New Books in Art Hannah Star Rogers, "Art, Science, and the Politics of Knowledge (MIT Press, 2022)
Aug 13, 2025
Hannah Star Rogers, an author and scholar at the intersection of art and Science & Technology Studies, delves into her groundbreaking book. She challenges the artificial divide between art and science, arguing that both realms share a quest for understanding our world. Rogers introduces Art-STS, promoting collaboration between disciplines. She discusses how this integration redefines knowledge production and influences societal norms, funding, and education. Through fascinating examples, she illustrates knowledge as a social, messy, and political process that deserves recognition.
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Attention Distributes Power
- Attention is a culturally distributed resource that assigns value and power to art or science.
- Funding regimes and national priorities shape which practices gain prominence and influence public reception.
Budgets Create Value Hierarchies
- Unequal budgets create perceived differences in societal value between science and the arts.
- Rogers frames this as a political-economic choice, not an intrinsic feature of the disciplines.
Art Encompasses Multiple Rationalities
- Art encompasses both rational, solution-focused projects (sci-art) and critical, non-solutionist interventions (art-science).
- Recognizing this diversity avoids mislabeling all art as anti-rational or merely communicative.
