Bland provrör och spektrometrar

Materiens agens och materiell dysfunktionalitet

Abstract

This study considers academic chemistry environments and shows how both daily consumables and precious research instruments interact with students and teachers. In such an environment – a laboratory, a classroom, a staff room – language, discourse, culture, and matter are entangled, without the possibility to clearly distinguish them as separate entities. It is this entanglement the present article aims to illustrate. By using Barad’s feminist theory of agential realism and the concept of ‘culture’ on empirical data constructed during field work where chemistry professors where shadowed, I investigate and discuss how the intertwinement of matter and discourse occurs. By using an example from the empirical data, the agency of matter is shown as part of the emergence of materialdiscursive practices and it is also shown how such an agency sometimes has effects that extend far beyond the intended purpose and scope, sometimes creating limits for what is possible. In both cases, there are consequences for participants who are either co-creators of the practice or who suddenly find themselves in an already existing one. In the article, I introduce the concept of material dysfunctionality and show that the absence of material awareness poses a risk, primarily for students and other subordinated participants, of finding themselves in non-optimal or even impossible situations. Participants who, due to the material dysfunctionality of an educational or work environment, end up in a performance-unfavorable position, can be identified as incompetent and not recognized as a potential member of the discipline and the culture. Such negative adhesion is more likely if the participant’s perceived shortcomings are reinforced by the fact that she is a woman in a male-dominated environment. Other categories of differences may have similar consequences if perceived as challenging in the prevailing culture.