LA LENGUA GALLEGA.

STS’s work on mediation goes hand in hand with the work of postphenomenology (e.g., Ihde, 2003, 2009, 2010; Lievrouw, 2011a; Rosenberger 2009, 2014; Rosenberger and Verbeek, 2015; Verbeek, 2005, 2011), which refers to a school of thought that builds on approaches in the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, expanding it with certain ideas and commitments. This perspective begins from the theories and concepts developed by Don Ihde and engages in concrete case studies revolving around certain human-technology relations (Rosenberger, 2014). As a distinctive philosophical perspective, postphenomenological claims are posed from an embodied and situated perspective, referring to practical issues (Rosenberger and Verbeek, 2015). Postphenomenology does not approach technologies as merely functional and instrumental artifacts, but instead views them as mediators of human experience and practices (Rosenberger and Verbeek 2015). Furthermore, postphenomenological studies combine an empirical orientation with philosophical analysis. They take technologies as their starting point to understand and explore human experience. There are subtle differences between STS and postphenomenology. Some scholars claim that while STS merely analyzes things from a distance, phenomenology describes them from a closer engagement (Merleau-Ponty, 1962). However, they both use the concept of mediation to describe the phenomenon of emergent socio-material realities and to understand human experience. Instead of seeking the answer in either subjective ideas or objective facts, they both focus on the intentional relation between subjects and objects: 'A mediating technology enables certain possibilities for a user, while perhaps also foreclosing others, all of this relative to the particular user, the particular device, and the particular use-context’ (Rosenberger, 2014, p. 375). Note that contrary

to some postphenomenological scholars (See Merleau-Ponty, 1962; Van Den Eede, 2011), mediation is not something that occurs ‘in between’ subjects and objects, or a ‘middle position’ between them; rather it is the origin of entities (for a more in-depth critique of this view see Verbeek, 2012). Subjects and material objects cannot have a separate existence. The human subject is always directed towards objects; we don’t merely see, hear or think, but we see, hear and think of something. In the same vein objects in themselves may exist, but as soon as we think of them, they become things- for-us, artifacts that are disclosed in our relations with them. Peter-Paul Verbeek (2005, p. 130) describes mediation as follows: 'What humans are and what their world is receive their form by artifactual mediation. Mediation does not simply take place between a subject and an object, but rather co-shapes subjectivity and objectivity.' Ingold’s argument further confirms that mediation should be thought of as an ongoing process of making rather than the passive connection of two or more discrete entities (Ingold, 2011; see also Revill, 2013, p. 4).

Both approaches distance themselves from the idea that there is a pre-given subject in a pre-given world of objects with a mediating object between them. Instead, mediation is a source of the specific shape that human subjectivity and the objectivity of the world can take. Postphenomenology is the practical study of relations between humans and technological artifacts, from which human subjectivities emerge, as well as meaningful worlds. This idea that objects and subjects are configured and shaped in the technologically mediated relations that exist between them is referred to as relational ontology. Rosenberger and Verbeek (2015) explain this as follows:

A telescope organizes a relation between an observer and a heavenly body, just as an ultrasound device helps to shape the relation between expecting parents and

their unborn child. In doing so, technologies also help to shape the subjectivity of their users and the objectivity of their world: telescopes constitute their users as observers and the sky as the observable, just as ultrasound constitutes the unborn child as a potential patient and expecting parents as those who are responsible for the health condition of their child (Rosenberger and Verbeek 2015, p. 19).

Subjects and objects are always the product of mediation, rather than the starting point. But postphenomenology argues that in order to see these processes of mutual configuration, and to do justice to human experience that we are subjectively 'in' a world, it is necessary to draw a line between humans and artifacts. When we give up this line, we also let go of the phenomenological possibility to articulate (mediated) experience 'from within' (Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2014, p. 20). ANT puts complications towards networks of relations 'from outside', from a third-person perspective; postphenomenology on the other hand, engages human-world relations, and their technologically mediated character, from a first-person perspective. It is not the distinction between humans and non-humans that it wants to depart from, but their radical separation (see Verbeek, 2005, pp. 166-168). This subtle difference between ‘separating’ humans and nonhumans on the one hand and ‘distinguishing’ them on the other, enable us to conceptualize the ‘active’ role of technologies. As I elaborate in Chapter Four, when pilgrims call the shrine to talk to Imam Reza and say their pilgrimage prayers, they start their conversation with a human operator; once the operator assures the pilgrim that he is holding the handset towards the golden dome, the operator recedes into the background, becoming invisible and joining the sociotechnical configuration that mediates the shrine. Remediated pilgrimage in this case starts from the time when the pilgrims talk to the operator and distinguishing the operator from

the phone enables us to crystallize and notice the active role that each agent plays in this mediation.

When both postphenomenology and STS assert that technologies play an actively mediating role in human-world relations, it doesn’t mean that artifacts can act just as humans do: 'The question is not: is agency not only a property of subjects but also of objects? Rather, the question is: what kind of roles do objects play in agency? Agency then is not an exclusively human property anymore: it takes shape in complicated interrelations between humans and nonhuman entities‘ (Rosenberger and Verbeek, 2014, p. 20; see also Boczkowski, 2010; Jasanoff, 2004; Hyysalo, 2010; Williams et al., 2005; Wyatt, 2008; Ross, 2012).

These approaches provide different resources for the analysis of mediated pilgrimage. Several scholars have suggested that postphenomenology and ANT can be usefully mixed (Hildebrandt, 2007; Smith, 2003; Verbeek, 2005). It is not hard to see their motivation. The reason is that these two approaches each articulate something about technology that the other misses. Postphenomenology is proficient at exploring the nuances of the relationships developed between an individual user and a technology, however it is not as readily prepared to analyze the effects of these relationships on the larger world. Conversely, actor-network theory is adept at describing the ways that collections of people and technologies together have effects on the world or addressing the chains of interactions among various human and non-humans, but not so proficient at addressing the nuances of particular relationships between individual humans and technologies (Rosenberger, 2014). As Aaron Smith (2003, p. 189) puts it, ‘Latour’s view [...], does not develop in nearly the same depth the direct personal relationships with artifacts that Ihde’s does. Instead, Latour’s project could be seen as picking up where

Ihde’s ends because it emphasizes systems of relations.'In other words, a distinction lies in the fact that the postphenomenological approach provides a way of engaging more closely with lived experience, at the point of the interface or the intersection between humans and technologies.