Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
STS/HIST 5206
January 27, 2016
Assignment #1
Carolyn de la Pea. "The History of Technology, the Resistance of Archives, and the Whiteness
of Race." Technology and Culture 51, no. 4 (2010): 919-937.
The author argues that historians of technology should make race a central research
concern. Scholars working in and around the edges of the field (919) have taken up race as a
core theme, but, according to the author, calls within the field to attend to race remain largely
unanswered. She attributes this failure in part to the nature of historical research itself:
traditional archives and methods that scholars have used to study technology do not so easily
lend themselves to questions of race. White actors tell the majority of archival narratives, and
research materials usually lack details regarding race or remain silent about it altogether.
According to the author, however, historians of technology themselves lie at the root of the
problem, since they have largely failed to recognize whiteness as a racial category. According to
the author, once historians start to take whiteness seriously, they can begin to draw race out of
the archive (923). She offers two examples of her own research to support this argument: 1)
early 20th century reports regarding the X-rays potential to whiten skin and 2) the development
and consumption of artificial sweeteners. By interpreting her archival materials via the lens of
race and attending closely to rhetoric, she concludes that, in both cases, technology reinforced
white privilege.
The author envisions a research practice that makes race an issue in any historical study
of technology, unless proven otherwise. The recent increase in works regarding race and
technology, as she notes, suggest that a number of historians of technology agree on its
importance. Nevertheless, the authors argument weakens when she proposes that race should be
a factor in any study of technology. Historians might make a similar argument regarding other
categories of difference, such as gender, sexuality, and social class. Technologies cannot claim
neutrality on any of these accounts, yet to ask scholars to factor them all in their analyses seems
impractical and, perhaps, unwieldy, depending on the analysts training. Furthermore, the author
advocates for an interpretive methodology that, she notes, lies beyond what the historical record
can prove or disprove (936). Such postmodern flexibility seems well suited to critical race
scholars, but whether it would appeal to historians of technology more widely remains unclear.
Therefore, while the author makes a convincing case for the salience of race in histories of