[Themaintainers] Talk: The Times of Maintenance (Jérôme Denis & David Pontille) Wednesday February 1st (1800-1915 UTC+1)

[mark young]

Dear all,

We’d like to announce the next session of the SPT Maintenance and
Philosophy of Technology SIG on Wednesday February 1st (1800-1915 UTC+1).
In this session, we’re very excited to welcome Jérôme Denis & David
Pontille who’ll be discussing themes from their new book *Le soin des
choses* (The care of things) which was published in 2022. Their
presentation will explore, among other things, how time is differently
envisioned and problematized in maintenance practices.

*If you'd like to recieve a link for this talk, please email me at
mark at markthomasyoung.net <mark at markthomasyoung.net> *

Best,
Mark

*The Times of Maintenance*

Jérôme Denis & David Pontille (Paris School of Mines)

Wednesday 1st February (1800-1915 UTC+1)

*Abstract*: In this presentation, we investigate maintenance as a
more-than-human process during which the ageing of things is both
negotiated and cultivated through particular problematizations of time.
Making things last, indeed, amounts to composing with, and sometimes
struggle against, the “time that matter does” (Barad, 2013). This process
is by no means univocal, though. Drawing on the growing literature in
maintenance and repair studies, including our own investigations, we
identify four different ways to make things last. The first one
is concerned with prolongation, and simply consists in extending the life
of an object for an unspecified amount of time. On the opposite, the second
one strives for permanence, which requires a lot of work and resources. The
third way involves a process of slowing down, in which maintenance is
carried out to postpone the disappearance of things, which is considered
inevitable. In the fourth form of maintenance we identify, things last
longer than expected, and confront people with their obduracy. Articulating
the practical conditions in which things age, these contrastive ways of
problematizing time also convey specific “ontological enactments” (Woolgar
& Neyland, 2013) through which what concretely matters for a thing
to remain “the same” vary as well.

(In order to avoid confusion regarding the timing of the talks - the
following table clarifies when the talks begin in different locations)

Amsterdam 6:00pm
London 5:00pm
Toronto (New York) 12:00pm
San Francisco 9:00am
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