Scientific progress in question: The becoming and being of HeLa cells

Abstract

This paper draws on the context of the becoming and being of HeLa cells to problematize some of the domain assumptions of scientific rationality. Taken from the cervix of cancer patient Henrietta Lacks, in the bio-medical world HeLa cells are as a famous as lab rats and petri dishes. Drawing upon a Foucauldian perspective the paper disturbs the assumed clarity of dominant scientific narratives concerning HeLa cells and instead surfaces abstract, personalised and commercial discourses which help us better understand conditions of possibilities shaping accounts of scientific progress. In so doing, the paper elucidates the tendency of scientific rationality to atomise by dislocating the subject and object of research, its purposeful disconnection of knowledge from its social and historical context, and as a consequence, the masquerading of science as something that is inherently value neutral. This logic has been uncritically adopted as the key modus operandi for management research, offering a blanket epist...