Moored Metamorphoses: A Retrospective Essay on Feminist Science Studies

Abstract

“Moored Metamorphoses” presents a retrospective on the development of feminist science studies as well as reflections on the current configurations and future possibilities of the field. I argue that the field began primarily with women scientists who made a strong critique of the cultural and professional practices of science and who developed a foundational body of work, the feminist critiques of science. These critiques argued for an understanding of science as a socially, culturally, and politically embedded set of practices.The feminist critiques of science, which later came to ground the field of feminist science studies, took on science's claims of value neutrality and argued that biological determinism has always supported the status quo and those individuals in power. Exploring the science of difference (sex, race, class, sexuality, nation, etc.) and its political consequences, this early work demonstrated the social embedded nature of science. In “Moored Metmorphoses” I note some of the critical contributions of feminist science studies, which include analyses of scientific objectivity and value neutrality, reproduction and the labor of women, gendered images and language, the binaries of nature and culture, the role of capitalism, and, finally, knowledge and its production. I argue that in the past three decades the field has exploded in exciting and multiple directions yet remains moored to the early formulations of the feminist critiques of science. I then suggest some of the ways unmooring the field will open up new possibilities for a future of feminist science studies, possibilities that are urgent for both feminism and science in our contemporary globalized and transnational world.