Interspecies intimacy defines an inescapable reality of lab animal research. This essay is an effort to disentangle this reality’s consequences—both in and outside the lab—as framed by the quandaries of ethnographic engagement. Encounters with lab staff and, in turn, with audiences unfamiliar with laboratory life, together provide crucial entry points for considering how the “messiness of the moral” might facilitate an “unbounded” approach to lab animal worlds. Within the lab, one encounters specialized ethical principles—often codified as law—that delimit strict boundaries (...) of in/appropriate human thought and action. Such principles determine quotidian practices of welfare and care that, in peculiar ways, privilege animal health (as key to reliable data) while obscuring, erasing, or denying human forms of self care. As such, they presuppose a regulatory ability to formulate, shape, and (re)direct human action. Yet attentiveness to the “messiness of the moral” of lab work exposes other realities: indeed, lab personnel regularly engage in a host of subversive responses that test or cross the boundaries of mandated behavior that (re)invigorate the meaning of moral acts of care as interspecies responsibility. The ethnographer’s ability to witness, record, and write about these actions within the lab rests comfortably on the relativist principle of suspended judgment. Once one moves outside the lab, however, I ask, wherein lies ethnographic responsibility, when one's accounts of the moral messiness of quotidian lab practices become unbounded and go public? I argue that a dialectical inter- and intraspecies framework—inspired by the existential anthropologist Michael Jackson—offers the ethnographer (and still other scholars) possibilities for forging a productively “unbounded” methodological analytic in and beyond domains of animal science. (shrink)

This article describes the political practices of a part of the Italian women’s movement that, as of the 1980s, gave way to the sexual difference thought. Through a political analysis of their own experience, which removed any humanist identity assumptions, the women’s movement generated new practices and discourses. With these, women were able to exert self-criticism, and simultaneously to produce new subjectivities articulated around the sexual difference concept. The difference thought helped highlight the limits of institutional policy, renewing the premises (...) of political analysis and redefining the borders of what was deemed to be ‘political’. Intended to foster dialogue with other feminist proposals, the article underlines the situated nature of this political experience and focuses on the method, the political praxis and the process rather than the outcome, the conclusions or the theory. (shrink)

: This paper discusses how Herbert Simon's initial interest in decision making became transformed into a focus on understanding human problem solving in response to the concrete conditions of the Cold War and the practical goals of the military. In particular, it suggests a connection between the seachange in Simon's interest and his shift in patronage. As a result, Simon is portrayed as a component of the scientific-military World War II cyborg that further evolved during the Cold War. Moving from (...) decision making to problem solving, Simon's cyborg science not only required large sums of money, but also managed to acquire these. (shrink)

Although nanotechnology is often defined as operations on the 10-9 meters, the lack of charisma in the scale-bound definitions has been fortified by remarkable dreams and alluring promises that spark excitement for nanotechnology. The story of the rhetorical development of nanotechnology reveals how speculative claims are powerful constructions that create legitimacy in this emerging technological domain. From its inception, nanotechnology has been more of a dream than reality, more fiction than fact. In recent years, however, the term nanotechnology has been (...) actively drawn toward the present to begin to deliver on the fantastic expectations. This debate over time and timing is loaded with paradox. This work examines how future claims work to define what counts as nanotechnology and reveals dilemmas that accompany temporal disjunctures. Science and politics converge in debates about the future of technology as expectations serve to create and enforce power and legitimacy in the emerging area. (shrink)

By examining the contingent alliance that has emerged between the computational theory of mind and cyborg theory, we discern some questionable ways in which the literalization of technological metaphors and the over-extension of the “computational” have functioned, not only to influence conceptions of cognition, but also by becoming normative perspectives on how minds and bodies should be transformed, such that they can capitalize on technology’s capacity to enhance cognition and thus amend our sense of what it is to be “human”. (...) We consider “a moratorium on cyborg discourse” as a way of focusing the conceptual and social–political problems posed by this alliance. (shrink)

:In this essay I begin with Foucault's theorization of the convulsive body of the possessed as a site of struggle. Next, I amend this perspective with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's notion that “the concept is not object but territory” 101). That is, rather than looking at convulsive bodies as objects through which actors struggle, I approach convulsions as evidencing acts of territorialization. Instead of a corporeal object over which actors struggle for ownership, this perspective reframes convulsions as a process (...) of space-making that is constitutive of the space-makers. Amending Foucault's take on convulsions with Deleuze and Guattari's notion of territory allows for analysis of “techno-horror” popular entertainments as constitutive processes in the unfolding of new reproductive masculine subjectivities. (shrink)

The program of intervening, manipulating, constructing and creating is central to natural and engineering sciences. A renewed wave of interest in this program has emerged within the recent practices and discourse of nano-technoscience. However, it is striking that, framed from the perspective of well-established epistemologies, the constructed technoscientific objects and engineered things remain invisible. Their ontological and epistemological status is unclear. The purpose of the present paper is to support present-day approaches to techno-objects ( ontology ) insofar as they make (...) these hidden objects epistemologically perceivable. To accomplish this goal, it is inspiring to look back to the origin of the project of modernity and to its founding father: Francis Bacon. The thesis is that everything we need today for an adequate (dialectic-materialist), ontologically well-informed epistemology of technoscience can be found in the works of Bacon—this position will be called epistemological real-constructivism. Rather than describing it as realist or constructivist, empiricist or rationalist, Bacon’s position can best be understood as real-constructivist since it challenges modern dichotomies, including the dichotomy between epistemology and ontology. Such real-constructive turn might serve to promote the acknowledgement that natural and engineering sciences, in particular recent technosciences, are creating and producing the world we live in. Reflection upon the contemporary relevance of Bacon is intended as a contribution to the expanding and critical discussion on nano-technoscience. (shrink)

Abstract Under the realm of neurocultures the concept of the cerebral subject emerges as the central category to define the self, socio-cultural interaction and behaviour. The brain is the reference for explaining cognitive processes and behaviour but at the same time the plastic brain is situated in current paradigms of (self)optimization on the market of meritocracy by means of neurotechnologies. This paper explores whether neurotechnological apparatuses may—due to their hybridity and malleability—bear potentials for a change in gender based attributions that (...) have been historically legitimized by apparently natural differences between women and men. Or, in contrast, which gendered ascriptions are (again) produced in theories and applications according to the normative demands for the bio-techno-social cerebral subject situated in neoliberal power relations. An exploration of three main fields of current developments, the neurotechnological apparatus of brain-computer-interfaces, the technologies for brain tuning and the discourses in neuroeconomics, reveals first insights on these gender aspects in reliance with the ethical/political debate. Moreover, this paper concretizes questions for further research on gender and ethical aspects in the field of neurotechnologies. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-14 DOI 10.1007/s12152-011-9129-1 Authors Sigrid Schmitz, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Vienna, Alserstraße 23/22, 1080 Vienna, Austria Journal Neuroethics Online ISSN 1874-5504 Print ISSN 1874-5490. (shrink)

Brain-machine interfaces are a growing field of research and application. The increasing possibilities to connect the human brain to electronic devices and computer software can be put to use in medicine, the military, and entertainment. Concrete technologies include cochlear implants, Deep Brain Stimulation, neurofeedback and neuroprosthesis. The expectations for the near and further future are high, though it is difficult to separate hope from hype. The focus in this paper is on the effects that these new technologies may have on (...) our ‘symbolic order’—on the ways in which popular categories and concepts may change or be reinterpreted. First, the blurring distinction between man and machine and the idea of the cyborg are discussed. It is argued that the morally relevant difference is that between persons and non-persons, which does not necessarily coincide with the distinction between man and machine. The concept of the person remains useful. It may, however, become more difficult to assess the limits of the human body. Next, the distinction between body and mind is discussed. The mind is increasingly seen as a function of the brain, and thus understood in bodily and mechanical terms. This raises questions concerning concepts of free will and moral responsibility that may have far reaching consequences in the field of law, where some have argued for a revision of our criminal justice system, from retributivist to consequentialist. Even without such a (unlikely and unwarranted) revision occurring, brain-machine interactions raise many interesting questions regarding distribution and attribution of responsibility. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to the expanding discourse on inter- and transdisciplinarity. Referring to well-established distinctions in philosophy of science, the paper argues in favor of a plurality of four different dimensions: Interdisciplinarity with regard to objects, knowledge/theories, methods/practices, and further, problem perception/problem solving. Different philosophical thought traditions can be related to these distinguishable meanings. The philosophical framework of the four different dimensions will be illustrated by some of the most popular examples of research programs that are labeled interdisciplinary (...) : nanoresearch/nanoscience/nanotechnology, complex systems theory/chaos theory, biomimicry/bionics, and technology assessment/sustainability research. Thus, a minimal philosophy of science is required to understand and foster inter- and transdisciplinarity. (shrink)

: Disabled women's issues, experiences, and embodiments have been misunderstood, if not largely ignored, by feminist as well as mainstream disability theorists. The reason for this, I argue, is embedded in the use of materialist and constructivist approaches to bodies that do not recognize the interaction between "sex" and "gender" and "impairment" and "disability" as material-semiotic. Until an interactionist paradigm is taken up, we will not be able to uncover fully the intersection between sexist and ableist biases (among others) that (...) form disabled women's oppressions. Relying on the understanding that sexuality is one such material-semiotic phenomenon, I examine the operation of interwoven biases in two disabled women's narratives. (shrink)

While unicellular microbes such as phytoplankton (marine algae) have long been considered immortal unless eaten by predators, recent research suggests that under specific conditions entire populations of phytoplankton actively kill themselves; their assumed atemporality is being revised as marine ecologists recognize phytoplankton’s important role in the global carbon cycle. Drawing on empirical research into programmed cell death in marine microbes, this article explores how, in their study of microbial death, scientists change not only our understanding of microbial temporality, but also (...) reconstruct the relationship between life and death, biological individuality and assumptions about a natural teleology associated with bounded biological systems and genetic programmes. Reading this research together with a Derridean deconstruction of the limit between human and other animals with respect to death, this article explores how the deconstruction of individuality from within biology may suggest alternatives to our anthropocentric notion of time and embodiment. (shrink)

Moshe Tati, a sanitation worker in Jerusalem, was among the first of more than a thousand mortally sick Israelis who signed up for illicit and clandestine ‘transplant tour’ packages that included: travel to an undisclosed foreign and exotic setting; five-star hotel accommodation; surgery in a private hospital unit; a ‘fresh’ kidney purchased from a perfect stranger trafficked from a third country. Although Tati’s holiday turned into a nightmare and he had to be emergency air-lifted from a rented transplant unit in (...) a private hospital in Adana, Turkey back to Israel, Moshe became a poster-boy of transplant tourism for the next decade. João Cavalcanti was among the first of 38 residents of the slums of Recife recruited by retired military Captain Ivan da Silva and his sidekick Captain Gadddy Tauber to travel to Durban, South Africa to provide a spare kidney to an Israeli transplant tourist in Durban. This article examines the logics and practices through which kidney buyers and kidney sellers, organs brokers, surgeons and their accessories convince themselves that they are engaged in an illegal but still mutually beneficial ‘medical-recreational’ adventure, an ‘extreme medical sport’ of sorts. While life, health and survival motivate ‘transplant tourism’, a euphemism for human trafficking in spare body parts, the freedom to roam, mobility, is an essential feature of transplant tours for kidney buyers and kidney sellers. (shrink)

Disabled women's issues, experiences, and embodiments have been misunderstood, if not largely ignored, by feminist as well as mainstream disability theorists. The reason for this, I argue, is embedded in the use of materialist and constructivist approaches to bodies that do not recognize the interaction between “sex” and “gender” and “impairment” and “disability” as material-semiotic. Until an interactionist paradigm is taken up, we will not be able to uncover fully the intersection between sexist and ableist biases that form disabled women's (...) oppressions. Relying on the understanding that sexuality is one such material-semiotic phenomenon, I examine the operation of interwoven biases in two disabled women's narratives. (shrink)

This essay forges links between Popperians and feminists by considering the connections between Donna Haraway's “situated knowledge” and Karl R. Popper's “situational logic.” It is concerned with the political commitments behind methodological issues, with the degree to which there can be a Popperian contribution to the feminist vision of a successor science, and with ways of dealing with, while not resolving, the political differences between socialist feminists and libertarian Popperians.

Scientific progress has been understood as synonymous with the growth of knowledge and the advancement of humanity. In this brief survey, this concept is problematized both in rhetorical terms and within the neoliberal framework. Despite the sustained marketing of the scientific community and its funding agencies, the dangers associated with progress are explained and highlighted.

This essay examines critically two related claims: first, that postmodernism and philosophy of science depend on each other in a manner similar to the Enlightenment and Romanticism, that is, they respond and dispute each other's claims; and second, that what underlies and emanates from both postmodernism and philosophy of science is a political perspective and commitment. These claims suggest not only the possibility of translating from one area to the other when they are critically engaged with each other but also (...) the potential for using both areas simultaneously to transform and possibly improve the human condition. By emphasizing the similarities between science/philosophy of science and postmodernism the essay explores the ways in which these two enterprises or groups of people can learn from one another and benefit from each other's insight. (shrink)

This article discusses the conditions of research in international and European contexts, in particular European elite politics and politicians, arguing that the researcher is a central agent and research instrument in this process. The article suggests that the researcher finds herself renegotiating parts of her socially assigned identity in relation to European national and international structures and discusses the ways in which the gendered ‘self’ remains the centre of a research project above other identity componentseven in such conditions that might (...) appear to be gender neutral. The article examines the micro-politics of research from the level of archive research to elite interviewing. (shrink)

Recent "gender, environment, and sustainable development" accounts raise pointed questions about the complicity of Enlightenment philosophies of science with failures of Third World development policies and the current environmental crisis. The strengths of these analyses come from distinctive ways they link androcentric, economistic, and nature-blind aspects of development thinking to "the Enlightenment dream." In doing so they share perspectives with and provide resources for other influential schools of science studies.

This article explores the impact of the new communications technologies on the generation born in the 1980s, the first to grow up under the dominance of the computer. It considers some of the parameters for discussing the close of one era and the beginning of another and draws on the writings of major civilizationist historians and futurologists, including Jacques Ellul, Samuel Huntington, and Romano Guardini.

Critical Data Studies explore the unique cultural, ethical, and critical challenges posed by Big Data. Rather than treat Big Data as only scientifically empirical and therefore largely neutral phenomena, CDS advocates the view that Big Data should be seen as always-already constituted within wider data assemblages. Assemblages is a concept that helps capture the multitude of ways that already-composed data structures inflect and interact with society, its organization and functioning, and the resulting impact on individuals’ daily lives. CDS questions the (...) many assumptions about Big Data that permeate contemporary literature on information and society by locating instances where Big Data may be naively taken to denote objective and transparent informational entities. In this introduction to the Big Data & Society CDS special theme, we briefly describe CDS work, its orientations, and principles. (shrink)

In this paper, Roy attempts to develop a semiprescriptive analysis for the natural sciences by examining more closely a skill that many feminist scientists have been reported to possess. Feminist scientists have often been lauded for their ability to “ask different questions.” Drawing from standpoint theory, strong objectivity, situated knowledges, agential realism, and the methodology of the oppressed, the author suggests that this skill can be articulated further into the feminist practice of research agenda choice. Roy illustrates the usefulness of (...) developing such a practice by addressing her own dilemma of conducting in vitro research in a reproductive biology lab. (shrink)

In this paper, Roy attempts to develop a semiprescriptive analysis for the natural sciences by examining more closely a skill that many feminist scientists have been reported to possess. Feminist scientists have often been lauded for their ability to “ask different questions.” Drawing from standpoint theory, strong objectivity, situated knowledges, agential realism, and the methodology of the oppressed, the author suggests that this skill can be articulated further into the feminist practice of research agenda choice. Roy illustrates the usefulness of (...) developing such a practice by addressing her own dilemma of conducting in vitro research in a reproductive biology lab. (shrink)

: Philosophical naturalism is ambiguous between conjoining philosophy with science or with nature understood scientifically. Reconciliation of this ambiguity is necessary but rarely attempted. Feminist science studies often endorse the former naturalism but criticize the second. Karen Barad's agential realism, however, constructively reconciles both senses. Barad then challenges traditional metaphysical naturalisms as not adequately accountable to science. She also contributes distinctively to feminist reinterpretations of objectivity as agential responsibility, and of agency as embodied, worldly, and intra-active.

Philosophical naturalism is ambiguous between conjoining philosophy with science or with nature understood scientifically. Reconciliation of this ambiguity is necessary but rarely attempted. Feminist science studies often endorse the former naturalism but criticize the second. Karen Barad's agential realism, however, constructively reconciles both senses. Barad then challenges traditional metaphysical naturalisms as not adequately accountable to science. She also contributes distinctively to feminist reinterpretations of objectivity as agential responsibility, and of agency as embodied, worldly, and intra-active.

Resumo: A partir de uma análise sobre a utilização das biotecnologias médicas, este artigo pretende compreender como a disseminação de uma lógica e um discurso "informacional", na área de saúde, mascaram as intervenções médicas efetuadas no corpo humano. Argumenta-se que frequentemente as práticas biotecnológicas são tratadas como meras relações linguísticas, como se não fossem operações de carne e sangue realizadas nos corpos. Para abordar a forma como essa lógica se processa, será feita, neste texto, uma breve discussão sobre como as (...) disputas em torno do que são, e como operam os genes, acabam por reforçar um paradigma informacional, ainda que tal resolução não seja amparada pelas evidências empíricas, mas em metáforas bem-sucedidas.: Starting with an analysis of the use of medical biotechnology, this article aims to understand how medical interventions in the human body are masked by a certain logic and by an "informational" discourse on health care. We argue that biotechnological practices are often treated as linguistic relations, as if they were not flesh and blood operations on bodies. To address how this logic is processed, we discuss how disputes over the nature and functioning of genes end up strengthening an informational paradigm that is not based on empirical evidence, but rather on successful metaphors. (shrink)

This article suggests that humanism is a decisionism in contemporary critical political theory. Despite obvious and multiple differences, leading critical theorists like Giorgio Agamben, Slavoj Žižek, Eric Santner, and Jürgen Habermas, among others, share an investment in stabilizing the human being as a ground of the political. This stabilization of the human should concern political theorists, as this article argues, because it uncritically reproduces conceptual affinities between the notion of the human being and sovereign authority. By investing in the stability (...) and centrality of the human being, these theorists perform what will be called, paraphrasing an often neglected argument by Carl Schmitt, a decision to be human. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I argue that Schmitt’s decisionism is not merely circumscribed to sovereignty’s juridico-political dimension, but that it also includes a peculiar commitment to God’s decision to become human in Christ. Against this decisionism as humanism, the article draws on Walter Benjamin, Roberto Esposito, and Jacques Derrida to propose an alternative politics that destabilizes humanity and sovereignty through the emergence of the animal, or what will be called melancholic lycanthropy. (shrink)

Artificially Intelligent robotic technologies increasingly reflect a language of interaction and relationship and this vocabulary is part and parcel of the meanings now attached to machines. No longer are they inert, but interconnected, responsive and engaging. As machines become more sophisticated, they are predicted to be a “direct object” of an interaction for a human, but what kinds of human would that give rise to? Before robots, animals played the role of the relational other, what can stories of feral children (...) tell us about what it means to be human? What of ‘relationship’ do AI and robotic scientists draw on to generate ideas about their relational others? I will address these questions by reference to the work of Martin Buber in I and Thou. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe Cybathlon is a new kind of competition that embraces disabled people who use advanced assistive technologies. The purpose of this essay is to interpret the Cybathlon not as a ‘transhuman’ sport for enhanced athletes but as a place for experimenting with ‘capability hybridatization’ of the self. We wish to show that the figure of the transhuman cyborg that dominates the media coverage of disabled athletes is an attempt to approximate the able-bodied standard. This figure is problematic because it excludes (...) athletes who cannot meet it. We defend the idea that capability hybridization, on the other hand, does not seek to approach a standard, but aims to promote and legitimize variedly able bodies. This article will be organized in three stages. First, we will highlight the production of the transhuman cyborg at work in contemporary disability sport. Then, we will show that this transhuman cyborg is based on ableist and heteronormative conceptions of the body that are opposed to a postmodern defini... (shrink)

Feminist philosophers of technoscience have long argued that it is vital that we question biomedical and scientific claims to an immaterial and disembodied objectivity, and also, more specifically, that we disable the conception of medical visualising technologies as neutral or transparent conduits to the “fact” of the body. In this paper we suggest that corporeal feminism is well situated to provide such a critique. Feminist phenomenologists over the past decade have theorised embodiment in a number of critical ways, many deriving (...) concepts from the work of Merleau-Ponty, and emphasising the pliability and diversity of our body images and corporeal schematics. Others such as Elizabeth Wilson, Cathy Waldby and Drew Leder have considered the interdependence of our inner biology or viscerality with the socio-cultural inscriptions of embodiment. In this paper, these adaptations of phenomenology, and their account of the specificity and depth of embodied being, will be discussed and applied to the discourse of biomedicine and the apparatus of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 6, Edition 1 May 2006. (shrink)

Feminist philosophy of science has led to improvements in the practices and products of scientific knowledge-making, and in this way it exemplifies socially relevant philosophy of science. It has also yielded important insights and original research questions for philosophy. Feminist scholarship on science thus presents a worthy thought-model for considering how we might build a more socially relevant philosophy of science—the question posed by the editors of this special issue. In this analysis of the history, contributions, and challenges faced by (...) feminist philosophy of science, I argue that engaged case study work and interdisciplinarity have been central to the success of feminist philosophy of science in producing socially relevant scholarship, and that its future lies in the continued development of robust and dynamic philosophical frameworks for modeling social values in science. Feminist philosophers of science, however, have often encountered marginalization and persistent misunderstandings, challenges that must be addressed within the institutional and intellectual culture of American philosophy. (shrink)

The benefits of family planning for those who desire it, and the possibilities of coercion against those who do not, are well-known aspects of international population policies. Family planning technologies, more than simply a means for preventing conception, are involved as identity artefacts in the construction of bodies and in the reproduction of power relations. As such, modern contraceptives, organized by and implemented through, donor-funded programmes constitute a discursive apparatus through which scattered hegemonies are disseminated. Women's use of family planning, (...) traditional and modern, allows them to counter the expectations of these hegemonies at some times, and to embody them at others. Both service providers and clients, construct identities, referenced through women's bodies, using the discourses of international population control and family planning. This paper uses data collected in Tanzania to understand how notions of modernity in the family planning programme construct Tanzanian female bodies as ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’, how these discursive inequalities reflect and compound material disparities and how these logics come into play in the ways that women construct themselves and each other. (shrink)

In 1997, five decades after the publication of the landmark Hempel-Oppenheim article "Studies in the Logic of Explanation"([1948], 1970) Wesley Salmon published Causality and Explanation, a book that re-addresses the issue of scientific explanation. He provided an overview of the basic approaches to scientific explanation, stressed their weaknesses, and offered novel insights. However, he failed to mention Mary Hesse's approach to the topic and analyze her standpoint. This essay brings front and center Hesse's approach to scientific explanation formulated in the (...) 1960s and argues that rereading Hesse's account one can overcome the criticisms addressed towards another influential theory of explanation that of Bas van Fraassen's. Furthermore, it could bring the traditional philosophy of science into a fruitful conversation with science and technology studies and gender studies in science, technology and medicine. (shrink)

In 1997, five decades after the publication of the landmark Hempel-Oppenheim article "Studies in the Logic of Explanation" Wesley Salmon published Causality and Explanation, a book that re-addresses the issue of scientific explanation. He provided an overview of the basic approaches to scientific explanation, stressed their weaknesses, and offered novel insights. However, he failed to mention Mary Hesse's approach to the topic and analyze her standpoint. This essay brings front and center Hesse's approach to scientific explanation formulated in the 1960s (...) and argues that rereading Hesse's account one can overcome the criticisms addressed towards another influential theory of explanation that of Bas van Fraassen's. Furthermore, it could bring the traditional philosophy of science into a fruitful conversation with science and technology studies and gender studies in science, technology and medicine. (shrink)