Experience | Platypus

A One-Trick Pony Among Poly-Metis at the 16th ESOCITE Congress

 David Antolínez  October 21, 2026

Sing, Muse, of the triumphs and tribulations of Latin American scholars gathered to discuss the fragile threads linking Science, Technology, and Society. Sing, Muse, of the congress held earlier this year in Colombia, barely a couple of days after the presidential election with the rising shadow of fascism. Sing, Muse, of that uneasy feeling, sharpened throughout three days of intellectual exchange, leading to the realization that our inquiries must choose between the Scylla of romanticism and the Charybdis of rationalism. From the beginning I felt the hospitality of the professors of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, despite them being busy with final arrangements. Too aware of my peripheral role in this community, I decided to stay at the margin and pay close attention to others. A feminist ethnographer working with textiles gave the inaugural lecture. She started by confessing her ambivalent feelings about the usefulness of these international meetings. She next remembered one of the first congresses of the Latin American network, where John Law eagerly spoke about non-human agency. Despite the lack of remuneration and the inevitable waste (printed materials, disposable coffee cups, megabytes of stored files in the cloud, etc.), the committee accepted the challenge of hosting the 16th Congress of the Asociación Latinoamericana de Estudios Sociales de la Ciencia y la Tecnología (ESOCITE), hoping it would be an opportunity to connect different researchers and projects. The nostalgia in the room was almost palpable. (read more...)

Commodifying Disability as an Experience

 Mine Egbatan  August 20, 2024

 Listen to a reading of this post.

Since February 2023, I have been conducting fieldwork on disabled women’s access to and experience of infrastructure under the current populist authoritarian government in Turkey. My research has taken me, among other places, extensively throughout Istanbul, the city with the largest disabled population in the country. I have traveled primarily by public transportation to meet with my interlocutors, most of whom are blind, allowing me to experience urban infrastructures alongside them. While passing through Gayrettepe Station, one of the busiest subway stations in Istanbul due to its location in a business district and near an upscale shopping mall, I observed a sentence written on a black background with white neon points: “Learning is possible through encounters” (Öğrenmenin yolu karşılaşmaktan geçer). This area is home to a museum called “Dialogue in the Dark” and “Dialogue in the Silence,” which provides a multisensory corporeal experience of blindness and deafness targeting non-disabled people as an audience. The museum draws inspiration from other “Dialogue in the Dark” museums located in Europe, and was established by a civil society organization. These museums are significant initiatives aimed at helping non-disabled people understand how “others” experience the built environment, thereby raising awareness about the inequalities and injustices that disabled people may encounter in their daily lives. Disability activism is relatively new in Turkey and values any effort that contributes to the recognition of disability as an identity, which has not been widely acknowledged. Indeed, creating a space for encounter is crucial for cultivating a culture of pluralism, understanding, and care for one another, all of which are crucial for a democracy. In some countries, populist movements are explicitly hostile to disabled folks, and/or ridicule them (e.g. Trump in the US), however, this is not the case in Turkey (disabled women face other challenges, as we will see). So, such initiatives regarding disabled people are quite welcome, as they may contribute to Turkey’s democratization and the inclusion of non-normative bodies and existences. (read more...)