Abstract

This thesis argues for the generative powers of popular culture and asks what they can bring to a critical understanding of modern science. Drawing on literature in science studies, cultural studies and feminist theory, the project considers in particular how sensational discourses--from monster culture to detective fiction to celebrity expose--are productive in human origins research, and what kinds of knowledge they produce. It begins by theorizing connections between the scientific and the sensational through a cultural history and theory of missing links. Following is a combined textual and discursive analysis of "Lucy", a partial skeleton whose discovery in the 1970's led to the naming of a new species of ancient hominid. Lucy's case is seen simultaneously as a credible science of human prehistory and an incredible discourse of Western modernity. Her investigation and publication constructed an ape-like specimen (and her scientists) into multiple modern-day subjects, revealing in the process some highly cultural conceptualizations of being biologically human. Moreover, the case demonstrates the intolerable horrors implicit in researching half-human creatures, and the ensuing sensational efforts to humanize our apish beginnings.