This is the opening introductory chapter (PDF of John Law’s After Method: Mess In Social Science Research. It could be the manifesto for this semester. Law is a colleague of Bruno Latour (actor-network theory, mentioned in the Bogost readings and we have a Latour reading too). While this is about sociology I think you can substitute sociology for media studies, communication studies, cinema studies, even probably film making, and his point remains valid. The world is messy and most of the ways we have to approach it are very poor at dealing with the ambiguous mess of the world. And most of the world is simply messy, not ordered (like school, university, the ‘canonical’ essay or report of narrative film). So how do we make things that acknowledge this, while also offering some sort of account of it. Or, as he says in something I’d happily wear on a t-shirt, except it wouldn’t fit:

My hope is that we can learn to live in a way that is less dependent on the automatic. To live more in and through slow method, or vulnerable method, or quiet method. Multiple method. Modest method. Uncertain method. Diverse method. Such are the sense of method that I hope to see grow in and beyond…(11).

We have spent the semester learning how to be slow and modest in the face of something ordinary, hopefully to realise how complex and extraordinary (and messy and complex) any thing really is. I only found this book this week. I’m excited by it.