[Sci-tech-public] Colloquium - November 3rd with Hélène Mialet

[Bianca Singletary]

 “The Subway Series”

A Joint Colloquium Between Harvard History of Science and MIT Program in
Science, Technology, and Society

 

What is the Thinker doing? The Ethnographic Study of a Statue

Hélène Mialet, University of California, Berkeley

Abstract:

 

I begin by drawing your attention to a special, but at first sight merely
curious feature of the notion of doing something, or rather of trying to do
something. In the end I hope to satisfy you that this feature is more than
merely curious; it is of radical importance for our central question,
namely, what is le Penseur doing? 

 

——Gilbert Ryle

 What was for the philosopher a pure thought experiment has been fleshed out
for the ethnographer into an improbable scene: the meeting of Stephen
Hawking, the man with Stephen Hawking the statue. The scene takes place in
Hawking’s office. A statue representing Hawking (along with his wheelchair
and computer) has been presented for approval before a definitive version is
made. Hawking, his assistants, his colleagues, the sculptor and the
ethnographer are present. The paper describes the interaction between these
different actors. In taking into account the materiality of the statue, its
circulation, its presence and what it allows, I will follow the
mise-en-scène, the articulation and shaping of an identity—the Thinker (le
Penseur). Where is Hawking? Where the original, where is is the replica? Who
is who? Who is what? And what is Hawking—the Thinker, the man/the
statue—doing? These are some of the questions I will address through a thick
description, to use Geertz term, which, as we will recall, was inspired by
Ryle’s “What is le Penseur doing?” The social sciences have for a long time
made subjects into silent agents—statues—that are put into action and into
words by others, society, culture, habitus
 Or, on the contrary, they have
made them all-powerful by overlooking the non-humans to which they are
attached. Rethinking the role of a statue will enable us to rethink the role
of the subject, and not any random subject, but one that embodies the
mythical figure of the isolated genius capable of attaining the ultimate
laws of the universe on the sole basis of his reasoning—the Knowing Subject,
the Cartesian Subject, the Thinker.

 

 

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

4pm

Located at Harvard Science Center 469

 

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