STS Circle Lecture

Clapperton Mavhunga (MIT, STS)
Why is the 'Social,' Not 'Technology,' the Central Subject in African(ist) History?

Sandwich lunches are provided. Please RSVP to sts@hks.harvard.edu by Thursday noon the week before.

Abstract: Writing in a recent article in Technology & Culture, Leo Marx traced the history of technology as a concept and words like “civilization” and “progress” that preceded the word. It was while “civilization” and “progress” were common parlance in western societies that Europe colonized Africa. These registers traveled with the colonizer and were then used to name emerging settler infrastructures, silhouetted unambiguously against those of “primitive” ‘natives’ presumed hostages to Nature until (European) civilization rescued them. The Africanist’s first task was to correct this narrative by reasserting the African as an agent. Any consideration of the role of ‘technology’ and ‘nature’ in history cannot ignore this usage and its impact on the production of knowledge about Africa. The presentation dwells on one such example: the twentieth century colonial discussions that the tsetse fly ‘held Africans hostage’ before European guns and drug prophylactics came to their rescue.

Biography: Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga is an assistant professor of science, technology, and society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is a historian of science, technology, and society in Africa. He received his Masters at Wits University (South Africa) and his PhD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has authored a number of book chapters and articles, including journals like Social Text, Journal of Southern African Studies, and Oryx. This presentation is the second chapter of his forthcoming book, The Mobile Workshop, an exploration of the war against tsetse fly in Zimbabwe throughout the 20th century, in which rifles, insecticides like DDT and Dieldrin, and human shields were used to stop the deadly mobilities of an insect.