The ‘display’ in the exhibition organised as part of the November AusSTS meeting was ‘a story-telling’ about the ‘making and doing’ of a particularly elusive entity in an Australian university setting. This essay is ‘a story about the telling of this story as part of a particular event’. As such, both the story as displayed, and, in the form of this essay about that, are just further turns in the events which are trying to bring this elusive entity to politico-epistemic life in the tension-filled working of the polity of the sovereign Australian state. The challenge taken up in the essay is to shed light on a string of practices as constitutive of the event(s) in embracing an openness to allow the unfolding of both the particular happenings and of the vague whole that is ‘M&D STS’.
My Making & Doing session, which took place at the 2024 AusSTS conference, was prefigured by a long string of processes (thinking, writing, talking). Yet, all this preceding work was not, at least in the way that I wanted to conduct the session itself, intended to ‘plan for’, or ‘determine’ what would happen in the ‘event’ itself. Indeed, the prefiguring work was undertaken to enable it to ‘become’ whatever it ‘became’. I did figure that the general form and preliminary subject matter of the session would need some basic structure and scripting, giving the participants some guidance to help them join in. However, because the more important aim was that the session itself be able to ‘unfold’ on the basis of the contributions made by those in attendance, I resisted going too far with either of these processes. In this my aim was to mimic the openness of how I try to conduct our ‘open learning’ sessions (webinars) in the Treaty education program that I lecture and research within.
This outlook informs the challenge I set myself for this account: can it shed light on the string of processes as constitutive of the event at the same time as embracing the openness to the unfolding that I was hoping to nurture in the event itself? And further, can this account be crafted so that it can be understood as an extension of the Making & Doing event? I.e. can this account be read as something more than simply a reflection upon it? Any assessments in relation to these challenges are to be made by you, the reader.
Having volunteered to do an STS Making & Doing presentation I find myself wondering what have I got myself into? On one hand it is strange to have this feeling, given I have attended many Making & Doing presentations in the past and have discussed them as a ‘mode of presentation’ plenty of times with colleagues. There seems to be something about methods and methodology of STS M&D that engenders such feelings; something goes in and out of focus when I try to think about this. Regardless here I am, in the lead up to the 2024 AusSTS conference, in which I have volunteered to do my own Making & Doing presentation, and I feel nervous. What exactly is it I am trying to do? Am I trying to ‘achieve’ something?
In this essay I attempt to ‘bring to light’ some aspects of my knowledge making practices which I see as inhering in the preparation, the doing, and the reflecting on, my Making & Doing presentation at the 2024 AusSTS conference. I hope that this account is an extensive one (as in, it e x t e n d s, not as in detailed and long), and not simply a reflective one that relays what took place, explain or analysing it. Rather, my aim is to take ‘what was done’, examine it, and through interpretation, develop it in new directions. In the way I think about it, the ‘success’ of this account depends on two interrelated elements. First, that it somehow embodies the spirit of what makes Making & Doing different from other sorts of knowledge production. In this, the account (like Making & Doing) attends to things that might otherwise remain hidden. And second, that it explores and articulates what makes an M&D conference presentation different to ‘ordinary’ conference presentations and why. Having done this I will offer some thoughts on what I believe such presentations offer, and why people doing knowledge work wanting to share their stories should consider M&D as an option.
I am a researcher and lecturer in an Australian university’s Treaty education program, which is principally focused on the nascent Victorian treaty process. As an educational object, Treaty is unlike most university subjects, for two key reasons. Firstly, the object of our study- a treaty or treaties- do not exist in Australia. There are no examples to tell us about the form/s our object of interest takes, or the logics upon which they might be built. We can, of course look at examples from elsewhere (and we do), but it remains the fact that there are no local objects to examine. Secondly, the concept of treaty, in terms of its substance, problematises the notion of singular and secure knowledge domain that normally grounds the teacher’s authority as teacher. Treaty demands that those who become configured by it directly engage with epistemics. Questions immediately arise: who knows, what is known, how do knowns become knowns, and, how they secured as knowing? Treaty thus directly instantiates institutions as critical to knowing. In this the teacher’s ‘authority’ and the notion of ‘expertise’ (crucial concepts, central to making teaching what it ‘is’), are problematised and opened for interrogation. In terms of how I think of my role, these are critical tasks (tasks eschewed in almost all formalised education).
One of my goals for the M & D session is to make something of the ‘flavour’ of the Treaty education program available to the conference participants–capture something of how it ‘feels’ ‘tastes’ to we who are the ‘facilitators’…. The thing I am most keen on is to find a way to create an opportunity for participants in the session them to be actively involved, and to see that their contributions, in the form of questions, confusions, steadfast opinions (whatever, really), actively configure the work we do together. I hope that the session is helpful for all of us as we grapple with what it might means to seek to make treaties in Australia.
I hope that we get a chance to discuss the concept of expertise, but I do not feel it’s right to approach it head on. Rather, I am hoping that questions relating to epistemics arise from a shared discussion about what treaties ‘are’, what they might ‘do’ and what’s required for the to get ‘done’. To be clear, I know I have an active configuring role; it would be disingenuous to pretend otherwise. But I’m going not to engage in some sort of Socratic process, where I lead people ‘to and through’ questions I think ‘ought’ to be asked. If I see an opportunity to talk about expertise I will, if not, that is fine too.
I obviously have to have some sort of structure, and I also need to some things up my sleeve. I am, after all, the one running the show. I have gone over and over how to start the session, thinking about what people need to hear from me in order to situate themselves in the M&D session, and to understand something of what I imagine their role to be. I also need to set ‘the tone’, and to demonstrate my awareness of the political implications of this M &D experiment (to make clear that as a whitefella it is not my place to assert any sort of ownership role in relation to the subject matter)… making sure this is ‘safe’ is a critical consideration, but what exactly this will mean in the event itself cannot be prescribed in advance.
The M&D part of the conference has been set up in the large open space on the ground floor of the RSS building. Each presenter has been allocated a space and the organisers, cognisant that my presentation is a ‘sitting and talking’ kind of event, have given me a space with couches at the one end of the large open space.
The time comes for the M and D sessions to start. I am in my space, and can see people milling around the other presentations, which unlike mine, all have visual components. I had toyed with what kind of visuals I might use but decided that all would likely take attention away from what I was interested in focusing on, and so do not have any. I had not considered that they might play a role in attracting attention, so that is a learning to be had- first you need to attract people’s attention! I do a quick whip around of the other presentations, keeping one eye on the area around the couches to see whether anyone seems to be turning up for my session. Soon enough there is someone there, and so I move quickly, making sure they don’t leave before seeing if they are interested in my presentation. As it transpires, they are, and so we sit down.
I begin talking, using the framework I have spent weeks thinking about, to get going. I acknowledge that we are on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country. That this evidences a local dispute over Traditional ownership is important, but not being from here I do not have the knowledge to speak to the complexities it both reveals and hides, yet at the same time this does speak to the political complexity of what brings this session into being. Soon afterwards another person joins, and I begin again, talking about how I was originally introduced to ‘acknowledgements of country’ by Aboriginal people in the north-west of Western Australia more than thirty years ago. They helped me to understand the country as sentient, and as a giver of life, not as inert dirt one lives on top of. I am hoping that through this I am passing on what I myself have been taught (befitting my role as a ‘teacher’), at the same time demonstrating my ‘bona fides’ as it were, grounding, even if only in a small way, what I’m discussing.
I continue, explaining what I am seeking to ‘make available’ through this M & D presentation- i.e. the chance to participate in the kinds of knowledge making experiences we are trying to generate in our Treaty education program. I think it’s critical to explicitly draw the participants attention the fact that this session is attending to knowing knowing. Behind this is my hope that we can consider together issues of what responsibilities might go along with living in this country and how we explore both the issues of our past and our possible futures. This is in part driven by an inquiring intention, nurtured within me by Helen Verran and Michael Christie, which says ‘attend to the present so that we might (if we’re lucky) make futures different from pasts’. We inquire not only to know, but to inform how we might act…
This account is an interpretive artefact. It is something that I have ‘conjured’ for multiple purposes. Firstly, to give you, the reader something to help to orient you to the M & D presentation and the thoughts it evoked, both before and during, Secondly, it is a means through which I seek to understand the M&D presentation as an example of ‘what I do’, and a vehicle to understand what ‘what I do’ is. Lastly it is to form the basis of analysing how M&D, as a specific mode of presentation, enables thinking about one’s object/s differently.
I want to be clear here, in rendering this text (as a whole, the story and everything else) I am not seeking to fix, in any permanent sense, any meaning that arises from its production. In this, Making & Doing as a mode of presentation (rather than a ‘traditional’ presentation,) is critical, encouraging me to shape the presentation as a ‘performative ‘event’. This is because thinking of the session as a performance facilitated the positioning of other participants as ‘active agents’, rather than as ‘an audience’. This underpinned an event in which what would emerge could not be known in advance. This was critical for the performance to function as M&D, and central to the knowledge I was interested in inquiring into. This highlights, at least for my M&D presentation, the centrality of the assembly (even though there were only three of us), the presence of these others- their knowledge and participation- were key to it being what it was.
It seems important to note that, in inquiring into my Making & Doing session, I am also, necessarily, reflecting on my role as lecturer in Treaty education. While the Making & Doing session was (and needs to be) ‘self-contained’- it has its own logics and processes which can be attended to and understood as a specific event- I always thought of it as a site in the wider field of ‘what I do’. Therefore, part of reflecting here means specifying the connections and separations between these two aspects of the same endeavour (which themselves I generate for the purposes of analysis). Issues to do with the task of teaching, which are present in my life as a lecturer in ‘general,’ are also present in quite particular ways in the Making & Doing session, though not in the same way.
Part of the purpose of this account is to bring ‘into the light’ the figures of the knowers elicited in the Making & Doing session. No knowing takes place without knowers, and in this Making & Doing session, the embodied actors who engage in knowledge making practice with others are particular sorts of knowers. Exploring these figures is important in reflecting on M&D as a mode of presentation, but it’s also important in terms of understanding the object of interest- treaty in Australia- that configures the presentation itself.
I choose to lean into qualifying this Making & Doing event, and all the thinking and talking that took place constellated by it, as an opportunity for thinking. I deliberately resisted scripting the event (aside from getting it going, as described above), embracing the instability that would inhere in the unfolding of the event’s present. I was interested to see what would emerge, and how the collective would chart its way forward within the event itself.
You may detect that I am trying to develop this account as if it is part of my Making & Doing session, i.e. as if the event is ongoing. While this text is reflective, I am trying to make it so that it’s doing more than just referring back to something ‘done and gone’. I, as knower participating in knowing (including here, in crafting this account), am trying to refuse to bifurcate the knowing arising which centres on the physical event that was the M&D session in Canberra in November 2024. In this sense I articulate the ‘event’ as continuing, as in, not over. This, possibly strange, positioning might be best apprehended through invoking John Dewey’s notion of the ‘situation’, through which elements of lived life, which includes embodied acting (aspects of which may be separated in time and space), the use of concepts (including, obviously, language), meaning making etc., are analytically connected (Dewey 1929). Invoking this notion also allows inquiry to be centred as an active configuring concept in understanding. Dewey was interested in the processes through which phenomena become connectedseeing inquiry as critical to this process. Once connections were made, driven by inquiry, one could see them as comprised within ‘a situation’.
Inquiry in this view is active; it drives the process through which connections are made and the meanings that emerge. This also means, contra to a scientific method understood as an apparatus through which what was ‘already there’ is revealed, that the pertinent questions and processes cannot be established by pre-existing rules. Methods, under such a view are not ‘normative devices’ whose role is to tame the unruly mess of life. Rather, given the Deweyan view that method participates in the constitution of what comes to be known as the known, they must themselves emerge as the ‘right ways’ to interrogate what demands to be known. This view is what undergirds the production of this piece as an extension of the embodied M&D event (now understood as a situation), rather than simply a reflection on it; it is taking the challenge of knowing as issuing from the event itself and seeking to attend to it reflexively.
All this serves as context that hopefully helps me to see if I have answered any of the questions I set myself at the beginning of this piece. To remind you, these were: ‘does it ‘bring to light’ some aspects of my knowledge making?’ Does it ‘take what was done and develop it in new ways?’ Does it ‘explore and articulate what makes an M&D conference presentation different to ‘ordinary’ conference presentations and why?’
The M&D ‘conversation’ unfolds in the way I had hoped it would. The other participants are keen to talk about treaty and its place in thinking about Australia, and happy to offer their thoughts and perspectives on a range of things that arise, and which make themselves pertinent to our discussion. It’s like we are ‘taking a walk together’ in treaty’s conceptual landscape: we look around, things grab our attention (or do they demand we pay attention), and so we attend to them. As we do, we are in turn led to other things, an unfolding process. By the end of the session we all feel as if the conversation could easily continue, but also that we are also now somehow charged with some homework. Things have arisen that require more thought, though the forms that this thinking may take may not yet be clear. And obviously that which arises for me may well not be the same as for the others…
Of significance to me in reflecting on the session as a Making & Doing session is that it allowed for the emergence of knowing figures who could not be understood as experts. While I obviously had configuring power (partly because it was ‘my’ session, and partly because I deal with questions and issues of treaty and treaty education day in, day out), it was clear that the absence of a ‘settled’ object (the treaties that do not yet exist in Australia) meant that I was in no greater position to say what a treaty should/could/might address than the other participants. I don’t doubt that I could have made an expertise claim, in the sense that I could have tried to generate a set of limits around what was allowed to ‘count’ in our discussion, but to do so would have meant asserting myself as having the ‘right’ to configure it in that way (which would seem to me a colonial move, which would surely be hypocritical when talking treaty). This highlighted to me the responsibility I held as an educator, revealed through paying attention to questions of authority, which were themselves put on the table by the object of interest (treaty, as a process of negotiation and settlement where knowers of different traditions come together on an ‘equal’ playing field). My sense is that had I given a ‘traditional’ conference presentation, in which I explained to an audience what I do and its complexities, this appreciation of ‘knowing our non-expertise’ would not have emerged, nor would the awareness of how important this non-expertise is. Structuring this presentation as M&D meant that the other participants were able to contribute in much more active ways. We all responded to each other’s contributions, the back and forth offering thoughts, not necessarily fully formed, in real time, to the other participants, something that would not have been the case otherwise.
So, M&D made me, and us together, pay attention to authority and its role in configuring learning in ways that would have been almost impossible under another presentation format. It allowed us to think together about how it manifests in practice as a collective practice. It also, speaking from my own position as an educator, enabled me to intuit the ‘reservoirs of potential’ that must be present in many learning settings, but which so often remains just out of sight (and thus lie unused). Opening up to the contributions of others as holding configuring power within our shared conversation, rather than understanding them as mere ‘offerings’ such as those which might be offered by an audience, meant that we proceeded into a space of exploration rather than one of explanation. Together we generated an exchange that explored questions of justice and transformation, providing each other with food for thought. This space arose through deliberately turning away from invoking expertise as a primary configuring concept, despite the fact that this event took place in an academic setting where expertise is generally the name of the game.
This is of specific relevance to me as the knower positioned as convenor of this session for my future work. Broadly the question might well be asked: what is happening educationally if the person leading ‘declaims’ expertise? Part of this account might be to attend to how such positioning reconfigures the knowing field, repositioning ‘non-expert’ knowing and enabling a consideration of how it might be understood and articulated, particularly in terms of knowing collectives. (Importantly, identifying ‘non-expertise’ as an active concept arising in practical experimentation (the M&D session), does not mean that ‘expertise’ was not present, nor that it had been wholly eschewed in the event itself). The Making & Doing event served as an opportunity to explore what expertise ‘is’, and to inquire into its role in an unfolding indeterminate present where the object of interest cannot be effectively understood through a notion like ‘expertise’ (by which I mean that an ‘expert’s’ account will not tell us any more about the object of interest than will the account of another kind of knower).
As a final reflection I would say that the value of presenting as M&D, as opposed to a traditional presentation, lay first in how it made me rethink my role as a presenter, and second in how this rethinking enabled me to gain things from the M&D session of use to me in my day-to-day work role. It made me prepare to share differently, thinking about what I needed to do to effectively invite the other participants in as ‘fellow explorers’ of a conceptual landscape, rather than as people I wanted to tell a story of my own explorations to. This openness to indeterminacy was both challenging and rewarding, attested to first by the nervousness I felt in the lead up, and evidenced in the richness of event as a producer of thought.
To finish I hope that this piece doesn’t read as something which ‘wraps up’ the M&D session into a neat package; an ‘explanation’ of the event and its meaning. In one of Isabelle Stengers more recent pieces she writes this: “…the aim of this paper is not to turn the situational provocation of our present into a mere object of analysis. To do so at this stage would not enable us to engage reality, our present, as a test upon those who think with it. It would not make us grasp the change it might induce in our own practice as thinkers” (Stengers 2021, p73) While her work seeks to engage with a far greater challenge than the one I do here, this sensibility that informs this piece; what we do matters and we ought to engage in thinking about our thinking seriously (which does not mean sombrely). While my own aims here are humble, to think into my own practice as an educator of treaty, I recognise that my work does confer upon me a significant responsibility. Recognising this responsibility induces me to pay attention, and to learn, wherever I get the chance. Doing so contributes to my ability to do this important work as well as I can. And to finish, I feel grateful that the M&D session at the AusSTS conference provided me with an opportunity to reflect and engage, playing a part in my ongoing journey as a treaty lecturer.
References
Dewey, J. (1929). The quest for certainty. London, Allen and Unwin.
Stengers, I. (2021). “Putting problematization to the test of our present.” Theory, Culture & Society 38(2): 71-92.