Paper short abstract

This paper develops the notion of 'room space' to rethink modes of scientific inquiry and attention.

Paper long abstract

The paper examines three locations where scientists engage in the experimental manipulation of mosquitoes: the insectary, the semi-field station, and the outdoors. Scientific and regulatory discourses (and, often, science studies scholarship) place these locations in a linear trajectory of ever-diminishing containment and ever-greater approximation to the real world. Instead, we propose to treat each of these sites as creating a distinct mode of interiority, a particular room-space (Clark 2013). It is through the fabrication of a sense of proximity that researchers substantiate their observations and can take in - and be taken in by - the world of mosquitoes.