Bio-colonialism and Bad Scientific Anti-Racism: Bruno Latour and the (Violent) Politics of Religion and Science

Over the course of his life, Bruno Latour has sought to unravel the taken-for-granted character of sharp distinctions between nature and culture, religion, politics and science. After recapping the trajectory of Latour's "political epistemology", I argue that Latour's account of the laboratory as a locus for the rearticulation of power enables the development of new categories to analyze the distinctive ways that scientific institutions may enact violence. The violence of "Non-reciprocity" and "Non-representative authority" may make themselves present even in scientific encounters which attempt to be more sensitive to the concerns of indigenous populations or racial minorities, illustrated by the encounter of D. Carleton Gajusek with the Fore people and the (failed) attempts to enlist African-Americans in Tuskegee for a purportedly antiracist genomics program. Focusing attention on how overlapping, but non-identical communities navigate politico-epistemological authority and the circulation of knowledge opens a new angle to approach the religion-and-science conversation.