Objectivity and its discontents

Abstract

In my 2008 book, The Collectors of Lost Souls, I told the story of the medical investigation of kuru, a fatal brain disease afflicting the Fore people of New Guinea during the middle of the 20th century. The story involved sorcery accusations, cannibalism, first contact, colonial incursions, scientific rivalry, alleged sexual molestation, and two Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine. There can be little doubt that kuru, because of its peculiarities, has proven exceptionally ‘good to think with’—in infectious diseases research, medical anthropology and the history of science. Here, I attempt a cultural history of valuation in kuru research, hoping thus to make a tentative contribution to a theory of value in modern science. It is important to distinguish this project from functionalist and normative analyses predicated on conceptions of social structure and solidarity. Instead, I want to look at the inter-subjective mobilization and modulation of desire in scientific work, thus focusing on multiple agency, more than structure, in the making or perception of value. Like John Dewey, and his teacher Georg Simmel, I am most interested in how experiences of self-formation generate or reveal value commitments; that is, I am interested in how interaction, or opening ourselves to others, can form and make visible our values and valuables. In this spirit, I want to attend to the commitments to subjects and objects that emerge through cultural contact and exchange in scientific research.