My interests
I wrote this a while ago after reading Sonechka's post for the indieweb carneval on "Intersecting Interests". That interests would intersect seemed obvious to me, a bigger problem for me was formulating what exactly I'm interested in at all. Not because I'm not interested in anything, but because I don't know what being interested actually means. Is it enough to regularly pay attention to something to be interested in it? Is "being interested" even something that can be conscious?
I eventually came up with four areas most of my reading and writing relate to – but I don't think these are the extend of my interests.
Social-systems-theory
I got really into Luhmann's theory a few years ago. I first got fascinated by it's extreme grade of abstraction, but this and the auto-logical (self-implicating) structure makes it hard for beginners. The method of functional comparison, in which all phenomena are treated either as a problem to be solved or a solution to a problem not yet clear is amazing and yields (in my opinion) great results.
Trying to understand "society" through systems – that is through concepts introduced by cybernetics – isn't without problems. For one, Luhmann's theory doesn't really allow for normative analysis and explicitly excludes humans (this might be for ethical reasons, but here is not the place to argue this). Also the term cybernetic (κυβερνήτης beeing the helmsman) always implies a desire for control that stands in stark contrast to my personal beliefs but also (how convenient haha) to societal realities.
A great introduction to Luhmann are his papers published in "Niklas Luhmann, Aufsätze und Reden" by Oliver Jahraus and his books aimed at a broader audience, for example "Ökologische Kommunikation" (transl. Ecological Communication) and "Die Realität der Massenmedien" (transl. The Reality of the Mass Media). The english literature on Luhmann is sparse. There is Moeller's "The radical Luhmann", but his approach to Luhmann is very hegelian … On cybernetics I recommend Hayles' short article "Boundary Disputes: Homeostasis, Reflexivity, and the Foundations of Cybernetics" and Teixeira Pinto's "The Pigeon in the Machine".
(Post-)Structuralism
I don't have elaborate things to say with this one. I'm interested in (post-)structuralist theories but I can't say I have read any of the foundational literature (Saussure, Jakobson, Lévi-Strauss, Hjelmslev …). My structuralism is a firm belief that adequate theories are always based on fundamental differences, not identities and a tendency to think in terms of the difference between structure/process and of evolution.
My thinking about difference is greatly influenced by Luhmann's interpretation of Spencer-Brown's "Laws of Form" and Deleuze's "Difference and Repetition". I really recommend Clam's "Was heißt, sich an Differenz statt an Identität zu orientieren?" and Guattari's "Machine and Structure". I also quite liked reading Irigaray for her language, not so much for her "strategic essentialism".
Technology and media
I mean this both in a very abstract and a very concrete sense. I'm interested in the influence technology has on society. The most fruitful way to think about this is the concept of affordances or under-determination, where technologies always suggest certain uses, but how these are implemented remains open and has to be part of the analysis. This still means that technology and media have a huge part in socio-cultural evolution.
On a more concrete level, I like thinking about how specific technologies or media influence society. I love reading McLuhan and my approach to philosophy is greatly influenced by Havelocks "Preface to Plato" and Luhmanns tendency to sociologize texts (that is, to attribute content to social structure which is to a degree determined by media).
And I just like dabbling with computers (I'm not a programmer in any case) and reading about specific technologies, I enjoy science-fiction stories and a part of my job is to critically teach AI.
This also might be the place to confess my (critical) interest in Latour. I'm currently writing my thesis on his concept of the "oligopticon" as a figure that reduces complexity.
Theory of theory
This sounds weird, I could just say "philosophy". But I don't think it would express the specific interests I have in philosophy, which are a) the architecture of texts and b) the relation of theory and life-world (or more abstractly, between descriptions and their objects). Both interests are connected because theories have to develop their relation to the world within themselves.
This basically means that I treat every text (it's hard to do with your own texts) as some kind of metalogue (Bateson). On this topic I recommend a) Zorn's writings and Schobingers "Operationale Aufmerksamkeit in der textimmanenten Auslegung") and b) Kissers "Wie kann eine allgemeine Theorie der Wirklichkeit ihre eigene Wahrheit zeigen?", where he develops the problem of the theory-speaker who must explain how they arrive at their knowledge of reality, because any discourse about reality sits in a position of difference to reality.
When I told H. about these and she said "so just systems-theory, basically" … so much for the intersection of all this.