From Omega to Mr. Adam: The Importance of Literature for Feminist Science Studies

Abstract

The simultaneous publication in 1992 of two texts dealing with a global decline in sperm potency, P. D. James’s The Children of Men and Elisabeth Carlsen’s “Evidence for Decreasing Quality of Semen during the Past 50 Years,” inaugurates the exploration of another kind of sterility: the failure of feminist literary criticism and feminist science studies to converge as a fertile zone of inquiry and analysis. This article considers the modern discipline of literary studies, as well as feminist literary criticism and feminist science studies, and suggests how Latour’s seven rules of method might be adapted to produce cross-fertilization between these fields...