MAKING DEATH MATTER A FEMINIST TECHNOSCIENCE STUDY OF ALZHEIMER’S SCIENCES IN THE LABORATORY Tara Mehrabi Linköping Studies in Arts and Science No. 700 Linköping University, Department of Thematic Studies – Gender Studies Linköping 2016 Linköping Studies in Arts and Science No. 700 At the Faculty of Arts and Science at Linköping University, research and doctoral studies are carried out within broad problem areas. Research is organised in interdisciplinary research environments and doctoral studies mainly in graduate schools. Jointly, they publish the series Linköping Studies in Arts and Science. This thesis comes from Tema Genus, the Department of Thematic Studies – Gender Studies. Distributed by: TEMA – Department of Thematic Studies Linköping University 581 83, Linköping Sweden Tara Mehrabi Making Death Matter A feminist technoscience study of Alzheimer’s sciences in the laboratory Edition 1:1 ISBN 978-91-7685-655-0 ISSN 0282-9800 c Tara Mehrabi TEMA – Department of Thematic Studies, 2016 This book was typeset by Erik Schlyter using LATEX. The image on the cover is the artwork of Juan Bosco – www.juan-bosco.com. Printed by: LiU-Tryck, Linköping, 2016 Contents List of Figures vii Acknowledgements ix 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Alzheimer’s disease and feminist studies . 4 1.2 Aim of the study . 7 1.3 Alzheimer’s disease and life science: A science in the making . 8 1.4 Why laboratory study? . 12 1.5 Chapter summaries . 16 2 Mapping the Fields, Theories and Conceptual Building Blocks 19 2.1 Mapping the fields . 19 Gender studies . 19 Feminist science studies (FSS) . 27 Science, technology and society (STS) . 29 Human-animal studies (HAS) . 31 On posthumanities . 33 iii 2.2 New materialism as the theoretical approach . 34 Agential realism . 35 Posthumanist performativity . 38 2.3 Mapping the theoretical concepts . 41 Theorizing the molecularization of AD, performing death 41 On theorizing killability . 50 On theorizing waste and the problem of categorization . 54 2.4 Conclusion . 60 3 Methodology 63 3.1 Making of the field . 66 Meeting my gatekeeper . 67 Participant observation as a method . 68 3.2 Feminist laboratory ethnography: Embodied subjectivity as the only way to be objective . 71 Situated knowledge and objectivity . 74 3.3 Becoming a participant observer: On embodiment and research . 76 Entering the lab . 77 Learning the language: On becoming liminal . 78 On becoming fly-sensitive . 80 3.4 Disgust and ethics . 82 3.5 Other laboratories . 86 3.6 Interviews . 88 3.7 Writing and thick description . 89 3.8 Conclusion . 92 iv 4 Molecularizing Alzheimer’s Disease, Performing Death 95 4.1 Alzheimer’s disease molecularized: On partial enactments and the laboratory . 100 4.2 Visualizing the molecular component: Animating life through death . 106 4.3 Making Alzheimer’s disease: animating theories about neural death . 112 4.4 Making Alzheimer’s disease: On imaging and intra-animacy . 122 4.5 Conclusion . 129 5 Spectrum of Killability 135 5.1 Messengers of death: From culture to medicine . 138 5.2 Flies and otherworldly relations . 145 5.3 On killability . 149 5.4 Fly and laboratory . 154 5.5 Biology and material-discursive cuts: On becoming a test object . 162 Brain: On the (im)possibility of becoming a test object . 162 Mouse model . 166 Fly model . 170 Cell model . 174 5.6 Spectrum of killability: Order and fluidity . 177 5.7 Conclusion . 186 6 Waste liveliness in the lab 191 6.1 Waste, ambiguity and in/determinacy . 193 6.2 Waste as a technoscientific legacy . 200 v 6.3 Sorting waste out . 202 6.4 On danger and hazardousness . 206 6.5 On materiality and hazardousness . 209 6.6 Flies as waste: On relationality, in/determinacy and the agentiality of waste in the lab . 212 Knowing waste: Becoming biological waste as matters of practice . 214 Flies as ambiguous: The in/determinacy of waste in the labs . 216 6.7 Waste in/determinacy, life and death and becoming waste in relation . 219 6.8 Conclusion . 222 Prelude 227 7 Conclusion 231 7.1 Making death matter: On animating death . 232 7.2 Making death matter: On killabililty . 233 7.3 Making death matter: On handing biological waste . 234 7.4 Making death matter . 235 7.5 Theoretical Contributions . 236 On imaging practices and death itself . 236 On killability, response-ability and ethics . 237 On practice and the politics of categorization . 238 7.6 Pondering care: Suggestions for further research . 239 References 245 vi List of Figures 4.1 Images of A-beta peptide taken by Karin and Helen in the lab 109 4.2 One of the four tables in the lab with the shelves and fly trays on them. 119 5.1 Poster for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health warn- ing of potential health risks from exposure to flies. Created by Robert Muchley, between 1941 and 1943. 143 vii Acknowledgements Writing this thesis would have not been possible if it was not for the love, support and generous inputs of a number of incredible people that I had the privilege of calling colleagues, friends and family and I would like to thank them here for making the difficult task of writing a PhD thesis also a fun experience for me. First and formost I wish to thank my supervisors Cecilia Åsberg and Ericka Johnson. Thank you Cissi for your generous and thought- provoking comments and input over the years. Thank you for new materialism and posthumanism which despite of my initial resistance turned out to be just the magic recipe I needed to tackle my research questions. Thank you for helping me to see the juicy stuff in my texts which I would never have realized if it was not for you. Thank you for long talks, passionate discussions and exchanging fabulous ideas that established the foundations of my work but also changed me and pushed me to care for the flies. Thanks for your words of confidence and encouragement when I needed them the most. Ericka, I would like to express my warmest gratitude to you for your insightful comments and your very appreciated yet unique liking of the “spectrum of killability”. Thank you for your patience, constant support and for your spot-on and constructive critiques that formed my text into readable chapters over the years. I remember you joking about being too structured many times and I want you to know that structure was what I gravely needed and I like to thank you for it. But for most of all, thank you for enabling me to write when writing seemed to be impossible. Thank you for our weekly ix meetings and chit-chats, for laughing with me, celebrating with me, and listening to me when I needed a compassionate listener. I would also like to thank my informants in the lab, who have immensely contributed to the making of this thesis. Without their generosity and sharing spirit I would never have gained access to the lab and to the interesting world of Alzheimer’s sciences. And I definitely would have never met the mighty fruit fly. Thank you Karin, Anna, Helen, Olof, Johan, Ellen and all the other wonderful people whom I have the privilege to meet, to chat with and to learn from during my one year of field work. My deepest gratitude also goes to Oliver Fugler for the amazing work they have put into copy editing my text. I would also like to thank Juan Bosco for the wonderful artwork which is the drawing of the fruit fly on the cover of this thesis, and Erik Schlyter for the incredible type-setting he has done, turning my text into a book. Last but not least, I appreciate Alma Persson’s translation of the book abstract into Swedish. During the past five years I had the privilege of sharing the extraordinary experience of being a PhD student with my wonderful and extremely talented peers, who, not only thought about and discussed fruit flies, Alzheimer’s disease, and death with me but also affectively got disgusted by these tiny laboratory creatures yet appreciated them with me. Thank you Desireé Ljungcrantz, Helga Sadowski, Justin Makii, Line Henriksen, Lisa Lindén, Magdalena Górska, Marianna Szczygielska, Marie-Louise Holm, Marietta Radom- ska, Morten Bülow, Verena Namberger, and Wibke Straube for our many talks and for your friendships. Thank you Marie-Louise for our weekly meetings during the last year and for reading my drafts and discussing them with me and mostly for being there for me every step of the way. Thank you Marietta not only for your generous comments and our discussions but also for your kind support whenever I needed it. Thank you, Edyta Just, Olga Cielem˛ecka, Pat Treusch and Redi Koobak, for reading my text-in-the-making and generously commenting on it. Thank you, Josef Barla and Marianna Szczygielska, for discussing the exciting topics of waste and Harawayian politics with me. Thank you, Magdalena Górska and Wibke Straube, for your x friendship and for helping me to find my burning questions. Last but not least, thank you, Magda, Wibke, Marjo and Aiste, for sharing the collective experience with me. I will never forget the dinners, talks and laughter in our feminist collective. Tema Genus is an enchanted place. Beware, those who have never been there for it is a place that will mark you forever. It is a place of sheer feminist spirit, a collective and a community saturated with thought-provoking ideas. It is generative, creative, loving and supportive yet demanding, for you are always renewing yourself. It changes you and you will love it. I had the oppor- tunity and the pleasure to start my path of becoming a scholar in this magical place and I would like to thank every one of my colleagues without whom I may have never had such a wonderful experience of being in academia.