Breakdown as Method: Screenshots for Dying Worlds

Abstract

Drawing on John Durham Peters’ theory of (mis)communication and other studies of precarious infrastructure (Hicks, 2020; Star, 1999; Pow, 2021; Tsing, 2015), in this article, I consider mortality or finitude as a site of communication breakdown, focusing on the problem of using digital platforms to achieve posterity. Providing an overview of my long-term ethnographic, historical, and web-based research on digital death care practices, I highlight some of the techniques that constitute breakdown as a method of scholarly inquiry. I present screenshots as mourning objects and breakdown research tools. The screenshot represents and captures a distinct point of view and provides material evidence for slippery, ephemeral communications even as the screenshot, as a media object, is subject to decay. Drawing on temporally-oriented or ethnographic approaches to studying dynamic social media cultures (Bonilla, 2015; Christin, 2020; Karpf, 2012; Seaver, 2017) in addition to the work of John Durham Peters, I position breakdown as a method befitting fragile digital social worlds. I argue that death, through the practice of screenshotting, provides a framework for grasping the transcendent capacities and material limits of technologies.