Response: Laboratory Cultures

The readings for this week focus on the physical space of the laboratory and the authors are concerned with the ways in which science transforms societal realities, expert political power and influence the ways we perceive ourselves and situate ourselves in the world.

Bruno Latour argues that the laboratory is destabilizing, reconstructing reality by manipulating space and the scales of these spaces. I understand the general argument that Latour is making in this piece, about how scientific knowledge is powerful in the ways that it shapes our values and the ways we pursue our interests, but I am confused by his specific distinctions of space and how science destabilizes these boundaries. Karin Knorr-Cetina makes a similar argument, stating the scientific work done in laboratories have the power to alter our realities, however, they do so by replicating reality. She states, "Laboratories recast objects of investigation by inserting them into new temporal and territorial regimes...they create new configurations of objects that they match with an appropriately altered social order." Modern science, in its methodology and ability to alter time and space, constructs new power dynamics. This kind of knowledge is power in the sense that it creates new standards of authority which are exclusive to those people who are able to 'see the invisible microbes'. Additionally, this discussion reminds me of Foucault's writings on the system of discipline built into our modern institutions, which feeds off of procedural scientific studies. Labs create knowledge and in turn they create power - the future use and consequence of which is not necessarily determined.

Duana Fullwiley and the collaborative team, Amber Benezra, Joseph DeStefano and Jeffrey Gordon, focus on the way that microbiology has altered the way that we understand ourselves as human and in what way we are able to relate to the world in which we live. Part of me is very skeptical of the idea that microbes and DNA can determine more about me as a person that my own lived experiences and relationships. I'm interested in further discussing these specific examples and they ways that they relate to the discussion of power from the first two articles.