Bhaba and Hegel Crush Science

    “It is often taken for granted in materialist and idealist problematics that the value of culture as an object of study…lies in a capacity to produce a cross-referential, generalizable unity that signified a progression or evolution of ideas-in-time” (2370).
    Now this: http://www.techwench.com/scientists-invent-oxygen-particle-that-if-injected-allows-you-to-live-without-breathing/
    Science is its own culture. It operates according to its own epistemic rules, and it is almost intentionally self-congratulatory. It is expressed as progress over time. I am convinced that Bhaba would think science was in fact a deliberate affirmation of particular ideologies. This is because science, expressed as advancement (and therefore positive), calls goodness the sustentation of particular conditions. It is important for science to describe itself as neutral, a unifying expression of human advancement. However, it seems that this guise of neutrality could instead cover dominant affirmation. For the ability to extend life is always owned by particular parties, parties that are keen to perpetuate a condition under which their product is desirable. That condition is the assumption that aliveness is the best expression of goodness. This is, more than anything else, a cultural claim.
    It seems that science, especially medical science, is linked inextricably to particular ideologies. Particularly consumption and control, both of which are valued in a dominant structure of production and distribution, that is, the heirs of Euroamerican neocolonial powers. The trouble is that neo and postcolonialsim no longer accurately describe international relationships. There are not large-scale discrete parties. There are, however, small communities engaged in particular enterprises. Those small communities are, in fact, dominant by nature of their monolithic capital. In science, differentiation is accomplished through idiomatic language, the display of technologies, and the ownership and administration of technologies by particular groups.