Thesis ID: CBB001567519

Fables of Attention: Wonder in Feminist Theory and Scientific Practice (2013)

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Kenney, Martha (Author)


Haraway, Donna Jeanne
University of California, Santa Cruz
Barad, Karen
Reardon, Jenny


Publication Date: 2013
Edition Details: Advisor: Haraway, Donna; Committee Members: Barad, Karen, Reardon, Jenny.
Physical Details: 266 pp.
Language: English

Fables of attention are didactic stories about the consequences of how we attend to the world. They act on our sensoria; they teach us how to pay attention. In this dissertation, which is located in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), I use the genre of the fable to explore the relationship between attention and storytelling across different ecologies of practice. Specifically, I focus on wonder as a mode of attention in feminist theory and scientific practice. As I read and write fables of attention, wonder does not stay still; it transforms and accrues different meanings as the chapters unfold. Chapter 1 looks at wonder as epistemological dilation in the scientific articles of American ichthyologist E.W. Gudger (1866-1965), showing how it shaped his scientific objects and guided his passionate empiricism. Chapter 2 tells the story of how STS scholar Helen Verran shifts her mode of attention from wonder to disconcertment as she struggles to remain accountable for the colonial inheritances of her knowledge-making practices. In Chapter 3 I return to wonder, refiguring it for speculative feminist theory. Isabelle Stengers is my guide as I read speculative wonder into the work of iconoclastic evolutionary biologists Joan Roughgarden and Lynn Margulis. Here wonder helps me to consider how to tell more responsive and response-able stories about life. The Conclusion is about thinking with aesthetics, the arts of enchantment, and the promise of an illuminated wonder. Following in the tradition of feminist science studies, each of these chapters is guided by the cosmopolitical question: "What kinds of attention can foster more livable, breathable technoscientific worlds?"

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Description Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 74/11(E), May 2014. Proquest Document ID: 1430500310.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001567519/

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Authors & Contributors
Rutherford, Alexandra
Andréolle, Donna Spalding
Clough, Sharyn
Creager, Angela N. H.
Des Jardins, Julie
Gaard, Greta
Journals
History of Psychology
American Quarterly
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
Social Studies of Science
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Publishers
University of Chicago Press
West Virginia University
Feminist Press at the City University of New York
Rowman & Littlefield
University of Notre Dame
Carleton University (Canada)
Concepts
Feminism
Science and gender
Feminist analysis
Women in science
Women
Eugenics
People
Carson, Rachel Louise
Darwin, Charles Robert
Franklin, Rosalind
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
McClintock, Barbara
Goodall, Jane
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
20th century, late
20th century, early
18th century
Places
United States
Great Britain
Canada
England
Institutions
Cornell University
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