{"title":"Germ Growers in the Colonial Laboratory","authors":"D. Crouch","doi":"10.1080/09505431.2021.1970128","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":47064,"journal":{"name":"Science As Culture","volume":"30 1","pages":"535 - 555"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5000,"publicationDate":"2021-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Science As Culture","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.1970128","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CULTURAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
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.
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.