STS Research Seminar: Geopolitical actors on a world stage performing science in a predatory system

Geopolitical actors on a world stage: performing science in a predatory system

Born of many people, from the very first the history of Jamaican Maroons has been a history of relentless, crushing geopolitical forces. Yet in complex coerced ways, Jamaican Maroons have always also been geopolitical actors on a world stage. Phrases such as ‘geopolitical force’ and ‘transnational capital’ naturalise the malign intent of the systems in which they have been compelled to act; and efface the complex agency and significance of those actions. Bringing together two important episodes respectively in the history of theatre and the history of British industrial triumphalism, this paper is an attempt to know it on its own terms: a performance that the Maroons called science and the British called ‘obi’