The Wonder of Data
Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies
Published online on May 08, 2013
Abstract
The article considers the productive capacity for wonder that resides and radiates in data, or rather in the entangled relation of data-and-researcher. Wonder is not necessarily a safe, comforting, or uncomplicatedly positive affect. It shades into curiosity, horror, fascination, disgust, and monstrosity. But the price paid for the ruin caused—to epistemic certainty or the comforts of a well-wrought coding scheme—is, after Massumi (2002, p. 19), the privilege of a headache. Not the answer to a question, but the astute crafting of a problem and a challenge: what next?