The Politics of Absence

The Real, the Vacant, the Virtual, the Blank, and the Fake
 Enacting Pandemics

• Pandemics and disease outbreaks are

produced in a multitude of practices
• Implicates a number of more-than-human
actors
• Algorithms, Big Data, Satellites, Climate Data
• Mosquitos, Bats, Rats, Birds, Cats

• To think through disease outbreaks as

produced
Enacting
Absence
Paper Status
Some methodological principles in STS

• ”Follow the actors” ”Matters of concern” (Latour 1987, 2004)

• “This means that it no longer follows a gaze that tries to see objects but
instead follows objects while they are being enacted in practice. So, the
emphasis shifts. Instead of the observer's eyes, the practitioner's hands
become the focus point of theorizing.” (Mol 2002)
Discomforts in tracing actors’ eyes & hands

Naturalising the categories of

Fractionality and multiplicity our informants (Muniesa 2019,
Machhiavellianism (Star 1990) (Law 2002, Mol 1999) Lee 2021)

1999 2014

1990 1999 2021

Otherness, outside the rails of Making of weak actors (Galis &

the network (Lee & Brown Lee 2014)
1994, Bowker & Star 1999)
Absent-ography
• Studying the achievement of absence
in practice (cf. Lynch)

• Looking away from the “matters of

concern”
• Looking away from the ”actors’
making of objects”
A turn to absence?
Otherness & the The blank figure Topologies of
Absent presences
dark continent (Lee (Heatherington & absence/presence
(Law 2002)
& Brown 1994) Lee 2000) (Law & Mol 2001)

Plasma (Latour Secrecy (Rappert Nothingness (Barad Uncared for

2005, 2012) 2010, 2015, 2017) 2012) (Bellacasa 2014)

Cathedrals
Ornitology (Sætnan
(Giovannoni &
& Bellanova 2017)
Quattrone 2018)
Versions of Absence
Thinking with Zika & Aedes Aegypti

http://francislee.org
Absences of Zika

• The Real: Zero Confirmed Cases

• The Vacant: No Data
• The Virtual: No Zika Risk
• The Void: No Prediction
• The Fake: Simulated Absence
The Real: ∅ Confirmed Zika Cases
The Void: Absence of Data
The Virtual:
Absence of
Zika Risk
The Blank:
Absence of
Prediction
The Fake: Computed Pseudo Absence
Absences of Zika

• The Real: Zero Confirmed Cases

• The Vacant: No Data
• The Virtual: No Zika Risk
• The Void: No Prediction
• The Fake: Simulated Absence
Thinking With
Ornitology
• Absence of species
• … never existed
• … is extinct
• … is found elsewhere, but not here
• … is still found elsewhere, but no longer
here
• … is rare, threatened and/or rarely seen
• … has been seen but not registered

• (Rudinow Saetnan 2017)

Thinking with
Predictive Policing
• Absences …
• No crime: We have no reports of crime.
• No Data: Which crimes are not reported?
• Types: What crimes are not counted? Violent vs. economic?
• Time: Which crimes are outside of the timescale?
• Etc.
Conclusion
The Politics of Absence

Theoretical Methodological Empirical

How do we study the Don’t take interlocutors’
world outside the matters of concern for What matters of concern
network (Lee & Brown, granted (Lee 2021, become hidden in the
1994)? Muniesa 2019). production of absence?

Politics of Absence 1: Politics of Absence 2: Politics of Absence 3:

What is made absent? Absent Data Fake Data
What things are deemed What is absent from How are absences filled
”noise,” ”unimportant,” data, datasets, in? Models to fill models,
”filtered,” etc. databases, metadata? to fill models?
 Thanks for listening
Thoughts? Comments? Tips? Questions?
@francislee | francis@francislee.org | francislee.org