Traces of the Future
An Archaeology of Medical Science in Africa
Edited by Paul Wenzel Geissler, Guillaume Lachenal, John Manton, Noémi Tousignant
Publication date:
05 September 2016Publisher
Intellect BooksDimensions:
229x178mm7x9"
ISBN-13: 9781783207251
This book presents a close look at the vestiges of twentieth-century medical work at five key sites in Africa: Senegal, Nigeria, Cameroon, Kenya and Tanzania. The authors aim to understand the afterlife of scientific institutions and practices and the 'aftertime' of scientific modernity and its attendant visions of progress and transformation. Straightforward scholarly work is juxtaposed here with altogether more experimental approaches to fieldwork and analysis, including interview fragments; brief, reflective essays; and a rich photographic archive. The result is an unprecedented view of the lingering traces of medical science from Africa's past.
'This elegant, field-defining collection of sparkling originality excels as it curates, joining bits about five modern scientific sites in Africa with playful lines. The entire package suggests vital new affective methods for our times. These unruly junctions will productively challenge STS humanists, ethnographic historians, and students of global health practices. In our times of often ungainly, overtheorized immoderations, their innovative traces and tracing enable thinking deeply about relatively affluent African pasts. In these erstwhile spaces of scientific practice and development dreams, much remains not grim, rather bursting still with whims and guile.'