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SUMMARY:Unveiling the world? Aerial photographs and the social sciences in
  interwar France - Serge Reubi (Humboldt University\, Berlin/Cambridge)
DTSTART:20160512T120000Z
DTEND:20160512T130000Z
UID:TALK65957@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Richard Staley
DESCRIPTION:Aerial photography is almost as old as photography itself. How
 ever\, unlike photography\, it was only scarcely used as a scientific tool
  before 1914. In the limited field of social sciences and humanities\, it 
 was not used at all except in archaeology or cartography. A decade later\,
  the picture has changed: not only have scholars of most disciplines start
 ed to experiment with it\, but the uses of aerial photographs have changed
  and raise new issues. What was until then used mainly for illustrating pu
 rposes (or sometimes to accelerate the process of sketching)\, is now beli
 eved to be a means to unveil essential but hidden features of the observed
  world.\n\nTo examine this 'rhetoric of unveiling'\, my paper will focus o
 n the uses of aerial photography by French social scientists of the interw
 ar period. There are valuable reasons for this. After World War I\, in Fra
 nce more than in any other European country\, social scientists were extre
 mely interested by this new tool: while elsewhere the uses of air photogra
 phy were limited to one or two disciplines\, generally archaeology and geo
 graphy\, in France most disciplines tried at one point or another to make 
 use of this tool. The curiosity it raised was broad\, and spread relativel
 y fast. This all makes of French social scientists uses of air photograph 
 a compact but diversified object.\n\nRooted in what Ginzburg has coined 'e
 vidential paradigm'\, the rapid success of mechanically produced images fr
 om above also tells us a lot about the way we consider scientists and scie
 ntific activities. Indeed\, in many writings about aerial photography prod
 uced in the 1920s and 1930s\, these photographs are believed to unveil the
  world\, and this seems to be possible\, partly because the scientist's su
 bjectivity has vanished. It is therefore fruitful to examine this rhetoric
  of unveiling through the lens of Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison's conc
 epts of epistemic virtues and scholar's selves. First\, it will be highly 
 profitable to follow how proponents of aerial photographs defend their new
  tool\, through the categories of truth-to-nature\, mechanical objectivity
 \, and the trained-eye\, in order to understand how they understand legiti
 mate scientific practices and legitimate scientists\; second\, it will be 
 of some interest to apply Daston's and Galison's framework to the social s
 ciences\, which are left behind in their 2007 objectivity in order to test
  its validity outside of the natural sciences.\n\nTo achieve this\, I will
  confront their hypotheses to the ways aerial photographs are mobilized in
  the French social sciences and will show that the narrative of aerial pho
 tographs unveiling the truth thanks to a vanishing scientist is opposed to
  the practice of a vivid and legitimate subjectivity. Hence my paper will 
 be divided in three parts. First\, I briefly expose the quick\, wide\, and
  short success of aerial photography in the French social sciences. Second
 \, founding on these examples\, I present three variations of these entang
 led rhetorics of unveiling and objectivity: the palimpsest\, the structure
 \, and the reality. Finally\, I focus on the writing practices of social s
 cientists and will concentrate on the articulation of pictures and caption
 s to demonstrate how the supposedly expelled subjectivity of the scholar f
 inds its way back in their work.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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