Sylvia Wynter: Science Studies and Posthumanism as Praxes of Being Human
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Through dialogue, this article explores the works of Sylvia Wynter to elicit some implications for science studies. In particular, we explore her analysis of the ideological construction of Man as the paradigm for humanity and how this structures the Othering or exclusion of non-White-cis-straight-men from the definition of human in the extant Western Colonial period. We also explore the ways such ideologies find expression in the logics of some central work of science studies. We discuss the ways her oeuvre articulates with science studies, especially research conducted from a postcolonial frame, especially in her notion of a “new science” or scientia. The article also explores her notion of the “pieza,” the standardized black body of the slave trade, in relation to theories of objectivity and objectification. Finally, the dialogue considers the need to start with the writing, thinking, and scholarship of those writing from positions of exclusion, in struggle for liberation, and freedom, to recover the human within science studies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.038 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.014 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".