The Haraway Hall of American Science Interpreters
Mock-up by Peter Taylor, draft 22 February 2017
Comments welcome via this form especially in relation to leading visitors to the Hall (or its virtual equivalent) to subject depictions of science to interpretation with respect to influences from the social context.
(Credits: Peter Kogler for room design; PTGui software)
Script 1: When Donna Haraway asks what it costs to depict nature in a certain way in a certain place at a certain time for certain people (1), one way to interpret her question is to consider the resources that get drawn upon by the person or group doing the depiction. It takes an effort—interactions with other people, including one's sponsors, work collaborators, and audience, skills in using equipment, composing text or graphics, and so on. The resources are diverse—as indicated by (1)—and involve many different social worlds (2).
Another way of stating this is that there are many different practical considerations that the person or group faces in making their depiction—using that term to refer literally to a picture or museum display or more broadly to an account given in some published text. In turn, it is a very practical matter—never simply a matter of having the right interpretation or scientific view—to modify someone else's depictions. Also in turn, we can always ask of someone who has been involved in the practice of making a depiction what can they do with that depiction? Or, in other words, what kind of resource is their depiction for their ongoing making of further depictions and other activities in the world?
We can ask the same questions of Haraway in 1987 interpreting depictions of primates in National Geographic magazine and in the Akeley Hall of African mammals at the American Museum of Natural History (1). When Haraway emphasizes visual and text based interpretations—looking and reading—we can place this emphasis in tension with her ability to act as if primate science were shaped by visual and textual metaphors (9).
We can also ask the same questions about ourselves, in 2017, taking in a museum display designed to help us interpret Haraway in her context.
These questions are not straightforward to address, especially in the not unlimited time we can spend in a museum visit. It is important, therefore, to find ways that museum-goers can build on each other's efforts to make sense of work and lives. How could that happen?
Traditionally, museums displays allow us to look, read, and, more recently, listen and sometimes touch. In light of the emphasis on practice above, The Haraway Hall of American Science Interpreters draws museum-goers into examining what can be done with new knowledge, including interpretations made in the past or made by the museum-goer in the present.
You enter the Hall by the escalators so that you are never looking at the hall from an outside position. You will have been given a set of cards that you must use before leaving the Hall. These cards require you to interact with other museum-goers at the sites for activities (traditionally called "exhibits" or "displays"). Although not shown in this mockup, there are stools to move around and sit on. And, to emphasize that the activities require time and interaction with others, flexible rods come out of the floor up to about waist height when a person sits on a stool to encourage, but not enforce, you to stay a while at the activity. In this mock-up the activities are exposed by clicking on or near the numbers (more detail to be added in due course).
Haraway in 1987 is positioned in the middle ground. Activities further back invite attention to strands of society and intellectual life that informed her interpretations. Activities closer to the foreground invite attention to what people, including you the museum-goer, do with her interpretations from that almost, to borrow her adjective, mythic time of the late 1980s.
One of the cards is a 3-item survey (7), which elicits influences prior to visiting as well, if relevant, any influences drawn from the Hall. When you leave you will be given the latest printout of the timeline (7a) to which their survey responses will be added as soon as possible.
Script 2: We can also ask the same questions about Peter Taylor, in 2017, as he assembled from his own work exhibits that are placeholders to be elaborated into activities for a museum display designed, ostensibly, to help us interpret Haraway in her context. What can he do with this multi-media depiction?
(Hint: He wonders if the mock-up is less about interpreting Haraway in her context than it is about drawing others into thinking with him based on his development—and blindspots—since 1987.)
Script 3: A November 2012 email exchange:
Peter: What, in your experience, helps people be more curious and follow out the threads into diverse entanglements of naturocultural politics?
Donna: love and rage! neediness for connection; a sense of humor; a lust to somehow stay with the trouble without despair; joy; just plain curiosity
Peter: Who, other than yourself, provide good examples of such curiosity?
Instead of pointing museum-goers to the examples Haraway mentioned in answer to the last emailed question (in any case the list was very short), we can try to help each other be more curious and follow out the threads (1) into "diverse entanglements of naturocultural politics" (6). The activity at 6 does that and opens up the possibility that we then discipline the material, draw cross-connections among the threads, and identify points at which to engage with the entanglements. You have been given a handheld device to make this simple technically. One of the cards requires you to take a break from the activity and explore the background to Haraway's depictions of interpretation of science in its social context (1 & 2). Another card asks for plus-delta feedback on the activity (one thing you appreciated; one thing that could be developed further) so as to help Peter develop this experiment in engaging with the many different practical considerations that the person or group faces in making a depiction of nature in a certain way in a certain place at a certain time for certain people. To be continued...
