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fawei's picture

Yes, I can see that

Yes, I can see that Subramaniam and Barad are in the 'blur boundaries' camp with a lot of the other writers we have looked at. There seem to be a lot of advantages to mixed field studies that are posssible now that some have become quite advanced. General fields like science and feminism have maybe become less well defined as they grow broader, but that's something important for initiating interdisciplinary activity.

I'm not sure I can look at feminist science studies as being entirely beneficial though. What you said about new research for political topics makes me suspicious... I think it was Subramaniam who said science is inherently political to begin with. Intentionally adding even more humanties aspects could wind up creating even more broadly beneficial uses for scientific discoveries, or the critique from so many sources could slow things/bring up undesirable results. If feminist science studies becomes more widely recognized, it's likely that opposing studies will follow... not necessarily bad for dialogue but it's also not just that there are so many things opposing feminism, but there are also different kinds of feminism. For example, Haraway in the essay we read earlier on pits socialist feminism against radical feminism.

It's true that if all the 'science studies' wind up becoming highly developed, uses for discoveries or what is being researched can be assessed better. It's also probably true that absolute 'truths' will never be established again, and everything will exist as a variety of possibly conflicting viewpoints all gathered in one large field of study with too many aspects to be an expert in all of. It's like escaping one harmful system and entering another. This is a pretty negative assumption though...

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