Methods that move, not measure
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This is a space for thoughts that aren’t always "testable" but are deeply thinkable.
Inspired by fieldwork, theory, art, and everyday moments, Non-Scientific is my ongoing collection of ideas that resist rigid categories—reflections on scholars’ methodologies, readings that linger, and the ways they might spark action, design, and feeling in daily life.
[Non-Scientific: The Diagram in Francis Bacon]
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Francis Bacon wasn’t trained in the academies, yet he created some of the most visceral, sensory-charged paintings of the 20th century. His canvases offer no gentle white space—only contorted bodies, raw emotion, and solitude pushed to its most oppressive extremes.
The philosopher Gilles Deleuze wrote a book about him titled Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. He didn’t treat Bacon as just a painter, but as a system of thought—one that doesn’t rely on representation, but on impact. At the heart of this system is a progression: from the figurative (recognizable form), to the disruption of the diagram, and ultimately to the emergence of something entirely outside representational logic—the Figure.
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[Theoretical Background]
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The diagram interrupts what you think you’ve understood. It introduces chaos onto the canvas. The painter’s hand revolts—with rebellious strokes, smeared blocks of color, and wayward lines. That’s when the diagram appears. But what it generates isn’t the figurative—a familiar image—it’s the Figure, something that hits the senses directly. The viewer no longer “decodes” the image, but is instead pierced by an unspeakable sensory force. This visual condition is what Deleuze calls haptic vision: you’re not just looking at the painting—you’re touching it with your eyes.
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[Excerpt]
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​Deleuze, in his engagement with the work of Francis Bacon, states that the challenge for the modern painter, and indeed for modern thought in general is to escape or at least pervert those givens that always already envelop us: the painter is already in the canvas, where he or she encounters all the figurative and probabilistic givens that occupy and preoccupy the canvas. An entire battle takes place on the canvas between the painter and these givens. There is thus a preparatory work that belongs to painting fully, and yet precedes the act of painting ... This preparatory work is silent and invisible, yet extremely intense, and the act of painting itself appears as an afterward ... in relation to this work. (Deleuze, 2003, p. 99; original emphasis) The battle with the givens, in Bacon's work, is engaged via "aleatory marks" or "asignifying traits" (Deleuze, 2003,p. 100)- random or accidental strokes, smudges, or deformations of the paint, around which, and from which, the painting emerges in chancy ways that cannot be anticipated at the outset. The aleatory mark undermines the orders of figuration and representation, releasing the work from conventional meaning, and circumventing the will of the artist. "It is as if the hand assumed an independence and began to be guided by other forces," Deleuze writes. "The painter's hand intervenes in order to shake its own dependence and break up the sovereign optical organization: one can no longer see any-thing, as if in a catastrophe, a chaos" (pp. 100-101). This is the operation of the diagram—to introduce “catastrophe” into the static, vertical relations of signification and figuration. The diagram “unlocks areas of sensation.”
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[What Inspires Us]
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We’re used to mapping culture with precision: structure, symbol, meaning—as if it were a clean, legible map. That’s the figurative—logical, composed—but it often loses texture, tension, and feeling.
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What if the diagram, as used in art, could become a tool for anthropology? A way to interrupt our habits of understanding?
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In the field, this might mean allowing method to unravel—abandoning neat notes and tidy categories, recording with images, sensing atmospheres, tracking bodily reactions.
A diagram is not a model that produces answers. It’s a force of disruption—like a blot of color that halts thought and reshuffles it. You don’t impose the diagram. You wait for it to surface.
[Non-Scientific: Human Mapping]
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Denis Wood is an artist, writer, and cartographer. Since 1972, he has published numerous articles, books, and lectures aimed at expanding the public’s understanding of cartography. Contrary to those who view maps as neutral representations of reality, his works—especially The Power of Maps—critique the idea of maps as objective reference materials and reveal the underlying assumptions and biases hidden in seemingly benign topographic illustrations. To Wood, maps are not just tools, but also works of aesthetic and interpretive power. He insists that his maps reflect his point of view.
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[Theoretical Background]
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In 2011, Wood published Everything Sings: Maps for a Narrative Atlas, a cartographic project based on the neighborhood of Boylan Heights in North Carolina. These maps don’t follow conventional data-based formats. Instead, they capture the community through imaginative and narrative forms: the glow of streetlights, the delivery routes of the local newspaper, the appearance of carved pumpkins during Halloween.
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[Excerpt]
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The following quotes are from an interview Denis Wood gave to The Believer upon the book’s release:
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“This is one reason I think designer-made maps are way cooler than those in geography class. A design student has to declare themselves graphically, while a cartographer tries to disappear graphically.
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Sure, a scientist might say, ‘I had this idea,’ but what he really did was recognize data, process it, and attach his name to the outcome. He’s saying: ‘This is reality!’
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A designer, on the other hand, says: ‘This is me.’ That’s a totally different stance.”
“Beyond that, I’ve been thinking about what makes a community. What turns a neighborhood into a neighborhood? What gives it identity and structure?
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My students and I concluded—through these maps—that what a neighborhood does is transform a citizen of the city into a resident of a specific place: someone who sits in a certain way on their porch in the morning sunlight. And at the same time, it turns that limited individual into a citizen, someone participating in a larger social fabric.”
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[What Inspires Us]
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Mapping as a research method makes social and spatial practices visible, material, and emotionally resonant.
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As researchers, how do we draw our own maps? Are we acting like scientists—attempting to disappear behind data—or like designers, revealing the contours of a particular way of seeing?
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When our research participants sketch their spaces, do we judge them unconsciously? The scale is off. It’s missing so much. But what are we comparing it to? Often, it’s the sleek, authoritative interface of our GPS apps. Yet what truly matters in these mappings isn’t accuracy or aesthetics—it’s perspective.
Whose gaze is being drawn? What gets named, emphasized, or omitted?
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No person appears directly in the map, and yet, their life is inscribed across it.
Their choices, silences, priorities—become lines and shapes. The map becomes a portrait.