Universal Equilibrium: Sociopolitical aspects of the rhetoric of chemistry

This presentation is part of the Feminist Perspectives in the Sciences: Physics, Chemistry and Climate Science track.This paper is an exploration of the language and basic concepts that inform the framework of chemistry. Often thought of as an “objective” field of scientific study, theories promoting equilibrium as a dynamic, yet ultimately stable condition where both foreword and reverse reactions occur at an equal rate with no observable net change, conveniently map onto the current capitalist political system. It is within this system of exchange that the concept of a “universal equal” is created and responds directly to a social hierarchy built to maintain and reinforce particular notions of universality. As such, these theoretical frameworks serve to promote globalization and it’s inherent racist and sexist tendencies. Following the critique of scientific universality in Donna Haraway’s Primate Visions and the concept of commodification of the “exotic other” expressed in bell hooks’ essay, “Eating the Other,” I argue that chemical jargon can be seen operating in ways consistent with the construction of scientific authority that maintains structures of domination and oppression. Through the lens of “objectivity” that chemistry offers, a scientifically prescribed notion of a politically favorable “universal equilibrium” relies upon the continual commodification and exchange of the “other” yielding political stability in the lack of visible net change. In conditions where dynamic equilibrium is synonymous with stability, chemical discourse simply reinforces and thereby (self) justifies a continual investment in an inherently unequal “equalibrium.” Furthermore, social institutions that benevolently promote education and knowledge production such as the public museum and study abroad organizations juxtapose the disembodied scientific rhetoric of chemical reaction with the embodiment and objectification of politically advantageous categories of people. As the junction between chemistry and politics is unveiled, the very concept of gaining stability through dynamic equilibrium can be brought into question.