Jonathan Banda

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

technology, she fails to do the same for her interpretive methodology.

Word count: 395