Science’s Stories and Other Possible Grammars

For ages, science has told divisive stories about the world, especially along racial lines: who is more human; who is fit to rule; who matters. And yet, science continues to enchant us, sustaining wonder within its mission to help us grasp and put into words the unknown. This review essay follows how three recent monographs that straddle STS and Black studies seize upon this seeming contradiction. I argue that they do so by cataloguing the elements of science’s stories: genres, beginnings, plotlines, grammars, characters, and endings. In so doing, these texts not only diagnose scientific racism, but they offer a horizon for telling different scientific stories. They gesture toward a science that reveals new arrangements of the physical world already in front of us. With their focus on relationality, insistent that the story of science entails humanity’s entwined and plural stories, these texts offer lucid and captivating templates for pursuing a decolonial study of science freed from differentiation, classification, opposition, and the hierarchies they architect.