By Professor Artwell Nhemachena
Speech at the Decolonising Research in German Academia: Changing Narratives from the Global South, Wednesday June 7 2023, Research Centre, Hamburg’s (post) Colonial Legacy Rothenbaumchaussee 34, 20148, Hamburg, Germany.
RESEARCH is being transformed in a global context where humanity is set to experiment with new disruptive technologies, including nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technologies, among others.
New medical research is already taking place using nanotechnologies, nanomedicines, nanovaccines – and new researches are already taking place around genome editing, editing human genes and deleting human genes, editing human memories and deleting some human memories.
Such researches fall into the remits of, for instance, the anthropology of science and technology studies, genomic anthropology, molecular anthropology, medical anthropology, anthropology of health, sociology of health and medicine, sociology of science and technology studies, sociology of the future/sociology of anticipation and anthropology of the future/anthropology of anticipation, and digital humanities.
New and dangerous researches on gain of function research and what is called dual use research of concern are taking place.
In this regard, researchers are carrying out unprecedented researches, including experiments to genetically alter bacteria, viruses and other organisms to make them more virulent, resistant to drugs and resilient to human interventions.
Some viruses are being nanofabricated and engineered not only to be more virulent and resilient but also to be able to target specific ethnic groups or peoples.
Recently, WHO produced a document to regulate Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC) and to ensure responsible life sciences research so that humanity may not be needlessly harmed by new transformations in research, such as gain of function research.
Of course, the challenge is that even WHO is substantially funded by global corporations and global elites who are themselves interested in profiting from the novel researches that are gaining traction in the world.
He who pays the piper calls the tune.
The point here is that there are novel but dangerous researches, such as in synthetic biology, wherein new more virulent organisms are being fabricated using nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technologies.
Indeed, even human beings are set to be subjected to synthetic biology and nanofabrication using nanotechnology.
The human, as we know it, is set to be transformed using the new disruptive technologies which are increasingly gaining traction in research in the 21st Century world of nanoengineering, nanofabrication and rewiring or reverse engineering humanity.
All these transformations make it imperative to ensure that those who set research agendas and execute researches are more accountable for possible harm, breaches of ethics and breaches of the law wherever and whenever harm ensues.
Put differently, global pharma and global tech, for instance, are set to generate huge profits from the ongoing experiments and resultant innovations – including the nanovaccines, nanomedicines, nanotechnologies, biotechnologies and information technologies.
But such profits have to come with accountability and responsibility for any harm that ensues.
To trace and apportion accountability in research, it has to be clear who has set the agenda, who is executing the research and who is benefiting from the research and so on.
Yet we all know that global capital tends to privatise profits while communalising responsibility and accountability.
In other words, the agenda of global capital is often cast as the agenda of the global community, even as the profits from such supposedly communal agendas invariably become privatised.
The point here is that global capital is not necessarily individualistic in the sense of wanting to privatise everything.
Rather, it privatises and individualises profits while it communalises and offshores accountability and responsibility for harm to the community or the public.
And it communalises accountability and responsibility by depicting its own agenda as the agenda of the public and of the community.
Once the community or public is made to believe that the agenda of global capital is its own agenda, it becomes more willing to bear the costs by which global capital makes profits – the costs are offshored to the community or public while the profits are kept private.
The problematique of the research agenda, which I am focusing on here, has been typically dealt with from an epistemological perspective but I would want to approach it from an ontological perspective within the ambit of contemporary scholarly discourses on the ontological turn.
Twenty-first Century scholarship is increasingly shifting towards what is called the ontological turn which includes what are addressed as relational ontologies.
Put differently, the decolonial movement is taking place contemporaneously with the ontological turn.
Therefore, it is germane to discuss the problematique of coloniality of research agenda in the context of the ontological turn.
Emphasising relations rather than substantive entities, relational ontologies deconstruct the entire research epistemologies upon which scholars have relied for centuries.
Relational ontologies shift the focus in research from substantive entities to relations in the research processes.
In other words, individual entities, such as individual humans, cease to be the primary focus in research that is premised on relational ontologies and the broader ontological turn which are already creeping into academia and research institutions across the world.
When individual substantive entities cease to be the primary focus, this does not only have implications for research ethics.
Of course, when primacy shifts from substantive individual entities to relations, this effectively decentres the individual research participants in so far as they become secondary to relations as understood in the ontological turn.
Once primacy shifts from substantive individual participants or entities in research, ethics to substantive individual entities also shift, such that relations become more important than the individual substantive entities in research.
Put differently, the ontological turn shifts primacy from substantive human entities such that research begins to assume premises of posthumanism, postanthropocentrism and antihumanism which are already decentring the human subject of, and in, research.
To this end, posthumanist scholars have proposed what they call posthumanist ethics which they argue provide space for the actions of nonhuman actors as understood in the philosophies on object-oriented ontologies (OOO) in Graham Harman, Levi Bryant and Bruno Latour’s senses.
In other words, posthumanist ethics, which are set to assume primacy in research guided by the ontological turn, are understood as flat ethics in the sense of the posthumanist ethics deriving from flat ontologies which decentre humans.
Such transformations of research in the era of the ontological turn have implications for research agenda setting.
This is so because the relational turn or the relational ontologies which emphasise relations over substantive human entities beg the question about who actually will set or is setting the research agendas in the relational world?
If humans are really decentred in the relational ontologies which are gaining traction, the question would be: Who will set, or is setting, the research agenda in such a world where humans and nonhumans are assumed to be on the same planes in a Deleuzian sense?
The point that I am making here is that the identities of the substantive entities behind the research agendas and behind the research processes are important for purposes of accountability for harmful, unlawful or unethical research.
