practical inheritances

As my story about Duangchay illustrates, places labeled as laboratories, including the contemporary computer lab(oratory), continue to contend with vestiges of the paradigm Robert Boyle established in the seventeenth century. The computer lab is open and closed; it is open even when it is closed. Duangchay’s Asian-ness does not preclude his status as modest witness. Rather, his ethnicity makes it somewhat harder to maintain the illusion of culturelessness: “Colored, sexed, and laboring persons...have to do a lot of work to become…transparent to count as objective, modest witnesses to the world rather than their ‘bias’ or ‘special interest’” (Haraway, 1997, p. 32). Indeed, those located at the margins of a group may have the most impetus to hold strongly to protocol established by those at the center.

His desire to be invisible to those of us already present coupled with my refusal to the same may have, more than any other factor, been at the root of our conflict. His question to me, “Who the hell are you?” takes on special meaning when considered in conjunction with the practice of modest witnessing. My cultured, gendered, subjective body stood in between him and his work while also compromising the sanctity of the lab(oratory). My clash with Duangchay, however, does not mitigate the degree of credibility occupying laboratory space can bestow upon writing instruction.