On Sorting Things Out...

Bowker and Star's emphasis on the importance of categorization in Sorting Things Out reminded me strongly of Foucault's description on the history of 'madness'. The power to name things is the first step for control, and thus it is important to look into the history of the knowledge to uncover the truth about the governance structure we are embedded in. In his vein, the authors argue that categorization is ubiquitous and crucial in the human society (And indeed, formal knowledge in our modern westernized world is all about classification). In part I, they go over the system and history of ICD in great lengths to prove this point, while in part IV they cover the actual work of categorization. Ironically, the main argument of the authors is that those categories are never as solid or uniform as they seem.

One interesting thing that struck me the most is the crucial role invisibility of the classification work plays in the power of the categories. In the various 'hidden' labor we have been dealing with during this semester, their labor was hidden for the benefit of the others. However, in this case the classification labor can benefit itself by staying in the shadow. The more hidden it stays, the more power the classification gets, so to say. But what about the struggle to bulid new standards of classification? I would assert that a challenging party gains more power by publicly uncovering the hidden classifications. Is it the dynamic that the once the challenging classification chooses to go back to the shadows after it has become the leading principle?

Also, the notion of the Aristotelean and prototypical categories was a intersting subject. Though we imagine to achieve the former, the actual outcomes are closer to the latter. One thing, though, I would like to ask is how the prototypes are set. Aren't the prototypes actually some forms of ideals that have sprung out from relational concepts, as the French structualists have argued? It sounds like a chicken-and-egg problem, but maybe the real important thing is that the very aspiration of the current paradigm of classification to achieve some form of 'Aristotelean' categories.