Part 1 of 3 desktop performance lectures on the political situatedness of sites of scientific research. This first one is about the founding of CERN—how it came to be located on the outskirts of Geneva instead of Copenhagen or Paris, how a Communist party campaign in the 1950s nearly prohibited the lab’s construction and how almost no women (quite remarkably in one significant political respect!) were officially involved in its conception.
The title of the series is taken from a reference to Francis Bacon made by feminist science-studies scholar Evelyn Fox Keller in her 1985 book, Reflections on Gender and Science.