Animating Mechanism

Abstract

In the scientific literature, proteins are frequently figured as molecular machines; that is, as tiny mechanisms that operate in interlocking assemblages, and which act to build and maintain the body as a higher-order machine. Mechanical models parse living bodies in ways that seem, at first glance, to deaden lively processes. I build on feminist contributions to the science studies literature to show how, rather than spelling the “death of nature”, mechanistic reasoning in the life sciences can become a site for feminist inquiry into modes of embodiment and the role of affect in the performance of scientific knowledge. I observe that researchers use their bodies kinaesthetically to manipulate and learn protein structures. Such forms of body-work enable modellers to animate their molecular mechanisms both onscreen and through elaborate gestures and affects. In this way molecular mechanisms are enlivened as they are propagated between researchers in pedagogical and professional contexts. I argue that this is not an extra-scientific phenomenon, but one intrinsic to the work of mechanistic modelling.