Feminist Science Studies, Objectivity, and the Politics oF Vision

Abstract

Feminist science studies concerns “nature” in all its trope-laden complexity. It’s about how we interpret nature, construct it, interact with it. It’s about who gets to name it, who gets to own it, and who holds legitimate control over its representation. In most fields—but particularly in the study of nuclear landscapes—all of these interactions over “nature” are highly contentious. Nature here is not a thing-in-itself, a gene, for instance, or an ecosystem, from which we can separate ourselves, our cultures, or our politics. “Nature’s” move from organism to ecosystem is accompanied by economistic analogies and metaphors, in which bioeconomic ecology mirrors post-World War II capitalist political-economy. While well known among science studies scholars, this particular representational history about “nature” bears repeating. The nuclear landscape is the material manifestation of the merging of Cold War politics with certain scientific beliefs and practices common to the second half of the twentieth century.