ABSTRACT
Although I have seen it inscribed on some of the older buildings at some of the better universities, replete with its capital “S,” the grand, singular noun Science has lost some of its power to summon. Without the capital inscription, the sciences join the ever-more-multiple postmodern pluralities of once singular notions such as globalisms, genders, and feminisms. Yet those of us in academic disciplines clustered in the Humanities continue to feel the economic and institutional sting of Science, as do many in the mediatized realm of documentary reportage. While the sciences and their technologies, proliferating wildly, seem to assimilate more and more of our social, economic, ecological, and aesthetic reserves, they have also increasingly withdrawn into their own specialized styles of articulation, consorting exclusively with their chosen forms of so-called facts and figures and actively rejecting any “humanistic” tracking of their ideas as “uninformed.” Thus, Science both impounds the social in effect and affect and retreats from its critical articulation. This book tracks performances inspired by the reclusive, transcendent status that Science seems to hold in the cultural imaginary, from performative rites of its technologies to fearful expulsions of its machines and ideologies.
