Situated Practices Seminar

2nd quadrimester

Teacher: Maryam Kolly

This course will familiarize students with the theoretical and methodological approaches of sciences studies and post-colonial studies. It aims to interrogate the conditions and effects (material and discursive) of scientific practices and the historical conditions of production of "othering" within colonial and capitalist power structures - both phenomena being at the root of Euro-American modernity.

Rather than looking at knowledge as an objective description of reality, this course seeks to understand/show how science actively participates in the transformation of reality. How is a scientific fact made? How did the sciences and colonial power produce racist categories in Europe? How do the great divisions between nature and culture, reason and belief, science and politics still participate today in the distribution of privileges and disqualifications, roles and places between humans, but also between humans and other creatures?

Tools:

A body of texts will be used, but also images, works or case studies.