My colleague Mark Coté is working with an interesting idea borrowed from Foucaut, the “dispositif”. He has a short paper/abstract in the Proceedings of the GENEALOGIES DE LA BIOPOLITIQUE. He defines dispositif as,
The dispositif’s something literally “lost in translation” with English-language interlocutors’ a grid of intelligibility; a heterogeneous ensemble of discursive and nondiscursive elements that come together in response to an urgent need, a combinatory machine that allows us to ‘see’ and ‘speak’ and in the process producing not ‘ideology’ but their own ‘truths’. (Coté, Mark, “The Soft Revolution”,
Conference Proceedings : Genealogies of Biopolitics, Oct. 18, 2005)
How is a dispositif a machine? How is it different from a tool? Does it give us a way of understanding the limitations of tools?
Dispositif is still for me a fuzzy concept, I worry that it could be just about any ensemble. My sense is that Mark is working with a sense of scale – a dispositif is something at the scale that it can be used (“disponible” – at the disposal of) by individuals. My sense is that an ensemble becomes a dispositif when there is a self-consciousness to the agency. When people begin talking and reflecting on blogging then the mix of technologies (XML, databases, web), practices (journaling, person reflection, linking) and communicative links with people becomes a pattern or meme – something people can advise others to do as a way of acting.