Feb 23, 2021
Troubling Epistemics and Postcolonialism
- 11:00 to 12:30
- Reading Group
- Dept. III
In this session we will discuss the following texts dedicated to the intersection between entomology and colonialism that will be briefly introduced by Kerstin Pannhorst (MPIWG):
Provocation text
- Excerpt from: Libes, Kenna: "Glory in a Host of Entomological Spoils': Beetle-Wing Embroidery and the Exhibition of India in Anglo-American Dress, 1780–1903," in: Dress, 2020, p. 10-11.
Complementary Readings
- Deb Roy, Rohan: "White ants, empire and entomo-politics in South Asia," The Historical Journal 63 (2020), Nr. 2: 411-436.
- Kosek, Jake: "Ecologies of Empire: On the New Uses of the Honeybee," Cultural Anthropology 25 (2010), Nr. 4: 650-678.
- Jansen, Sarah: "An American Insect in Imperial Germany: Visibility and Control in Making the Phylloxera in Germany," in: Science in Context 13 (2000), Nr. 1: 31-70.
Contact and Registration
Everyone is welcome to join. For registration or any questions about the seminar please contact Marianna Szczygielska.
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
- 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
- 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