Proving Grounds: On Nietzsche and the Test Drive

The figure of the test--as something that permeates modern existence but still lacks determination--belongs to what Nietzsche saw as our age of experimentation. Science itself invites us to read the scene of experimentation, its fractured promises and articulated procedures, the historical renewals, stalls or question marks, which the experimental disposition has generated. Often we are encouraged to seek answers, provisional or regulative, in terms that have been traditionally reserved for literary theory or a theory of signification. But there are also conceptual tendencies, largely unchallenged, that seek hermeneutic prodding. Whether we are canvassing the internal seams of scientific grammars or scanning effects of decisive drafts that describe an outer domain of signification, the way science produces hierarchical schemas affects every walk, or stumble, of life. What is it that links the recondite behaviors of lab culture to drug experimentation, experimental theater, thought experiments, political acts, or what Nietzsche floats as the pervasiveness of an experimental disposition?