Rumsfeld's comments – which came in the middle of a news briefing regarding the possible presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – were largely treated with derision at the time, even winning a ‘Foot in Mouth’ award from the UK Plain English Campaign for the ‘most baffling comment by a public figure’. The phrasing is, perhaps, tortuous, and the structure confusing. But (remarkably enough) the basic idea that Rumsfeld is trying to convey is an important one, and one that we will explore throughout this chapter. Knowing and not knowing are generally taken to be straightforward, binary categories: we know or do not know a particular fact. But in practice these categories have texture and nuance. As Rumsfeld says, there are different ways of not-knowing, and, as we will see in Chapter 7 in particular, knowledge itself can be fragile and contestable. In this chapter we explore some of this fragility, looking at what happens to technoscientific knowledge in times of disaster or crisis, as well as the ways in which both knowledge and non-knowledge are constructed through the intermingling of scientific, social, and political processes. We therefore examine the kinds of unknowing that Rumsfeld describes. How do we come to know some things, know that we don't know others, and are entirely ignorant of the existence of others again?

Knowing and not knowing

In the decades since Rumsfeld made his comments the field of ignorance studies has emerged. Its basic premise is that ignorance is not simply emptiness or lack, but a rich social space that emerges in particular ways and has particular uses. In scientific research, for instance, we know particular things and not others because of funding and scholarly priorities and interests, all of which operate to focus research on specific areas (we continue to be ignorant of, for instance, many aspects of women's health, because standard scientific models are generally male, or of diseases that dominate the South rather than the rich North).