how mathematical knowledge is produced through interactions between mathematicians and their tools and contexts. Such understandings are a productive step toward recognizing, and, crucially, undoing, connections between mathematics and political violence. In this contribution, I investigate the political commitments and calls to action that come from attending to different materialities. Using preliminary archival research on Benoit Mandelbrot, IBM fellow and “father” of fractal geometry,” I focus on the material aspects of fractal research – the visualization of fractals, the computing resources at IBM, and the ties to extraction industries. With these examples, I ask how we, as scholars, should approach the study of materialities that are more or less explicitly political. What are the stakes, for example, of focusing on the ties between Mandelbrot and weapons manufacturers, or between Mandelbrot and institutions central to the Israeli apartheid regime like the Technion? What about less explicitly political materialities such as fractal visualizations? This methodological question attends to what directions of study are the most fruitful on a scholarly level, but, more importantly, it asks what connections and relationships are most fruitful for enacting calls to action. Through a few examples, I suggest that to only focus on the most explicitly political aspects is a disservice that makes the work of organizers aiming to disrupt mathematical systems of violence and harm more challenging.