Agnotology: The Cultural Production of Ignorance

The workshop will explore a new theoretical perspective and methodology —agnotology, the cultural production of ignorance— in interdisciplinary science studies. Workshop participants will explore how ignorance is produced or maintained in diverse settings, through (for example) media neglect, corporate or governmental secrecy and suppression, document destruction, and myriad forms of inherent or avoidable culturopolitical selectivity, inattention, and forgetfulness. The point is to develop a taxonomy of understandings and uses of ignorance, but also tools for understanding how and why diverse forms of knowledge do not or did not "come to be" or are delayed or neglected at different points in history. Workshop Organizers Londa Schiebinger and Robert Proctor.