1985. RAF Cosford

It’s like this, isn’t it? This was a moment of interpellation. Knowing subject, known object, the two were recognized together in a single instant. I would study, study the TSR2; the TSR2 would be studied, studied by me. The effect was, as it were, an instant recognition or performance of a set of subject/Subject or subject/object relations coming from—well, coming from somewhere, but deeply buried in its obviousness, somewhere before.

Obviousness? Let’s just remind ourselves of some of its dangers. If we are interpellated, then we are being made or remade as a particular subject position, made to constitute our objects in particular ways. In particular we are being made to constitute our objects in ways that are obvious, recognized and made before we come to see them and think about them. There is another study here. We might think of it as the erotics of interpellation: Why or how it is that we are spoken to and perform the obviousnesses of our objects of study?19 Technoscience studies, military technologies with all their genderings, biomedical this and that, consumer goods, in all of these we are making obvious­nesses of one kind or another. I say that we are making obviousnesses because our narratives are performative. But if this is the case, then the question becomes: Interpellated as we are, what on earth is it that we are performing in our embodiments?