Category Archives: General

The main theme of the summer term is ‘topology’, and we thought it would be helpful to start by discussing Michel Serres’s take on it. For the first session we’re going to read various excepts (Ch1; pp. 57-62; pp. 93-107) … Continue reading →

This is the last meeting of the Winter term, and this time our special guest will be Tahani Nadim from the Natural History Museum in Berlin. We’re going to continue our discussion about relational ontologies with the help of Marsha … Continue reading →

To what extent is ontology a good and helpful term for STS scholars? Isn’t it too ‘philosophical’? Do we necessarily have to engage with philosophy, when we explore (even advocate) a shift from epistemology to ontology? If we do, what … Continue reading →

In this meeting we’ll continue our discussion with the help of various texts from the special issue of SSS about the (alleged) turn to ontology in STS. Among other things, we will compare and contrast different ways of relating to … Continue reading →

In the previous meeting we talked about performativity in an economic context. We did this with the help of Stephen Collier and a written exchange between Judith Butler and Michel Callon. Many of us had the feeling that there was … Continue reading →

What about critique? How is the economy performed, and how could it be performed differently? A discussion with Stephen Collier (background reading: an exchange between Judith Butler and Michel Callon in a special issue of the Journal of Cultural Economy … Continue reading →

The affective turn – what is it, and how is it relevant for STS? (We read Lisa Blackman & Couze Venn’s introduction to a special issue of Body & Society)

Temporalities, affect, and different ways of enacting the future (Vincanne Adams, Michelle Murphy and Adele E. Clarke: ‘Anticipation: Technoscience, life, affect, temporality’)

How does the concept of performativity help us better understand what’s going on in our field? And how does it help better understand our own knowledge making practices? We’ll be looking for answers with the help of Natasha Myers’ ‘Performing … Continue reading →

To start the discussion, we’re going to read Stefan Helmreich’s ‘An anthropoligist underwater’