Abstract
The article analyzes climate fiction utopia ‘Ministry for the Future’ by Kim S. Robinson. The analytical method relies on the framework of sociotechnical imaginaries proposed by Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim and combines it with the critical history of science and feminist studies of care. Since in the process of writing the novel its author went through numerous consultations with scientists, in the article this oeuvre is analyzed both as a piece of science fiction and as a futurology essay. It is examined how the institutions of science are portrayed, how society of citizens is imagined and how this vision of the future remains trapped in the misconceptions regarding science that result from the Cold War modernistic propaganda of science. On the basis of this analysis, the article offers a discussion of how the imaginaries of Anthropocene are likely to repeat such tropes, unless history of science and sociology of science during the Cold War becomes a necessary part of the Anthropocene studies.
Go to article
Bibliography
Augustine, Grace, Sara Soderstrom, Daniel Milner, Klaus Weber. 2019. Constructing a Distant Future: Imaginaries in Geoengineering. Academy of Management Journal, 62, 6: 1930–60. DOI: 10.5465/amj.2018.0059.
Bastani, Aaron. 2020. Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto. Paperback edition. London: Verso.
Bauman, Zygmunt. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge, UK : Malden, MA: Polity Press; Blackwell.
de la Bellacasa, Maria Puig. 2011. Matters of Care in Technoscience: Assembling Neglected Things. Social Studies of Science, 41, 1: 85–106. DOI: 10.1177/0306312710380301.
Bińczyk, Ewa. 2018. Epoka człowieka: retoryka i marazm antropocenu. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
Bonneuil, Christophe, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz. 2017. The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us. London New York: Verso.
Bush, Vannevar, Rush Dew Holt. 2021. Science, the Endless Frontier. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Chaplin, Joyce. E. 2017. Can the Nonhuman Speak?: Breaking the Chain of Being in the Anthropocene. Journal of the History of Ideas, 78, 4: 509–529.
Czapliński, Przemysław, Joanna B. Bednarek, Dawid Gostyński, Andrzej W. Nowak, eds. 2019. O jeden las za daleko: demokracja, kapitalizm i nieposłuszeństwo ekologiczne w Polsce. Warszawa: Instytut Wydawniczy Książka i Prasa.
Engman, Mel, Johanna Ennser-Kananen, Taina Saarinen. 2023. A Diffractive Reading. Pp. 175–86. In: New Materialist Explorations into Language Education, edited by J. Ennser-Kananen, T. Saarinen. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Fisher, Mark. 2009. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Washington, USA: Zero Books.
Golding, Oscar, Guangsheng Yu, Qinghua Lu, Xiwei Xu. 2022. Carboncoin: Blockchain Tokenization of Carbon Emissions with ESG-Based Reputation. Pp. 1–5. In: 2022 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC). Virtual Conference.
Griswold, Wendy. 2012. Cultures and Societies in a Changing World. SAGE (no place designation).
Haraway, Donna J. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Herbert, Frank. 2005. Dune. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Jameson, Frederick. 2003. Future City. New Left Review, 21(May/June). Digital Edition.
Jasanoff, Sheilla. 2015. Future Imperfect: Science, Technology, and the Imaginations of Modernity. In: Dreamscapes of Modernity. Chicago, IL. University of Chicago Press.
Jasanoff, Sheilla, Sang-Hyunn Kim. 2015. Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power. In: Dreamscapes of Modernity. Chicago, IL. University of Chicago Press.
Kelton, Stephanie. 2020. The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy. New York: Public Affairs.
Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 1996. Aramis, or, The Love of Technology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lem, Stanisław. 2017. Astronauci: Powieść Fantastycznonaukowa. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
Malm, Andreas. 2020. Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Verso.
Marczak, Michalina, Małgorzata Wierzba, Dominika Zaremba, Maria Kulesza, Jan Szczypiński, Bartosz Kossowski, Magdalena Budziszewska, Jarosław M. Michałowski, Christian A. Klöckner, Artur Marchewka. 2023. Beyond Climate Anxiety: Development and Validation of the Inventory of Climate Emotions (ICE): A Measure of Multiple Emotions Experienced in Relation to Climate Change. Global Environmental Change 83:102764. DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2023.102764.
Mills, Charles Wright. 2000. The Sociological Imagination. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Mirowski, Philip. 2018. The Future(s) of Open Science. Social Studies of Science, 48, 2: 171–203. DOI: 10.1177/0306312718772086.
Napiórkowski, Marcin. 2022. Naprawić Przyszłość. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
Nijakowski, Lech M. 2019. Świat po apokalipsie: społeczeństwo w świetle postapokaliptycznych tekstów kultury popularnej. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar.
Oreskes, Naomi. 2021. Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don’t Know about the Ocean. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Robinson, Kim Stanley. 2021. The Ministry for the Future. New York, NY: Orbit.
Russell, Andrew L., Lee Vinsel. 2018. After Innovation, Turn to Maintenance. Technology and Culture, 59, 1: 1–25. DOI: 10.1353/tech.2018.0004.
Suvin, Darko, Gerry Canavan. 2016. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. Oxford: Peter Lang.
Szaj, Patryk. 2022. Pamiętnik z końca świata (jaki znamy). Lusowo: W. Wolno.
Tufekci, Z. 2017. Twitter and tear gas: The power and fragility of networked protest. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Tronto, Joan C., Berenice Fisher. 1990. Toward a Feminist Theory of Caring. In: E. Abel, M. Nelson, eds. Circles of Care. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 36–54.
Wolfe, Audra J. 2020. Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Yaszek, Lisa. 2008. Galactic Suburbia: Recovering Women’s Science Fiction. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State Univ. Press.
Zaród, Marcin. 2022. When Social Theory is Devoid of Social History. Reply to ‘Transhumanism. Human Nature and Culture: A Preliminary Sociological Contextualization’ by Markus Lipowicz. Studia Socjologiczne, 4: 173-183.
Go to article
en
pl
