10 Science Fiction, Reconfigured Social Theory and the Anthropocene Age: Exploring and Thinking about Planetary Futures through Fictional Imaginaries
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Yannick Rumpala
Abstract
Should humanity prepare for life on a less habitable planet? The magnitude of human activities indeed makes it necessary to think about their consequences and to consider tackling them with renewed imaginative foundations. From this point of view, science fiction may have the advantage of having anticipated the movement. By initiating and accumulating thought experiments, its narrative combinations offer a cognitive reservoir and a reflexive medium for interpreting the world. Science fiction, and its imaginary constructions, provide a rare representation of how ‘future generations’ live, act and organise themselves. Faced with the need for new intellectual resources and frameworks fuelled by the notion of the Anthropocene, this chapter will first show that imaginary productions of science fiction are also of interest as a distinctive way to represent and problematise (in the sense of Michel Foucault) the relation of thinking species to their habitat, and therefore to cast the Earth’s habitability, its state and becoming as collective issues. It will then specify the intellectual operations (exploration, framing, and experimentation in particular) that can be engaged on these bases, and thus the type of participation that science fiction can offer to build an ethics of the future.
Abstract
Should humanity prepare for life on a less habitable planet? The magnitude of human activities indeed makes it necessary to think about their consequences and to consider tackling them with renewed imaginative foundations. From this point of view, science fiction may have the advantage of having anticipated the movement. By initiating and accumulating thought experiments, its narrative combinations offer a cognitive reservoir and a reflexive medium for interpreting the world. Science fiction, and its imaginary constructions, provide a rare representation of how ‘future generations’ live, act and organise themselves. Faced with the need for new intellectual resources and frameworks fuelled by the notion of the Anthropocene, this chapter will first show that imaginary productions of science fiction are also of interest as a distinctive way to represent and problematise (in the sense of Michel Foucault) the relation of thinking species to their habitat, and therefore to cast the Earth’s habitability, its state and becoming as collective issues. It will then specify the intellectual operations (exploration, framing, and experimentation in particular) that can be engaged on these bases, and thus the type of participation that science fiction can offer to build an ethics of the future.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- List of Figures vii
- Notes on Contributors viii
- Acknowledgements x
- Introduction 1
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Scaffolding
- Foreword to Part 1 9
- Speculating with Glitches: Keeping the Future Moving 13
- Investments in the Imaginary: Commercial Drone Speculations and Relations 36
- Dystopias for Discourse: The Role of the Artist in a Rapidly Reconfiguring City 66
- New Images of Thought: On Two Kinds of Speculative Realism 80
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More-than-Human Worlds
- Foreword to Part 2 103
- Speculative Listening: Melting Sea Ice and New Methods of Listening with the Planet 107
- It Matters What Designs Design Designs: Speculations on Multispecies Worlding 125
- Edible Speculations: Designing Everyday Oracles for Food Futures 145
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Speculative Ethics
- Foreword to Part 3 171
- Beyond Speculation: Using Speculative Methods to Surface Ethics and Positionality in Design Practice and Pedagogy 175
- Touring the Carbon Ruins: Towards an Ethics of Speculative Decarbonisation 200
- Science Fiction, Reconfigured Social Theory and the Anthropocene Age: Exploring and Thinking about Planetary Futures through Fictional Imaginaries 224
- The Debate 250
- Index 256
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- List of Figures vii
- Notes on Contributors viii
- Acknowledgements x
- Introduction 1
-
Scaffolding
- Foreword to Part 1 9
- Speculating with Glitches: Keeping the Future Moving 13
- Investments in the Imaginary: Commercial Drone Speculations and Relations 36
- Dystopias for Discourse: The Role of the Artist in a Rapidly Reconfiguring City 66
- New Images of Thought: On Two Kinds of Speculative Realism 80
-
More-than-Human Worlds
- Foreword to Part 2 103
- Speculative Listening: Melting Sea Ice and New Methods of Listening with the Planet 107
- It Matters What Designs Design Designs: Speculations on Multispecies Worlding 125
- Edible Speculations: Designing Everyday Oracles for Food Futures 145
-
Speculative Ethics
- Foreword to Part 3 171
- Beyond Speculation: Using Speculative Methods to Surface Ethics and Positionality in Design Practice and Pedagogy 175
- Touring the Carbon Ruins: Towards an Ethics of Speculative Decarbonisation 200
- Science Fiction, Reconfigured Social Theory and the Anthropocene Age: Exploring and Thinking about Planetary Futures through Fictional Imaginaries 224
- The Debate 250
- Index 256
