Race, Time and Folded Objects

The HeLa Error

Bibliographic Data

ID2352557
AuthorsAmade M’charek (0000-0001-5242-2406, University of Amsterdam, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume31
Issue6
Pages29-56
Publication date2014-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTheory Culture & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0263-2764 • E-ISSN: 1460-3616
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0263276413501704
OpenAlexW2161723606
LanguageEN
Citations received73
References cited55

Given their commitment to practices, science studies have bestowed considerable attention upon objects. We have the boundary object, the standardized package, the network object, the immutable mobile, the fluid object, even a fire object has entered the scene. However, these objects do not provide us with a way of understanding their historicity. They are timeless, motionless pictures rather than things that change over time, and while enacting 'historical moments' they do not make visible the histories they contain within them. What kind of object could embody history and make that history visible? Inspired by Michel Serres, I suggest the folded object is a way to attend to the temporality and spatiality of objects. In this article I explore this new object by unravelling the history of a DNA reference sequence. I show how, ever since it was produced in the early 1980s, attempts have been made to filter race out of the sequence. That effort has failed due to what one could call 'political noise'. Making and remaking the sequence have left traces that cannot be erased

Boundary object · Epistemology · Historicity (philosophy · Object (grammar · Politics · Race (biology · Sequence (biology · Sociology · Temporality · Computer Science · Gender Studies · History · History of Science and Medicine · Law · Philosophy · Race, Genetics, and Society · Artificial Intelligence