LAB IMAGINARIES

The lab has always had a significant cultural history as an imaginary site of scientific research as well as a physical one. Like Frankenstein’s monster, the lab imaginary has escaped from the confines of any “real history” of laboratories, becoming much larger than the actual practices of experimentation and scientific knowledge production in the process. Lists of favorite fictional laboratories from television, film, and literature abound on the internet, and essayists in the New York Times have argued for the existence of “lab lit” as its own subgenre.¹ We all think we know what a lab is long before we