ABSTRACT
Our contemporary experience resembles that of Rousseau; freedom, as a concept is increasingly moving away from us and its implication is that it needs to be able to withstand our fascination with the inner worlds of science and technology. Accordingly the opening of this short book takes its inspiration from Rousseau in a methodological sense: (our) tragedy is tied to (our) freedom, they are logically tied to one another and thereby operate as the means whereby to reconsider and engage with the intricacies of how the relation of knowledge and power has been understood. The introduction points to and outlines this observation as an approach of political, social and critical theory as well as to Science and Technology Studies (STS). Each of these is tied up to how we find ourselves, once again, running towards our chains (in our analysis/as theory, as STS) and this will remain the case unless we recognize that a meaningful concept of freedom is at stake in our empirical commitments (in our methods).
