Germ Growers in the Colonial Laboratory

IF 2.5 3区 哲学 Q1 CULTURAL STUDIES Science As Culture Pub Date : 2021-08-28 DOI:10.1080/09505431.2021.1970128
D. Crouch
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Abstract

ABSTRACT Written and set in the Australian colonies, Robert Potter’s The Germ Growers (1892) was amongst the earliest novels that engaged with the theme of extra-terrestrial invasion. It describes the discovery of aliens who breed ‘germs’ in a sophisticated laboratory hidden in the outback with the aim of conquering the human species. The novel’s introduction of these otherworldly interlopers into a setting already host to the political, social and scientific experiments of invaders, puts the colonial preoccupations with settlement and dispossession into sharp relief. Potter’s portrayal of relations between white settlers, aliens, exogenous and Indigenous others, accentuates how anxieties about invasion and contamination, insiders and outsiders, humans and nonhumans were accompanied by the application of scientific knowledge and technological expertise in the establishment and administration of social order. Highlighting the idea of colonies as sites for refining elaborate strategies of coercion and control, the novel provides a situated perspective upon the ways in which the affordances of the laboratory operated as central features of the imperial project and influenced its role in the development of biopolitical governance. In doing so, The Germ Growers brings attention to the archive of colonial fiction as a means of approaching the social and historical contexts that continue to undergird relations between science and culture.
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殖民实验室的细菌种植者
摘要罗伯特·波特的《细菌种植者》(1892)以澳大利亚殖民地为背景,是最早以外星入侵为主题的小说之一。它描述了外星人的发现,他们在内陆一个复杂的实验室里繁殖“细菌”,目的是征服人类。小说将这些超凡脱俗的闯入者引入了一个已经存在入侵者的政治、社会和科学实验的环境中,使殖民地对定居和剥夺的关注得到了极大的缓解。波特对白人定居者、外星人、外来者和土著人之间关系的刻画,突出了对入侵和污染、内部人和外部人、人类和非人类的焦虑是如何伴随着科学知识和技术专长在社会秩序的建立和管理中的应用而来的。这部小说强调了殖民地是完善精心设计的胁迫和控制策略的场所的想法,对实验室的可供性作为帝国项目的核心特征并影响其在生物政治治理发展中的作用的方式提供了一个情境视角。在这样做的过程中,《萌芽者》引起了人们对殖民小说档案的关注,将其作为一种手段来处理继续支撑科学与文化之间关系的社会和历史背景。
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来源期刊
Science As Culture
Science As Culture Multiple-
CiteScore
5.20
自引率
3.80%
发文量
28
期刊介绍: Our culture is a scientific one, defining what is natural and what is rational. Its values can be seen in what are sought out as facts and made as artefacts, what are designed as processes and products, and what are forged as weapons and filmed as wonders. In our daily experience, power is exercised through expertise, e.g. in science, technology and medicine. Science as Culture explores how all these shape the values which contend for influence over the wider society. Science mediates our cultural experience. It increasingly defines what it is to be a person, through genetics, medicine and information technology. Its values get embodied and naturalized in concepts, techniques, research priorities, gadgets and advertising. Many films, artworks and novels express popular concerns about these developments. In a society where icons of progress are drawn from science, technology and medicine, they are either celebrated or demonised. Often their progress is feared as ’unnatural’, while their critics are labelled ’irrational’. Public concerns are rebuffed by ostensibly value-neutral experts and positivist polemics. Yet the culture of science is open to study like any other culture. Cultural studies analyses the role of expertise throughout society. Many journals address the history, philosophy and social studies of science, its popularisation, and the public understanding of society.
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