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Paper short abstract

Strongly influenced by feminist technoscience this paper suggests touch as method in a ethico-onto-epistemology taken seriously. Using empirical cases of emotional dirt and digital life narratives touch - as method - turns out to lead the way for a new critical understanding of our posthuman becoming.

Paper long abstract

"Dirt is matter out of place" Douglas stated (1966), pointing out how meaning and matter always are entangled in systems of culture, politics and ethics. This paper builds on a 5-year ethnographic study of digital dirt (matter out of place), focusing on the growing practice of self-disclosure online. My compass has been set on norm-breaking material in the search for unknown diffraction patterns (Barad 2008, 2011; Haraway, 1997) reveling posthuman entanglements and systems of desire.

By swimming in the phenomenon of online sharing I have not only dipped my toes in a sea of a heartbreaking material, I have also become one with the phenomenon per se, submerged in silent participation in the construction of materialized emotions and bodies. Touch is physical, marking the matters involved, re-shaping our relational bonds in new becomings, new knowings and new futures (Barad 2008, 2012).

By putting myself in touch I´ve become entangled in the meaning and matter of the phenomenon I´ve studied by feeling, not just reflecting - and by hurting before healing. Figurations, re-figurations and entangled diffraction patterns can only be understood from this kind of movements within. Touch I claim, offers knowledge that exceeds reflexivity and moves far beyond the already known. Touch as method in ethico-onto-epistemology offers a posthuman ethics, taking responsibility for the knowledge produced and the future to come (Barad 2012).