Sarah Abel
My research looks at racism and sexism in genomics, visual culture, and generative AI, with a focus on Latin American contexts.
Working at the intersections of the philosophy of science, social anthropology, science and technology studies, and critical race studies, I aim to understand how emerging technologies stand to reproduce structures of oppression, and propose how they could instead contribute to global, intersectional struggles for social justice.
My work has been supported by the British Academy, Humanities in the European Research Area, and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, and I previously held affiliations at the University of Cambridge, the University of Iceland, the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), and the Centre international de recherches sur les esclavages & post-esclavages (CIRESC), Paris.
Working at the intersections of the philosophy of science, social anthropology, science and technology studies, and critical race studies, I aim to understand how emerging technologies stand to reproduce structures of oppression, and propose how they could instead contribute to global, intersectional struggles for social justice.
My work has been supported by the British Academy, Humanities in the European Research Area, and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, and I previously held affiliations at the University of Cambridge, the University of Iceland, the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), and the Centre international de recherches sur les esclavages & post-esclavages (CIRESC), Paris.
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Papers by Sarah Abel
To what extent do bio-graphical writings, which treat the body and its traces as historical archives in their own right, pose the same problems of interpretation and authorship as traditional biographies? This chapter focuses on the case of Hans Jonathan (1784–1827), whose story has recently been “written” in two different forms: first, in the biography The Man Who Stole Himself (Gisli Palsson, 2016); and second, through the scientific reconstruction of his genome. Our text explores the way biography (in the traditional sense) and various biomarkers (personal names, written genealogies, and DNA sequences) have been used to piece together Hans Jonathan’s life and trajectory, and examines to what extent the genome can yield insights into the identities of the enslaved.
Like many Latin American societies whose national projects are founded on myths of mestizaje (mixed-“race” discourses), Mexico has long projected and introjected an image of itself as a country devoid of racism. Nonetheless, racial discourses have historically played a central role in the narratives and practices of state-sponsored public art, foregrounding canonical ideas that integrally link racist discourses to national identity. Over the past thirty years, this myth has been progressively challenged by Indigenous and Afro-descendant activists, and scholars have worked to foster understandings of racism not as an archaic or imported ideology but as an integral dimension of the matrix of oppressions that has structured Mexican society since colonial times. Only in the second decade of the twenty-first century, though, has racism begun to be a matter of general public discussion and concern in Mexico. Over this period, a handful of public exhibitions in Mexico City have addressed the subject, usually with the aim of visibilizing the dynamics and origins of racism in Mexico and elsewhere. However, in the wake of antiracist protests across the world in 2020, galleries, museums, and artists are beginning to ask with more urgency: What does it mean to incorporate decolonial and antiracist positions into artistic practices? In this chapter, we add to this discussion through our examination of a series of recent interventions in public spaces that we judge to fall, in different ways, under the criteria of “antiracist” artistic practices.
http://www.cunorte.udg.mx/investigacion/publicaciones/educaciones-y-racismos-reflexiones-y-casos
The last twenty years have seen the emergence of “genealogical machines” that promise to revolutionize family history research. This article examines the tracing practices involved in these technologies, and their impact on shaping current concepts of kinship, drawing on two case studies: one relates to the efforts of Icelandic descendants in North America to reinsert themselves into the national family tree; the other follows the attempts by an Icelandic man to establish ties with the father he never met.
Les vingt dernières années ont vu émerger des « machines généalogiques » qui promettent de révolutionner les recherches sur l’histoire familiale. Cet article examine les pratiques de traçage qui s’articulent autour de ces technologies, et leur impact sur le façonnement des concepts actuels de parenté, en s’appuyant sur deux études de cas. L’une se réfère aux efforts déployés par les descendants d’Islandais en Amérique du Nord en vue de s’insérer à nouveau dans l’arbre généalogique national, et l’autre suit les tentatives d’un Islandais afin de rétablir le lien avec le père qu’il n’a jamais connu.