Failed Encounters or the Challenges of Rendering Gender a Matter of Concern

Abstract

This chapter argues that gender both as embodied performance and as a subject matter participates in (dis)enabling much needed contact zones between the physical sciences, science studies and gender studies, albeit in ways that often go unnoticed. Here I take scientists’ propensity to object to, or cast as irrelevant, particular gender performances as a resource to rethink how we might present asymmetrical gender relations in science in ways that incite concern and responsibility. Taking the example of a research presentation, I re-examine how my embodied collaboration with graphs, voices and theory geared to render gender a tangible matter of fact was in part achieved by bracketing the practices and technologies of particular research strategies, casting gender as a social construct rather than a socio-natural hybrid and enacting a mode of critique rather than foregrounding multiple ontologies. I argue that a lack of concern and responsibility is better engaged by making the entanglements, practicalities and tensions of gender and accountability explicit.