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Books by Fernando Domínguez Rubio

2012 Domínguez Rubio, F., Baert, P (Eds.) The politics of knowledge. Routledge, London.

Papers by Fernando Domínguez Rubio

The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Fragility

Public Culture, 2020

(paper available on link below) Impermanence and fragility have become the defining conditions of... more (paper available on link below) Impermanence and fragility have become the defining conditions of the digital age. Technologies that were ubiquitous barely a decade ago, like floppy disks, now look like archaeological relics. It takes only a few years, if not months, before software environments are replaced by newer versions, often with limited backward compatibility. At the same time, digital technologies rely on hardware that has short life expectancy. The radical obsolescence of this new digital register raises a number of important questions. How are we going to prevent the fragile memories of contemporary digital cultures from receding into oblivion? This essay answers this question by looking at one of the institutions in which the problems associated with digital fragility are most especially felt, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and by exploring the ontological displacements that digital objects are operating at the heart of the museum.

What is it that people do with objects? And what is it that objects do to people? This chapter ex... more What is it that people do with objects? And what is it that objects do to people? This chapter explores the dialectic between processes of objectification and subjectification, exploring how they intertwine through the manifold ways in which the description, refinement, punctuation and solidification of what a subject is are attached to a parallel process with regard to how things become objects.

The aim of this article is to develop a different approach to the study of the material world, on... more The aim of this article is to develop a different approach to the study of the material world, one that takes seriously the seemingly banal fact that things are constantly falling out of place. Taking this fact seriously, the article argues, requires us to think about the material world not in terms of ‘objects’, but ecologically, that is, in terms of the processes and conditions under which certain ‘things’ come to be differentiated and identified as particular kinds of ‘objects’ endowed with particular forms of meaning, value and power. The article demonstrates the purchase of this ecological approach through the example of the Mona Lisa. It does so by exploring the rather extraordinary processes of containment and maintenance that are required to keep the Mona Lisa legible as an art object over time.

Theory and Society, Aug 2014

The aim of this article is to theorize how materials can play an active, constitutive, and causal... more The aim of this article is to theorize how materials can play an active, constitutive, and causally effective role in the production and sustenance of cultural forms and meanings. It does so through an empirical exploration of the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MoMA). The article describes the museum as an ‘objectification machine’ that endeavors to transform and stabilize artworks as meaningful ‘objects’ that can be exhibited, classified, and circulated. The article explains how the extent to which the museum succeeds in this process of stabilization ultimately depends on the material properties of artworks, and more specially, on whether these behave as ‘docile’ or ‘unruly’ objects. Drawing on different empirical examples, the article explores how docile and unruly objects shape organizational dynamics within the museum and, through them, the wider processes of institutional and cultural reproduction. The article uses this empirical example to highlight the importance of developing a new ‘material sensibility’ that restores heuristic dignity to the material within cultural sociology

The aim of this article is to explore, through a case study (Plaza del General Vara del Rey, a pu... more The aim of this article is to explore, through a case study (Plaza del General Vara del Rey, a public square planned for Madrid's historic district) new ways of integrating technology, nature and infrastructures into urban public spaces. The design of General Vara del Rey will be offered here as a model to explore a novel urban political ecology that calls into question dominant definitions of public spaces as self-contained sites operating independently of natural and infrastructural spaces. Through the double movement of the technification of public space and the publicization of infrastructures the square aims to rethink the political ecology of urban public spaces by enabling the effective incorporation and participation of infrastructural and natural elements as active actors into the public and political life of the community. The transformation of infrastructures and nature into fully visible, public and political worlds, it will be argued, provides a useful model to address the growing proliferation of infrastructural and technological elements onto contemporary urban surfaces and to open up the possibility of new forms of civic participation and engagement.

The paper explores the central role of artworks in the field of contemporary art. It is based on ... more The paper explores the central role of artworks in the field of contemporary art. It is based on an ethnographic study of the conservation laboratory at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and draws from three detailed case studies where the temporal and spatial trajectory of artworks led to processes of competition, collaboration, and repositioning among the agents involved in the acquisition, exhibition and conservation of these artworks. The study demonstrates the importance of artworks qua physical objects in the field of contemporary art, claiming attention to materiality in field theory and engaging with an object-oriented methodology in field analysis. Artworks are shown to intervene in field processes, both reproducing divisions and re-drawing boundaries within and between fields, and actualizing positions of individuals and institutions.

The objective of this article is to open the 'black box' of artistic production in order to descr... more The objective of this article is to open the 'black box' of artistic production in order to describe, in minute detail, culture in the making, that is, the process through which cultural forms grow into being and are materially accomplished. I will do so through the study of the morphogenetic process through which the Spiral Jetty, an earthwork sculpture created by the American artist Robert Smithson, came into being. This study will show that artistic production constitutes an irreducible form of material practice which cannot be adequately understood as an individual activity or as an activity guided or constrained by 'external' social factors. As I shall argue, the attention to the material practice of artistic production reveals a much needed insight into the practices, materials and processes through which culture is actually produced and materially accomplished.

En este artículo defiendo que la teoría post-humanista no ha de ser entendida como un intento de ... more En este artículo defiendo que la teoría post-humanista no ha de ser entendida como un intento de anunciar el 'fin de lo humano' y el comienzo de una era post-humana, sino como una nueva forma de plantear la pregunta, y el estudio, de lo humano. Por ello, sostendré que, en lugar de hablar de una dualidad entre humanismo y post-humanismo, es preferible hablar de dos tipos de humanismo, el uno abstracto, que postula lo humano como una esencia atemporal y trascendente y el otro inmanente, que entiende lo humano como surgiendo, y permaneciendo, dentro de un inacabable juego de relaciones con lo nohumano. Esta posición será defendida a través de un caso empírico concreto, el de los pacientes de síndrome de cautiverio. Este caso revelará, de forma práctica, el juego de relaciones entre humanos y nohumanos a través del que se definen las fronteras de nuestra condición de sujetos autónomos y morales.

(Under review) Córdoba Azcárate, M, Domínguez Rubio, F. Baptista, I. “Enclosures within Enclosures: Privatization Practices, Uneven Development and the Governance of Hurricanes in Cancun”.

Drafts by Fernando Domínguez Rubio