MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT FÜR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Event

Sep 24, 2019
Troubling Epistemics and Postcolonialism

For this session, we will read the following text(s): 

[Provocation text:] Nadim, Tahani. “Seeds: German East Africa, 1892”. To be published in:  An Alphabetical History of (post)Colonial Planning. (eds.) Anindita Nag, Emily Brownell, Helen Verran, Kavita Philip, Martina Schlünder, Sarah Blacker, and Sarah Van Beurden/ Under consideration by MIT Press. 

[Complementary readings]: 

  • Haraway, Donna. “The Bio-Politics of a Multicultural Field.” In: Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York, London: Routledge, 1989, p. 249–280
  • Subramaniam, Banu. “Thigmatropic Tales On the Politics and Social Lives  of Morning Glories”. In: Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2014, p. 27–44
  • Gan, E., Tsing, A., Swanson, H., Bubandt, N. “Haunted Landscapes of the Anthropocene”. In: (eds.) Gan, E., et al., Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet. Ghosts of the Anthropocene. University of Minnesota Press, 2017, p. 1–14. 
Organizer(s)
Address
Boltzmannstraße 22, 14195 Berlin, Germany
Room
Room 265
Contact and Registration

Open to all, no registration required. Any questions about this or further sessions can be addressed by sending an email to Marianna Szczygielska at szczygielska@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de or by speaking directly to Marianna, Edna Bonhomme, or Helen R. Verran in person.

About This Series

“Troubling Epistemics and Postcolonialism” is a monthly reading seminar interrogating "postcolonial" as an analytic concept in the history of science. The goal is to understand the ethics and mechanisms of our own epistemic practices as they relate to politics and power. We aim to examine the ways that epistemology is both historically contingent and actively produced within the history of science with the goal of troubling our disciplinary positions. For each meeting we list and circulate

  1. a short ‘provocative text’ to carry the empirical element and to provoke us to go wider in attempting to attend to something that troubles. Everyone is expected to read that text
  2. two or three "theoretical" or descriptive papers that we feel might be useful in "attending to the trouble." These are optional readings. The idea is that everyone who attends the discussion will have read at least the short provocation paper and bring some "troubles" to the meeting
2019-09-24T11:00:00SAVE IN I-CAL 2019-09-24 11:00:00 2019-09-24 12:30:00 Troubling Epistemics and Postcolonialism For this session, we will read the following text(s):  [Provocation text:] Nadim, Tahani. “Seeds: German East Africa, 1892”. To be published in:  An Alphabetical History of (post)Colonial Planning. (eds.) Anindita Nag, Emily Brownell, Helen Verran, Kavita Philip, Martina Schlünder, Sarah Blacker, and Sarah Van Beurden/ Under consideration by MIT Press.  [Complementary readings]:  Haraway, Donna. “The Bio-Politics of a Multicultural Field.” In: Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York, London: Routledge, 1989, p. 249–280 Subramaniam, Banu. “Thigmatropic Tales On the Politics and Social Lives  of Morning Glories”. In: Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2014, p. 27–44 Gan, E., Tsing, A., Swanson, H., Bubandt, N. “Haunted Landscapes of the Anthropocene”. In: (eds.) Gan, E., et al., Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet. Ghosts of the Anthropocene. University of Minnesota Press, 2017, p. 1–14.  Boltzmannstraße 22, 14195 Berlin, Germany Room 265 Marianna SzczygielskaEdna BonhommeHelen R. Verran Marianna SzczygielskaEdna BonhommeHelen R. Verran Europe/Berlin public