Conditionally Relevant

This is part of something I tried to write for submission which would discuss how ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EMCA) might impact how we think about contact and interaction between Earth and extraterrestrial aliens. I wanted to link this to EMCA takes on identity/membership, accomplishment of interactional competence, and marginalised people on Earth. Here I reproduce this latter, because it is edgy and fun, though incomplete and possibly not reasonable.

Xenoproduction: Social Interactional Production of Terrestrial aliens
Human-alien encounters are happening, now, on our planet Earth. There have been professional fields dedicated to them throughout history; The most overt example being that of the alienist. For a time, the alienist was tasked with the management of aliens; those who had been alienated from reason, made mad, had gone insane. Many terrestrial Others beyond the mad are or have been aliens. Alien also has the meaning of “foreign” such that immigrants into one country, or the population of one country in the eye of colonists have been described as such in lay talk and inter-/national politics. The use of alien to refer to extraterrestrial entities is comparatively new. Science fiction media has long addressed social issues like confrontation with the Other by way of scenarios depicting the best and worst of Human/alien contact. However, despite being set in the future, on different planets, with intelligent creatures looking as far from human as possible (or not so much, e.g., Star Trek’s preoccupation with humanoids), these stories are often more or less transparently about us. The aliens are already here and have been here as long as the rest of us.

In fact, you may well be an alien, or have been one at some point(s) in your life. The boundaries between human and alien are ever-shifting and fragile, even a moment-by-moment (re-)negotiation; being born from human reproductive activity is not enough to secure your unending right to membership in the human species. All of humanity is co-opted into the service of the alienists, not often looking for but certainly noticing the tendrils of unreason as they slip through the nexus of their conduct from whatever other realm. Once trained upon you, the analysts’ gaze pins a tag – INSANE – readable by everyone and effectively indelible. This is how aliens are managed here on Earth.

This paper aims to describe at least some of the technology deployed in xenoproduction; the detection/production of aliens amongst Humans. This is a subtle technology; witnessable, however often (designedly) “seen but unnoticed” (Garfinkel, 1964, p. 226). It is used by all people, at all times, not only for the production of aliens. In fact, the technology that allows for xenoproduction is the same technology that allows for the realisation of society as a whole. It is the set of methods by which entities coordinate their conduct with each other and with the world for the accomplishment of action, in which is meaning. This paper is in large part an explication of some core concepts from the field of Ethnomethodology – the study of people’s ordinary methods for the production of coordinated action and thus the realisation of social fact – and will begin by briefly describing the processes by which action, and thus meaning, is produced in the moment-to-moment in the realisation and establishment of the Human. From there, the process of xenoproduction will be raised as the outcome of (intentional or otherwise) failure to establish Garfinkelian Trust between relevant parties, before bridging the gap between terrestrial and extraterrestrial xenoproduction.

Being born does not necessitate that you are a Human for life. It does not even necessarily mean that you will remain a Human for very long. Whatever it is that Humans are underneath all the artifice, it is largely by the sustained cultural re-/production of flesh that it maintains its exalted status as rational actor. Flesh’s re-/productive methods are the object of Ethnomethodological investigation. Ethnomethodology is the study of everyday sense-making, practical reason, and the accomplishment of action. Ethnomethodology’s founder, Harold Garfinkel, argued that sociological study in general problematically relied on the presumption that social facts (like the existence of women, or of government, or indeed of Humans) were real and were the foundation for further sociological analysis. His position was that, rather than presuming their existence as a given and then working from there, sociologists should instead be treating social facts as indisputably real yet produced by, and within, coordinated, practical, interactional conduct. As the social world is quite real, and yet produced by interacting agents, social scientific analysis that takes for granted the pre-existing nature of (for example) demographic properties and predicts impacts and outcomes from them is missing the core question; how do people organise and co-ordinate their conduct such that the objectivity of social facts is obvious? In considering what to make of Human-alien encounters and how they might unfold, Ethnomethodology encourages us to reconsider a far more fundamental question; how are we humans?

In order to answer the question of how we come to be sensibly human, co-ordinated practical action needs to be at the forefront of our analysis. This focus on action is central as action is what ordinary, everyday people have of each other to make sense of (i.e., co-ordinate their own action with). People in everyday life coordinate their action with other people’s (rather than inspect minds for thoughts, intentions, or meanings). Sense relies on having methods for acting and responding to action in turn. Garfinkel’s certainty that social interaction and sense-making is based in practical action is highlighted in his quote: “there is no reason to look under the skull since nothing of interest is to be found there but brains” (Garfinkel, 1963, p. 190). Harvey Sacks, the founder of Ethnomethodology’s sister field Conversation Analysis (which draws on the Ethnomethodological mentality to analyse specifically talk-in-interaction), echoed this sentiment in his own instruction to trainee analysts: “First of all, don’t worry about whether they’re ‘thinking.’ Just try to come to terms with how it is that the thing comes off” (Sacks, 1992, p. 11). Action, what people actually do, is the heart of the matter; action is where our minds are, our identities, our rationality. As per Gilbert Ryle, to know something is to do something skilfully(Ryle, 1949).

Action is where sense is, but how does action acquire this sense? People in interaction are concerned with their action being recognised, straight-forwardly, for what it is by observers. To recognise some action is to respond to it in a way that is affirmed, or at least not challenged and rejected or corrected by the actor of the initial action. Participants in social interaction seek out appropriate responses by orienting to the accountability of their conduct; literally, whether their behaviour could be described (i.e., an account for it could be provided) or, as Garfinkel wrote, people’s action is designed such that it is “visibly-rational-and-reportable-for-all-practical-purposes”(Garfinkel, 1967, p. vii). Our actions are designed to project what possible, sensible understandings (i.e., responsive actions) would be. Consider requests for information. One might make such a request by using words and intonation such that it makes a response relevant, and one might specify the domain of information requested. For example, the question “How far is it to Sirius B?” projects a conditional relevance for a response with the words “how far” and the upward, rising intonation at the end, and it indicates that the kind of response made conditionally relevant is one in which some indication of distance is provided. As the request for information was designed accountably, so too might the answer be. If the answer were to be “It’s eight and half lightyears away”, it can be understood by the asker as the answer to the request by, for example, the fact it uses a locally-subsequent referent (“it’s”), requiring looking backward to understand what exactly “it” would be, marking it as responsive to the thing before it, and providing a distance measure addressing the domain being requested about. The different resources described here (e.g., words, intonation) and others (e.g., gestures, gaze behaviour, elements and objects of the local setting) are all potentially available and laminated on top of each other in the production of sense in interaction(Goodwin, 2013).

The methods by which accountability is managed are the methods of members, and attribution of membership is the crux of the Human/alien distinction. Membership is passing; passing for rational, for sensible, for relatable. Membership is the mastery of a collectivity’s methods for accountably accomplishing what it accomplishes (Garfinkel, & Sacks, 1970). As such, membership is about competence, and specifically about competent conduct as it is recognised (and as such is pass-overable or taken for granted) by other members to those practices. One can be a member of many such practical collectivities, be excluded from membership on the basis of conduct not recognisable or sensible to fellow members, and be placed within memberships on the basis of at least presumedly acting in accordance with the methods of another collectivity.

Membership within Humanity can be, and often is, at stake with every action one takes. Doing ‘being ordinary’ (i.e., Human) is a practical accomplishment that requires working the social interactional engine (Sacks, 1984). One’s membership in Humanity is tied to sensible practice. Sensible practice is often only itself spoken about when someone else fails to meet expectations. Any time one is seen to be doing something unrecognisable, that improperly applies the technologies of rational conduct as seen to be the birth right (and obligation) of Humankind, that requires unacceptable work on behalf of fellow Humans to contort into a display of sensibility within the relevant local context, one could be pushed through the wormhole to alienation. And if you find yourself there you may not be able to return. Humanity is a precarious species. All that stands between Humanity and the monstrous is Trust.

[It is important to be clear that this account of actions and memberships is not straightforwardly a social constructionist issue of knowledge production. To know is to act knowingly. There are no cognitions, representations, or beliefs in this account; only doing. Social facts are accomplished in action that treats the world and things we engage with as objective. In this way, the interactional is a locus and method of hyperstition in miniature.]

Membership in Humanity is fragile, requiring constant work to maintain. The scaffolding that supports its precarious structure is Trust. Trust refers to a way of treating people; specifically, treating them as if they are acting sensibly. This Trust is the precondition that allows for meaningful interaction and sensible co-membership recognition. Because Trust is a way of treating people (i.e., action, not a cognitive or attitudinal precursor), it requires work to establish and maintain. Establishing Trust requires that; Interlocutor A treats Interlocutor B as if B is using the same methods as A; B treats A in the same way, and; both A treats B as if B is treating A in this manner and vice versa. These are called the Trust conditions (Garfinkel, 1963).

The Trust conditions require treatment that presumes equal access to rationality and sense such that all parties are understood to be acting for purposes rather than, for example, merely acting out irrational symptoms of a mental illness. As such, all participants are to be treated in this way or else the Trust conditions are breached. When one participant treats their interlocutor as a sensible person who can read their own sensible actions and is engaging earnestly but their interlocutor is not treating them similarly, equality is not maintained, the latter participant can dictate sense to the former, and the Trust conditions are breached. Rather than intersubjectivity, an overt subject-object distinction is wrought where one interlocutor is afforded the rights to determine meaning unilaterally.

Establishing and maintaining Trust does not mean that interactional problems cannot occur. However, how these problems are dealt with can involve a break of the Trust conditions. When some interlocutor does something weird, they or their fellow interlocutor may take the opportunity to repair what they did, where repair refers to the process of identifying and addressing troubles in speaking, hearing, or understanding (where troubles are referred to rather than errors as repair can be initiated regardless of any actual error present; Schegloff, Jefferson, &Sacks, 1977). Other-initiated repair (repair procedures launched by the recipient of some ostensibly bizarre conduct) is concerned with restoring Trust as it treats the actor of the bizarre conduct as if what they were doing was not merely something strange, symptomatic, or meaningless to be discarded but in fact something potentially significant to be engaged with earnestly. Self-initiated repair (repair procedures launched by the producer of the potential trouble) similarly is concerned with the possibility of the recipient’s misunderstanding. These procedures are engaged in the service of shoring up actual or possible upcoming breaches of the Trust conditions.

Of course, that repair mechanisms exist does not mean that breaches of the Trust conditions are not impossible. Repair procedures also rely on Trust itself to some degree as the participants to an interaction need to be able to treat their interlocutor as sensibly producing or recognising the actions by which repair is initiated. As well, participants may also just abandon the issue and prioritise progressivity of talk and action. Doing so does not necessarily entail a breach of Trust conditions but can merely treat the issue as insignificant for the broader course of action underway before moving on to another in which Trust can be established and maintained. Giving the benefit of the doubt like this avoids conclusively revoking Trust, allowing space for it in the next sequence of action. The problem of a breach comes in the form of a unilateral imposition of meaning. When this happens, an alien is born.

Xenoproduction is the realising of the Other; the construction of aliens. Xenoproduction relies on breakdowns of Trust and how interactional participants manage the accomplishment and breach of the Trust Conditions. As described above, a method of resolving issues of Trust and thus restoring intersubjectivity is other-initiated repair. Repair might not be possible, however, as the technology of interactional repair (like all interactional phenomena) are themselves required to be accountable and recognisable. Giving the benefit of the doubt can be given in spaces like these where participants can let the issue drop to prioritise progressivity and continued action in which Trust can be restored. Xenoproduction is what happens when the benefit of the doubt is withheld, and the baffled interlocutor asserts their interpretation of the now-Other’s conduct in their response to them(Rawls, & David, 2006). Rather than understanding these individuals as agentic, rational co-participants in the interactional order, they are treated as belonging to and operating under, as Garfinkel calls it, a demonic order (Garfinkel, & Lynch, 2022), with properties and methods of its own. Humans attempt to describe the demonic order in such grimoires as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, in which alienists’ attempt to document the bizarre workings of alien behaviour as contingencies over which Human’s wish to have control or to eliminate. While an alien’s initial incomprehensibility may be what justifies xenoproduction by the relevant Human agent, aliens are not ultimately incomprehensible to Humans. However, the sense that Humans extract from aliens is one-sided, in that it doesn’t arise in intersubjectivity, but instead unilaterally from the Human’s hermeneutics. This injustice extends to all alienated entities, including extraterrestrial ones.

It is important to briefly note here another method by which xenoproduction occurs. Withholding the benefit of the doubt does not only occur within an interaction in response to some conduct by an Other-in-potentia. It can also occur before any opportunity arises for such interactions. In fact, it is why those opportunities do not arise, as people are a priori treated as if they were incomprehensible, unrelatable, or undesirable and as such excluded from interactions or settings. These aliens are restricted from participation in discourse and social activities that concern them and while their contributions to the lives of Humans are minimised, the Humans’ impact on the aliens’ possibilities for action and interaction becomes overwhelming, and in the case of many alienated people, dangerous.

Xenoproduction is virtually everywhere on Earth. The status of aliens is a significant political topic. The constant political discourse on the meanings and affordances of conduct by neurodivergent or transgender people are particularly salient examples of xenoproduction currently in action and will serve as demonstrations here. Psychiatric diagnosis has been (and still often is) an extended process of xenoproduction as the meaning of disturbed (more correctly, disturbing to Humans) conduct is evaluated and ascertained by the mental health professional. A clinician has the final say over the significance of the “patient’s” (alien-in-becoming) behaviour.

An excellent example of clinical xenoproduction in a single interactional moment was explicated in a Conversation Analytic study of a clinical autism. This study analysed how individual assessments involving a particular assessment tool common to this setting (the Sally/Anne task) were conducted as interactional accomplishments. This now classic tool of alienation involves a vignette telling the story of Sally and Anne in which Sally has an item and puts it inside a box before leaving it behind and going away. Anne then moves the item from that box to another box. The child being assessed is asked to determine which box Sally will look in for the cake when she returns. The ostensibly correct answer (that would challenge that suitability of an autism diagnosis) is the box she originally placed the cake into. The child needs to give some response to the question indicating their choice.

Psychological assessments are interactional, involving accountable action and Trust. If the clinician does not recognise the child’s response as one, or recognises it as the incorrect response, the child may be said to have failed. This working attitude already involves a presumed inequality and thus breach of the Trust conditions, and this breach plays out in this specific case to alienate the child. In front of him, the child had two boxes, one Sally’s and one Anne’s. Having been asked by the test administrator to pick which box Sally would look in for the item, the child picked Sally’s box (the correct one) and says “there”. Unfortunately, the clinician spoke themselves at the same time as the child’s “there”, asking again for the child to pick the box. Despite the child’s doubly-laminated response with an embodied and verbal component, the clinician ignores the embodied component as not a relevant behaviour and, having not heard the verbal component, re-asks the question. The child in response demonstrates their understanding that the question was asked as his answer was not satisfactory and takes a moment to reconsider by picking up the other box. Ultimately, the clinician did not accept any response to this question and moved on. Despite having actually chosen correctly, his behaviour was not recognised for what it was in the moment and was regarded as having failed the test. This kind of situation affords the clinician the capacity to alienate the child they assessed from reason by unilaterally applying their meaning of the child’s behaviour. This hermeneutical injustice (Ritunnano, 2022) is interactional xenoproduction.

Where propagandistic films like Independence Day would have you believe that aliens are here to threaten us such that we would be wise to imprison any alien interlopers, the reality is that aliens are more frequently now left on the streets, maximally accessible to the metaphysical reach of the public and minimally empowered to mean. However, aliens of all forms horrible and disturbing are found not far from the alienist’s “clinic”. And when they are concerned with our conduct, we are kept in conceptual cages with limited access to any technology of sense.  Consider the tactical, authoritative, xenoproduction that plays out in cases like M. Remy Yergeau, being involuntarily committed during which a “narrative of neurological determinism” (Yergeau, 2013, para.  was deployed by alienists to confer “any and all agency to [their] supposed disembodiment, or [their] supposed disenmindment”(Yergeau, 2013). Or, alternatively, in the case of an aphasic man who could only speak the words “yes”, “no”, and “and”, yet can participate in human storytelling, whose cries in hospital for multiple days were treated as deranged, meaningless howls only to ultimately have been caused by the agony of an incorrectly applied catheter(Goodwin, 1995). Or a trans woman who is alienated from her body by a clinician training her into the correct, Human relationship someone in her position should have with their genitals (i.e., that human women, trans or otherwise, should be significantly concerned over possessing a penis; Borba, 2019). Of course, the alienist’s clinic is not the only significant hyperstitional nexus of xenoproduction. However, it is a place of significant power and machinery devoted to the xenoproductive project as a site in which Trust, and specifically giving people the benefit of the doubt in the face of momentary incomprehensibility, are hugely consequential.

References
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