Rück-kehren als Antworten: Technik, ‚Race‘ und das gespenstische Erbe von Materialisierungen

Abstract

Exploring how racism has been inscribed in the spirometer – a medical apparatus for measuring lung capacity – this article makes a broader argument about the historical entanglement of race and technology. By way of mobilising Karen Barad’s notion of „re-turning“ as an analytical lens and reading it through insights from Black critical theories of technology and the body, an understanding of the spirometer as an apparatus of bodily production is put forward that allows for the taking into account of how technologies help enact racialised bodies and meanings. Rather than problematising racial bias and the mismeasurement of Black bodies, such an approach to race and technology aims at contributing to both the sociology of technology and the sociology of the body with a critique of empiricist notions of technological objectivity and the idea of a (racialised) body that precedes measurements.