Desourcing Knowledge: Strategies of Unmaking in Science and Technology

In recent years, a variety of methods and approaches have been developed in the history of science, STS, and media studies to analyze and explain how the sciences, technologies, and knowledge in general have been “made,” “produced,” and “performed” and how they have developed a “life of their own.” As insightful as these deconstructionist historical approaches have been and continue to be, they tend to confirm (or even amplify) scientific and technological regimes that, from today's global perspective, are unjust or intolerable. In response to the pressing problems caused by unsustainable research technologies, the scientific monopolies of the Global North and the restrictions they place on access to knowledge, and knowledge systems that remain exploitative despite having moved beyond colonial frameworks of power, a number of new studies have begun to address not only the emergence of these knowledge and technology systems but, more importantly, whether and how we can overcome them. Accordingly, scholars and scientists are developing strategies that might be summarized under the rubric of “de-sourcing knowledge.” Using terms such as “de-theorizing,” “de-colonizing,” and “unlearning,” this work proposes that we disengage from traditions of thought, world views, narratives, and methods which reify scientific and humanistic enterprises as exploitative undertakings. By “undoing” institutions such as laboratories, archives, and libraries, such strategies aim to make room for new, still undetermined forms and means of knowledge creation. In a similar vein, concepts of “exnovating” propose to decommission unsustainable media and technological infrastructures in order to make way for carbon-neutral and low-resource systems of communication and research. The course will provide an overview and review of some of these strategies as they are being attempted today. In addition, we will engage with historical, partially forgotten approaches to suspending and re-contouring knowledge regimes.

The course is part of the curriculum of the International Max Planck Research School “Resources and its Knowledge” and is additionally aimed at advanced MA students in history of science, STS, and media studies. It will be taught in English, and the reading load will be demanding.