Science in the performance stratum: hunting for Higgs and nature as performance

Abstract

Recent traditions such as posthumanism and new materialism propose that non-humans and matter are active participants in processes of signification, so that humans do not give meaning to matter, but matter and meaning co-constitute each other. Notably, Karen Barad's plea for ‘the study of practices of knowing in being’ implies that performativity – with its conforming as well as its norm-shifting effects – is situated at the very heart of both scientific work itself and engagements with it. Understanding how matter and meaning are entangled requires a shift in focus from the relationship between them as it has come about towards the ‘processual relating’ within which this relationship comes about. This means to study the identities and subjectivities of entities in the laboratory as they are ‘in the making’. Following performance studies scholar Jon McKenzie, we argue that this ‘processual relating’ takes place under the pressure to perform, or else. Read in tandem with Barad, McKenzie's approach to performance in terms of a challenge (of being challenged to ‘perform, or else’) raises the question of whether in scientific experiments not only scientists and technology are put under pressure, but also nature itself is required to ‘perform, or else’. Using the hunt for the Higgs particle at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN, Geneva) as our case study, we will show the productivity of this perspective as it was first developed within the humanities not only for understanding human bodies and by extension of what it means to be human, but also for our understanding of knowledge production in the sciences. Furthermore, we suggest that such understanding may provide a useful perspective on the transformations in research and knowledge production currently brought about by the rise of the Digital Humanities.

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