Fat in Action. An Aprroach to Fats in Scientific Laboratories

Abstract

The approach to fats here proposed is based on experiences from an ethnographic fieldwork performed in laboratories and inspired by the socio-technical networks of ANT and New Materialism theories. Thus, this paper proposes a standpoint in which fats that take part as objects in the relationships that make it emerge as a scientific fact and describes the way a semiotic-material process is set in motion in chemical and technological laboratories with the machines, definitions, technologies, pots, textures and texts for making fats. Fats emerging in their socio-material scientific relations due to acid fat fractionations, chromatographs, enzymatic catalysis, congresses, genetic sequences, esterifications, meetings, blenders, computer programs, emulsions, papers, etc. would not be a required component of the research process (no-agency supports), but an active assemblage in which fats become scientific phenomena in action.