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The course This course in its present version is an amalgam of segments from various other actual and possible courses: the sociology of science or "science studies," the sociology of knowledge, a course with heavy doses of feminist theory and poststructuralism, with something from queer theory mixed in. It is not exactly "sociology" but in that "not," of course, it inevitably bears the marks of it. Something involving a critique of masculinity and realism, and something that is modest and not self-aggrandizing, but that doesn't "give up on" the exciting flows of gender and the possibility of useful "knowledge"(indeed, science itself) produced by mobile bodies/subjects/selves. So, the course is a mix of things and you bring diverse interests and agendas to that mix, meaning that what it turns out to be will differ of course for each of you and in ways you can't now know. It is the second time it has been offered and, given the enrollment, might be the last time. Where did it come from? Perhaps more than anything else, from reading the work of Donna Haraway on feminism and technoscience. That convinced me it was time for me to do a course and see what would come of it. Another thing that was important was finishing up a long-suffering project on ethnography and Chinese family caregiving (Giving Care, Writing Self: A "New" Ethnography, Schneider and Wang, 2000, New York: Lang). What I found so promising about Haraway (quite like Sandra Harding, a feminist philosopher of science you will read) is that she is both conversant with and sympathetic to many of the "post-" criticisms of power/knowledge and science that have been written in/translated into English during the last few decades. But, given these sympathies and that knowledge, she doesn't want to "give up" on science or on knowledge--at least, not all of it and certainly not on the very idea of science and knowledge. Rather, Haraway wants to help stimulate what she calls, after Harding, a "successor science," a science that takes all of the postmodern/poststructural criticisms of knowledge/power into account (and perhaps some of what has come from work on "artificial life") and seeks to co-exist in a world with them rather than deny their relevance and import. That seemed like a "tall order" indeed, but I think it is my own disciplinary background in social science and perhaps sociology in particular that made/makes me find that tension in Haraway's and related visions (including Hayles' ideas) so appealing. Perhaps it is even a bit utopian (but that is not a "four-letter word" in my dictionary). Finally, I felt in my own scholarship I had been using, drawing on and even writing about, some of those same criticisms of science and knowledge. That project, noted above, on ethnography sought simultaneously to use and to deconstruct fundamental tenets of social science. I was trying to be a very unfaithful "son" of the "fathers" of sociology and the grandfathers and great-great grandfathers of western scientific/"rational" thought. But I still wanted to be seen as a "member" of the "family." This metaphor of science as a "family" is perhaps apt in that this latter term has become, at least in North America, a site of such contention and struggle. Just what a "family" can be--who can be in it, what the nature of the relationships in it have to be; and what its relationships mean in terms of commitment, caring, and intimacy--are now all quite open questions--or, at least, opening questions. This is I think some of the same sense that Haraway might have toward her own beloved biology and science/technoscience: she wants to be part of the family, to live in its "house," but as a disloyal daughter and, as a result, to change that house and family fundamentally--through the collective efforts of "friendly others," whoever they may be and wherever they may come from. But what sort of change might she want and in what directions? These will be abiding questions for us, but given feminism as the interpretive context for this inquiry, we should have a pretty good idea that this means, at least, ways of working, living, and relating that encourage and move toward more open and less exclusive structures and practices, less systematic domination of some kinds of people by other kinds, and an unmistakable and abiding attention to the reduction of pain and suffering by sentient beings. Finally, I think a sort of faith, or perhaps a fantasy, is required to imagine and go forward with such a project, for what any one of us might be able to do to help build something different, something more agreeable, is necessarily very small (and we always like "big" changes, especially if we can take or try to "take credit" for them). Readings The following books, except for Woolgar, should be available at the University Bookstore: Sandra Harding. 1986. The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Steve Woolgar. 1988. Science: The Very Idea. London: Tavistock. Bruno Latour. 1986. Science in Action. Harvard. Donna J. Haraway. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse TM. Feminism and Technoscience. Routledge. Donna J. Haraway. 1999. How Like a Leaf. An Interview with Thyrza Nichols Goodeve. New York: Routledge. Karin Knorr-Cetina. 1999. Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Harvard. N. Katherine Hayles. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. There will be a few additional things either that I will distribute in class or that will be available at Copycat. Course objectives
Course structure/expectations/work Since I do not have "an argument," per se, that I am using to organize the whole of the course and since my aim is for us to read and critically respond to the texts noted above, the course is organized as a reading/seminar course. The worth of the experience, outside of the reading itself (which is of course of central importance), thus depends a lot on how well each of us comes to our class meetings prepared to "make something happen" around the material of focus for the week. In this sense, the course is "reading intensive." What complicates this of course is that there is a lot of reading to do (so, there is a kind of "trade off" here, between depth and surface encounters with the material). Discussion preparation memos. I will ask each of you to bring to each class a set of memos or notes you have made specifically in preparation for setting out both a brief overview of the reading or parts thereof and some of what has seemed to you most important about what the author/s are saying (see below). I will collect these memos as part of your regular course work and they will make up the 20% "participation" grade for the course. I will read your memo each week, comment briefly on it, make a copy of it, and hand it back to you at the next class meeting (I hope). These memos must be typed and should be no more than 3 single-spaced pages. I will accept these memos only at the end of the class for which they were prepared (or, if you are ill and cannot attend class, I will consider accepting them as an email attachment on the day they are due [but not after that] and you have set out the details of your illness). The idea here is that these are not "reading notes." That is, they should not simply re-iterate what the authors have written; rather, they should be your framings or responses to central ideas and arguments that they set out in the assigned reading. It's about what you found compelling, puzzling, provocative, confusing, annoying, and what you want to say about that response that takes your and others' thought back into the text rather than away from it. By this I mean that your memos should be less elaborations of spaces and experiences outside the text-linked issues up for common attention and more about the ideas and arguments the authors are setting forth. And while you of course need to refer specifically to pages and words in the readings (that is, cite and quote) as you make these memos, the memos should be, for the most part, in your own words and not quotes or in close paraphrase of the author. You might devote the first paragraph or two of your memo to a brief overview of what you consider to be the "main points" of the reading (this should not be more than half a page, single-spaced). Finally, you should write your memo as a memo--to the class, from you, about a subject/s--that is, I expect your memos to have subjects/topics. One more thing. You might want to think about these memos as proto-essays, as beginnings for longer, more developed writings you will do later in the course. That is, think of your writings in the course, over all, as of a piece and of writing as a process with various stages or parts. Short conceptual essays/position papers. I ask you to write four short essays (20% each; 5 pages, double-spaced, maximum) that focus on some specific idea, concept, argument or argument segment (that is some aspect of what might be called "theory"), or issue taken from four different authors of those we read for the course. You will choose the question, propose it to me via email--and try to frame it as a question, with a question mark--and I will try to respond helpfully (this may take several cycles) and give you an "okay" to move ahead. You should have a sense that I have said "okay" to your idea before you proceed. These essays will be due at the ends of roughly equal segments of the course (see outline, below). You may choose the four points at which you will submit these writings but the topic must come from the material engaged in the immediately prior period of time (that is, from that segment and not from earlier ones--but you may propose connections to me for consideration). The "good news" here is that you will be able to select something that you find particularly interesting or appealing as a writing topic and shape your paper, within the frames of the course, as you like. The "less good news" is that it is easy to let all of this flexibility get away from you ("I don't have a clue as to what I should write about"; I'll get to that later). It is critical that you do not procrastinate about choosing these possible paper topics and getting your ideas to me. Almost assuredly, if you do that the quality of your work will suffer. I will ask you to make progress reports in class as we move along. Please treat the final versions of your essays as your best work, by which I mean strive to see and present them as that; as carefully and thoughtfully written and as free of mechanical errors as possible. Schedule The aim here is to read and consider most if not all of the materials you have purchased and some that will be distributed in class. There is of course no "one right way" to order these books and in some cases chronology might be the most useful way to do it, especially given that I am interested in your getting a sense of links or connections between authors and arguments as they (sometimes) refer to each other. The outline and times noted below for reading might well be altered as we move along. Stay tuned. I will try not to alter the due-dates for the essays. (1) Feminism and Science--Some of the Issues (about 2 weeks; 1/24-2/7) Reading: Harding, The Science Question in Feminism. [251pp.] (2) Science in/as Society and Culture: Selected Stories (about 2 weeks; 2/7-2/21) Reading: (1) Sharon Twaweek. "Faultlines." 2000. Pp. 21-48 in Doing Science + Culture: How Cultural and Interdisciplinary Studies Are Changing the Way We Look at Science and Medicine, edited by Roddey Reid and Sharon Traweek. Routledge. (in-class distr.) (2) Steve Woolgar. Science. The Very Idea. (3) Patricia T. Clough and Joseph Schneider. 2000. "Donna J. Haraway." Pp. 338-348 in Profiles in Contemporary Social Theory, edited by Anthony Elliott and Bryan S. Turner. Sage. 2000 (in-class distr.). [156pp.] (3) Feminist Science Studies: Haraway's Pioneering Work (2 weeks; 2/21-3/7) Reading: (1) Donna Haraway. 1989. "Introduction: The Persistence of Vision." Pp. 1-18 in Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. (In-class.) (2) Haraway. 1989. "Teddy-Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-36." Pp. 26-58 in Primate Visions. (In class.) [40pp.] (3) Haraway. 1991. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century." Pp. 149-183 in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge. (In-class distr.) (4) Haraway. 1991. "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective." Pp. 183-202 in Simians. (In-class distr.) (5) Haraway. 1991. "The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies." Pp. 203-229 in Simians. (In-class distr.) [81 pp.] (4) Bruno Latour's "Actor/Actant-Network" View of Science and "Science Studies" (3 weeks; 3/7-3/28) Reading: (1) Latour. 1983. "Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Raise the World." Pp. 141-170 in Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science, edited by Karin Knorr-Cetina and Michael Mulkay. Sage. (In-class.) (2) Latour. 1986. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. [286 pp.]
(5) Knowledge without Guarantees: Haraway's Call for a "Modest Witness" Who Can "Make a Difference" (2 weeks; 3/28-4/11) Reading: (1) Haraway. 1997. Modest_Witness. Parts 1; 2; 3, introduction and Chs. 4,7; (2) Haraway. 1999. How Like a Leaf. [353pp.]
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