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.