SYNTHESIZING HOPE, matter, knowledge, and place in South African drug discovery

191pp., illus., paperback, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2019

ISBN: 9780226629186

A study of iThemba Pharmaceuticals, a South African startup founded in 2009 and tasked with drug discovery for tuberculosis, HIV, and malaria.

"Synthesizing Hope opens up a fascinating landscape of the challenges and possibilities of postcolonial science. Using iThemba Pharmaceuticals as her research site, Pollock opens up postcolonial knowledge construction in brilliant detail to reveal the myriad layers of power, capital, and global politics that shape the making of modern science. This is a sobering tale of ambition and failure, of faith and despair, reminding us that the histories of colonial science continue to haunt the future hope of lives in the Global South." Banu Subramaniam, University of Massachusetts Amherst

"This book shows us how pharmaceutical science both derives from and drives different forms of political, biomedical, and affective power. Moving seamlessly from molecules to macro-structures, the text troubles the distinction between economic and emotional investment in science. Pollock reveals how ‘hope’ is more than a feeling, but a practice that is synthesized in relation to scientific disciplines. It's a necessary read for everyone who cares about the future of global health and democratization of knowledge." Ruha Benjamin, Princeton University

Anne Pollock is Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London, and the author of Medicating Race: Heart disease and durable preoccupations with difference.