Feminist Imaginations in a Heated Climate: Parody, Idiocy, and Climatological Possibilities

Citation:

Brault, Claire. 2017. “Feminist Imaginations in a Heated Climate: Parody, Idiocy, and Climatological Possibilities.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 3 (2). doi: 10.28968/cftt.v3i2.28847.

Author: Claire Brault

Abstract:

This paper proposes to imagine an alternative climate scenario of our future. Through a parodic rewrite of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate scenarios, I challenge the rise of geoengineering technologies as a mitigation "solution" for the current ecological crisis. Showing that the IPCC is offering capitalocentric visions of ecological futurity and more-than-human economies that contribute to mainstreaming dangerous, hubristic geoengineering, I advance that feminist imagination and conviviality is a more capacious way to face climate change, one that climatology would benefit learning from. I do this drawing from Isabelle Stengers’ conceptualization of stupidity, which I argue can describe the IPCC’s futurology, and from her figuration of the idiot, a conceptual character who poses questions that cause us to pause and think, opening up possibilities.

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Feminisms

Year: 2017