Affecting the Technoscientific Body: Stem Cells, Wheeled-luggage and Emotions

Abstract

In this paper, I will be treating the technoscientific body in terms of the emergence of emotion and emotion conventions, mainly by considering the role of affect. In this I want to pay attention to technoscience not only as a key site for the emergence of epistemic and ethical novelty, but also emotional novelty. In particular I want to focus on the role of the peculiar objects of technoscience whose affect upon bodies enables the emergence of peculiar, new emotions, and their conventionalization, that is the way in which such new emotions become warrantable. In all this I address the technoscientific body in two versions: on the one hand, there are the bodies of practicing stem cell scientists, and on the other there are the bodies of members of the public in the transport system non-places like airports and train stations.