08 / Methodology
Non-positionedness
Non-preemptive Relational Method
Non-positionedness is a methodological discipline that does not preemptively install humans, machines, algorithms, or interfaces as the ontological center or superior actor prior to analysis, but first traces relations and then judges the asymmetries of power, control, risk, and responsibility actually revealed within them.
1. Definition
Non-positionedness is a methodological discipline that does not preemptively install humans, machines, algorithms, or interfaces as the ontological center or superior actor prior to analysis, but first traces relations and then judges the asymmetries of power, control, risk, and responsibility actually revealed within them.
It is neither the absence of a position nor value neutrality.
2. Relation to Kantian disinterestedness
Non-positionedness does not simply inherit Kantian disinterestedness. Kantian disinterestedness concerns the proposition that an interest connected with an object’s existence must not determine a pure judgment of taste. The minimal comparable structure is that judgment is not predetermined by a particular interest—a principle of non-preemption. Non-preemption is a metaconcept constructed for comparing the two theories, not Kant’s own term.
3. Asymmetrical transposition
In Kant, non-preemption concerns the conditions of aesthetic judgment within a human subject. In Non-positionedness, the level shifts to ontological analysis of networks in which humans and nonhumans are entangled. This is not direct inheritance but a transposition:
Disinterestedness → limiting predetermination by interest in the object’s existence
Non-positionedness → limiting predetermination of relational analysis by the ontological priority of either human or machine
4. Four stages
suspend preemption → trace relations → judge asymmetry → reconstruct responsibility
The first stage does not decide human or nonhuman superiority in advance. It does not follow that analysis ends by treating them as equal. Differences in control, resources, capacity for modification, burden of harm, and capacity for responsibility must be judged. Non-positionedness is precisely an assessment of asymmetry after the suspension of preemption.
5. Non-positionedness and relativism
Treating every actor as equivalent would conceal actual differences of power. The purpose is not to eliminate hierarchy but to avoid determining it in advance. If analysis shows that a human actor or platform company bears far greater responsibility, that asymmetry must be explicitly judged.
Core Structure
- 01Suspend preemption
- 02Trace relations
- 03Judge asymmetry
- 04Reconstruct responsibility
KEY PROPOSITION
Non-positionedness is a method of non-preemptive relational analysis that simultaneously suspends the two preemptions of anthropocentrism and technological determinism, traces human–nonhuman relations through their actual operations and effects, and then judges anew the asymmetries of power, control, and responsibility found within them.
Connected Research
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