Martin Hähnel

Abandoning Theory

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I was just thinking, while scrolling through my feed about this post:

RE: https://mathstodon.xyz/@anna/115476226397847329

No one offered any suggestions, so after a short fiction break, I’m now reading Judith Butler’s Who’s Afraid of Gender?[…] — https://mathstodon.xyz/@anna/115638433799653557

The person behind the post is the assistant professor in Computer Science Dr. Anna Latour. And of course my brain heard Latour and thought back to Bruno Latour (as far as I can tell there is no relation there). And then it thought about my time entangled with theory while I was still studying and how much I enjoyed that. I scrolled a little through her posts and also past one where she was hiring for a PhD. The details don't really matter, as I never finished my computer science degree. But it made me reminisce about a time and a potential future that never materialized: That of me as an academic.

I have not read an academic paper or a theoretical book in my field (history of science and technology) in quite some time now and have "just" been working as a programmer and learning to be in a relationship and in another country and caring for a dog in the last 10 years. Things that may appear "boring". But if they are "boring", then they are "boring" in the same way as theory is "boring". Nowadays, there are hardly any cycles left to just sit in theory, as I loved to do for so many years. Now, I am still living off of my engagement with theory in my 20s, and I'm 39 now. The world of theory has not stood still, of course, and so my contact with what I perceived as cutting edge has been lost in that regard. Still, having been in contact with theory has served me well. I love that I still have those well-trodden paths in my brain that allow me to think about things in a "philosophical", "constructivist", "historical", "systemic", "poststructuralist", etc. pp. way. The "approach" and the way to see the world as a theoretician has stuck. I don't find the time to carve out more paths or update them, though. At least not now, or if I do, it's pretty surface level, to be honest.

And you know what? It's fine. Hard to believe I'd say that ever. But I notice that as a person who likes to explore things I actually have not lost but gained a lot by not gripping too tightly and instead of looking back at my love for theory as something I didn't min/max correctly I look at it as something that is in my toolkit and that I'll always cherish (even if I don't have the time or calm) to explore it as thoroughly as I did back then.