Reimagining the Material-Semiotic in Feminist Neomaterialisms and (Feminist) STS

• In Event: Classic STS Papers, Re-incorporated, Reimagined, Re-enacted - I

Abstract

Feminist neomaterialisms and feminist STS mostly follow Karen Barad’s directive concept of the entanglement of matter and meaning. It is driven in part by the material-semiotic approach that initially guided actor-network theory following Bruno Latour’s contribution e.g. in the 1990’s paper Drawing Things Together.

Although there were strong moments in STS that focused on inscription devices, such as Karin Knorr-Cetina’s 1995 Laboratory Studies and Bruno Latour’s and Steve Woolgar’s 1986 Laboratory Life, it is remarkable that at present the semiotic side is underdeveloped in the ‘material-semiotic’ (Asdal 2015).

In my paper I will commemorate the contributions to the material-semiotic made by Knorr-Cetina, Latour, Barad and Haraway and try to productively re-stage an emphasis on the semiotic side. The aim of such a re-stagement would be to shape the narratives of (feminist) STS’s trajectories towards a re-enactment of a politicized semiotics, like Donna Haraway suggests throughout her work (e.g. 1984 in Primatology is Politics by Other Means).

Author

• Anastassija Kostan, University of Mainz