Theorizing the Global Hispanophone as a dynamic of (dis)entanglement: contributions from a history of science perspective

ABSTRACT

In this article, I propose an understanding of the Global Hispanophone as a dynamic of (dis)entanglement, taking as points of departure a global history of science perspective, as well as feminist and decolonial science and technology studies. Discussing conceptual thinking on issues such as the circulation and noncirculation of knowledge and objects in colonial contexts, I develop a number of suggestions with regard to how scholars might study the entanglement (relationality) of different entities in cultural contact zones. I further explore how the hybridity resulting from such entanglement is often rendered invisible by processes of what I call “disentanglement” (denial of relationality). I also suggest how Global Hispanophone studies might trace the ways in which entanglement is prevented from occurring in the first place. While this article focuses on the (dis)entanglement of scientific knowledge, its premise is that this dynamic can also be explored in regard to other forms of knowledge beyond the field of science.

KEYWORDS:

• Equatorial Guinea
• entanglement
• circulation
• science and technology studies
• history of science

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Cécile Stephanie Stehrenberger received her PhD from the University of Zurich for her dissertation on Spanish gender and colonial politics during the Franco dictatorship, focusing on the Coros y Danzas de la Sección Femenina and their activities in Equatorial Guinea. She also wrote several articles on the production of colonial science, medicine and literature in Equatorial Guinea. After holding research and teaching positions at the University of Zurich and the Technical University of Braunschweig, she is now a Junior Fellow at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt, where she is working on a research project on the history of social science disaster research during the Cold War. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1 I use the term actant following Bruno Latour (1987), to denominate nonhuman entities who, within an actor network, act upon other human or nonhuman entities in a way that modifies them.

2 For overviews of the development of the field of global history of science, see McCook (2013), Fan (2012) and Sivasundaram (2010).

3 It is important to take into consideration how the division of labor was gendered in different ways and in different local settings. Scholars of the Global Hispanophone might in this regard find the work of Steven Harris (2005) inspiring, in terms of its analysis of the organization of the scientific work of collecting, testing and describing local plants for the publications of Spanish Jesuit priests. This work was done by indigenous male servants of the Spanish Jesuit priests as an extension of the “women’s work” the servants did in the Spanish mission, such as cleaning and cooking (see also Harding 2016).

4 As Sampedro Vizcaya (forthcoming) remarks, “the archives have many layers”, and in some cases, like that of the Urquiola sisters and Manuel Iradier, engagement with oral history sources can prove indispensable for unearthing some of the histories of local contributions to knowledge production.

5 I use the term hybrid as it has been theorized and applied by Latour (2012) and Haraway (1997).

6 On “bovine agency”, see Gaard (2013). On animals and imperialism, more generally, see Skabelund (2013) and Bankoff (2004).

7 On ways of thinking virus-human relations, see Greenhough (2013).

8 For theorization of the agency of nonhumans and of vibrant matter, see Bennett (2009) and Watts (2013).

9 For an example of the integration of the nonhuman actor in a materiality-focused analysis in the context of other Spanish colonialisms, see Corcoran-Tadd and Pezzarossi (2018).

10 For an introduction to the work of Felipe Osá, see Valenciano-Mañé and Picornell Gelabert (2009).

11 For an introduction to the work of Pocho Guimaraes, see Sampedro Vizcaya (2018a).

12 On the composed and living status of soil, see Lyons (2016).

13 The history of the IDEA and its activities is still extremely understudied and needs comprehensive analysis. For some initial work, see Stehrenberger (2011, 2013, 2014), Darias de las Heras (2002); Díez Torre (2002) and Calvo Calvo (1997).

14 A case in point would be the Italian doctor and biologist Gustavo Pittaluga (Florence, 1876–Havana, 1956), who acquired Spanish nationality in 1904 and conducted a major scientific expedition to the Spanish territories of the Gulf of Guinea on behalf of the Spanish colonial administration in 1909. He made pivotal contributions to the field of parasitology in the following two decades.

15 Such processes ought to be historicized and contextualized against the backdrop of a specifically liberal and neoliberal “cultural obsession with independence”, and a deeply ableist aversion to dependency that denies the fact that “the ability of most independent persons to remain as such depends on care workers” (Giles 2013, 11; emphasis in original), and thereby greatly devalues the work that made “all other work possible” (Giles 2013, 4). The historical denial of the importance of care and domestic work in the production of scientific knowledge finds its continuation in how little attention it has received so far in the historiography of science and in science and technology studies. Exceptions include Opitz, Bergwik, and Van Tiggelen (2016), and Martin, Myers, and Viseu (2015).

16 As Helge Wendt writes,

Secrecy in the transmission of knowledge was part of the formation process of knowledge in the Iberian empires. Consequently, much of the knowledge gained in the Americas, Africa, India and other parts of South Asia were [sic] never published and remained under lock and key in libraries, archives and private personal collections, ecclesiastical institutions or governmental establishments. (2016, 24)

17 For an in-depth analysis of the differences between Haraway’s and Anzaldúa’s theorization of the concept, see Vargas-Monroy 2012.