Many trajectories of thought are opened up by the question of standby. Cutting across these trajectories is the assumption that standby is a condition of being available, of being-on-hand. To speculate with standby is to think about the production and emergence of this condition, about how this condition is undergone and experienced, and about how it generates capacities to act. This special issue is an invitation to explore how standby capacities are distributed across and between bodies, devices, and environments.
Perhaps! – But who is willing to concern himself with such dangerous perhapses! For that we have to await the arrival of a new species of philosopher, one which possesses tastes and inclinations opposite to and different from those of its predecessors – philosophers of the dangerous “perhaps” in every sense. –And to speak in all seriousness: I see such philosophers arising.
When we speak we are afraid, our words will not be heard nor welcomed,
but when we are silent we are still afraid. So it is better to speak,
remembering we were never meant to survive. (Lorde, 1978: 31-32)
