Work

The Nonhuman Unchained

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: This article stages a methodological provocation. By experimentally voicing a nonhuman participant – an AI system in clinical practice – we explore what happens when nonhumans are allowed to interfere with how social scientific accounts are generated. What is at stake in this provocation is not whether machines can or should be granted a voice, but whether social scientific methods are willing to be unsettled by the nonhumans they already claim to include. The CyberKnife responds, interrupts, and irritates the account, unsettling the methodological arrangement through which it is made to speak. These contestations do not merely expose failures in technical performance; they forcibly reveal ways in which knowledge itself is stitched together from unruly encounters, failed translations and messy negotiations.

Source: Social Studies of Science

DOI: 10.1177/03063127261496296

Authors: Emma Dahlin, Steve Woolgar, with CyberKnife

Institutions: Södertörn University, Linköping University, University of Oxford, University of Gothenburg

Language: English

Topic: Posthumanist Ethics and Activism

Subfield: Cultural Studies

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,650

Funder: Vetenskapsrådet