athwart theory

is a method of tacking back and forth between seeing theory as tools for explaining worlds and as phenomena in the world to be examined.

In Alien Ocean, I read anthropological and oceanographic materials and theories through one another. In this process, I treat theories-whether in anthropology or marine biology-both as tools for explaining worlds and as phenomena in the world to be examined. I think of such tacking back and forth as working athwart theory. This is not the anti-philosophy of science offered by Paul Feyerabend in Against Method in which 'anything goes'... it is precisely a method, one that does not take for granted the difference between things and forms of explanation or abstraction, tracing instead how these items exist in alignment and tension. Neither is this working against theory, a practice proposed by Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels to argue that all interpretations-whether they offer schemes for understanding everything or deny the idea of correct interpretation at all-founder on a 'single mistake': the assumption that problems set by theoretical frames are themselves real. Working athwart theory, I not only cross-wire ethnographic and marine microbiological theories (of, e.g., space, place, and community) but also claim that such transverse, oblique, operations can produce compelling renderings of a real world. (Helmreich Alien p.23)

athwart theory, n.Definitions

athwart theory