In 2019, I became really captivated by new digital technologies for sensing and analyzing sweat. Sweat sensing patches, for example, are a promising development for diabetics keen on non-invasive methods for measing biomarkers like blood sugar.
As it happens, people have tried to “sense” sweat in all sorts of weird and fascinating ways dating back to the days of Hippocrates. This project asks: how have Western and imperial medical sciences observed, quantified, and analyzed perspiration over the last four centuries? I find that, particularly since the dawn of imperialism, sweat was an important technology of colonization. Tropical medicine in particular used sweat as a framework for domination, exploiting colonized subjects based on race and the supposed efficiencies of their sweat physiology.
I’m working on a piece for submission to cultural geographies on this topic. For now, you can read more here:
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| the sweat gland of “tropical and northern races,” from an old medical journal |