30 March 2022
Event Date(s)/Period(s)
30 March 2022
Organised by
Centre for the Humanities and Medicine
This paper positions rodent trainers in Tanzania as philosophers of the mind who explore, propose, and critique the experiences of being human through their speculation of rodent minds. Rodent trainers in Tanzania speculate about rodent minds as a way to understand how best to train them to detect landmines as part of an international humanitarian project.
The speaker drew on these trainers’ experiences of working with rats to analyze how they participate in a long, cross-disciplinary history of thinking about cognition that depend on careful observations of rodent behaviors. In speculating about rodent learning and cunning, rodent trainers subsequently reflect on the importance of ‘hekima,’ an intelligent ability to understand and participate in social relations that foster solidarity and social wellbeing in Tanzanian society. The speaker further situated this ‘working theory of mind’ within the social inequalities that Tanzanian trainers confront while working for an international NGO. This paper forms part of a larger research project that builds on ongoing critiques in Black studies, anthropology, and science & technology studies about ‘post/humanism,’ and suggests that scholars begin to look to Africa for ‘counterhumanisms.’
Speaker:
Dr Jia Hui Lee, Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Haverford College
Discussant:
Dr Susan Levine, Professor and Head of Anthropology, University of Cape Town
Moderator: Dr Laura Meek, Assistant Professor, Centre for the Humanities and Medicine, HKU
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