[PUBLIC LECTURE 2016] In this talk Raoni Rajão will examine the foundation myths of Brazil over the last two centuries, paying attention to the relations between these myths and governmental attitudes toward the hybridity of Northern and Southern ethnic and technoscientific entities. Based upon this examination, Raoni will argue that it is important to consider both the wider temporal frames, the shifts and sedimentations that have formed current foundation myths and shaped their relations to science and technology. The theoretical work of postcolonial science & technology studies serves to illuminate aspects of this trajectory, but the analysis suggests a more complex scenario that involves taking into account internal political dynamics and the work of local intellectuals such as historians, anthropologists, novelists, poets and painters. Raoni will argue that the example of Brazilian intellectuals should encourage postcolonial scholars to go beyond the current focus on breaking the myths of technoscience and undertake mythmaking initiatives. This would represent a shift from the current focus on critique and deconstruction towards an emphasis on storytelling and identity building with wider societal resonances.

About the speaker:
Raoni Rajão is a senior lecturer in social studies of science & technology in the Department of Production Engineering and a researcher with the Institute of Advanced Transdisciplinary Studies at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Brazil. He teaches in the graduate programmes in Production Engineering and Environmental Analysis at UFMG and Social and Political Sciences of the Environment at Radboud University (Netherlands). His research crosses postcolonial studies, environmental politics and science studies. He has collaborated with different agencies of the United Nations and the German Technical Cooperation (GIZ), and has advised senior officials from the State Government of Minas Gerais and the Brazilian Federal Government in the creation of environmental policy. He has published in Global Environmental Politics, Theory, Culture & Society, edited a special issue of Science, Technology & Human Values, and has published in Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).