Nomadic Metrology

This paper develops a reconceptualisation of ancient Egyptian measurement devices as a means to bring neoliteral and metamethodological features of Rosi Bradiotti’s thought into new light. Whereas established metrological scholarship will tend to discuss such devices in terms of a teleology of standardisation, the first part of this paper will instead seek to emphasise the inherent variability of the Egyptian cubit rod at the points of its design and application. That each cubit rod embodies an ‘objective’ value of measurement can be seen to endorse, not preclude, this venture: each device organises a local (and discrete) value adequate to the evaluation or construction of a given object. In this way, a cubit rod establishes a responsive relation to its actualised object, and a speculative relation to its imagined object, as opposed to the blanket quantification associated with a universal standard of measure. The second part of this paper introduces three formal Axes (or conceptual functionalities) of this variable metrological device and connects these Axes to aspects of Braidotti’s conceptual nomadism.