Dissertation Research: The Machine 'qui permet a voir a l'interieur': Inventing Visual Culture in Colonial and Postcolonial Senegal

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

This STS Dissertation Improvement Grant is a study of a medical imaging technology in the colonial context. It historically traces notions of visual culture as they were developed not only by colonial administrators but also by users of radiographic technology. The idea of visual culture itself was developed and used to legitimize and stabilize relationships in colonialism's socio-technical work. The study shows what the political stakes of this epistemological debate were by outlining the role of visual culture in establishing a radiographic network in l'Afrique Occidentale Francaise (AOF). It argues that radiographic technology, including its constituent discourse of "representational tendencies," was used to negotiate the professional legitimacy of medical image interpreters and solidify their role as political actors in colonial and postcolonial West Africa. This study challenges the use of visual culture in Science and Technology Studies (S&TS) to explain consensus and reexamines the role of technology in colonialism. NSF funds support archival and enthnographic work in Senegal, the Ivory Coast and Mali.