Paper short abstract:

How does Innovation cross over categories of Science and Democracy? Using study of Innovation as a material-discursive practice, I show the logic of counting individual bodies as measure of success in all the categories makes innovation desirable for all scientific, economic and political practices.

Paper long abstract:

In this abstract, I take up how Karen Barad’s idea of complementarity -- when measurement is taken as material conceptual practice it entails that the variables be simultaneously necessary and mutually exclusive, thus complementary rather than incommensurable as in the uncertainty principle proposed by Trevor Pinch -through understanding both Innovation and Democracy as counting devices. Innovation is by definition success in the market where Science is measured in terms of more or less money it makes -success is defined by numbers -which in turn re-orders scientific research as capitalist commodity; Democratic achievements as electoral wins base their success in the number of bodies, so is prone to majoritarianism, rather than objective governance, again a matter for counting and numbers. While in general view, the domains of innovation and democracy might be seen as different kinds of activity and mutually exclusive till policy brings them together, I suggest that all knowledge-making and democracy-making are based on social actions, networks and social relationships. Yet since the achievements of both are measured through counting individual bodes -as citizens, or users, or money, a measurement does not take into account the social nature of the bodies -old, young, productive, reproductive, individual and collective, it only perpetuates mutual exclusivity as principle, rather than complementarity. Thus I explore through the material discursive logic of hand weaving, what would happen if we think of Innovation and Democracy as following a central logic -of counting in a linear numerical system, that legitimates innovation, services capitalism and is one of the instruments by which it endures.