Reflections on cultural studies of technoscience

Abstract

This article argues for cultural studies of technoscience through the trajectory of public technoscience. Two key questions are addressed: why has there been relatively little cultural studies research on technoscience so far and how might this be explained? What may cultural studies contribute to the recently emerging, heterogeneous field of cultural studies of technoscience? To substantiate a cultural studies approach to public technoscience a ‘differentiating perspective on popularization’ is elaborated through the revised appropriation of Habermas’s work on the ‘public sphere’ and through the concept of ‘mediations’. Then a conceptualization of technoscience as ‘public story-telling and more’ is proposed, which draws on through the concepts of story-telling, myth and discourse inspired by the works of Donna Haraway, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault respectively. Throughout the article the political significance of the symbolic dimensions of technoscience is highlighted.