Introduction: Metaphors as Meaning and Method in Technoculture

Abstract

Metaphors are critical sites of analysis for feminist scholars of science and technology because of what they both conceal and divulge about the conditions of their historical emergence and the persistence of those conditions. As researchers and editors, we find ourselves oriented to work that takes up the task of contesting uncontested metaphors, considering how metaphor “invades” (Tuck & Yang 2012, 3) and evacuates meaning. This Special Section carries on the dynamic practice in feminist STS of taking the work, and ambivalent potentiality, of metaphor seriously. In this Introduction, we draw together scholarship that informs what we identify as the "metaphor-work" of feminist STS—the work of allegory, myth, metaphor, figurative and associative discourse, and their analysis—as central to the methods by which we make and remake meanings that matter to feminist technocultures. Throughout the metaphor-work collected here, the contributors propose that paradigm change comes through the collective refusal of some metaphors, through the re-evaluation of others, and the introduction of new metaphorical frames and figures to reorient our work.