CAPAS RESEARCH PROJECT - Taylor Dotson SCIENCE, STORYTELLING, AND THE APOCALYPSE: THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND POLICY LIMITS OF POLITICAL CATASTROPHISM
This project interrogates the epistemology and political consequences of apocalyptic rhetoric from the vantage point of democratic theory and science and technology studies. I will examine the presuppositions undergirding the translation of simulated or predicted catastrophes into the often fanaticizing languages of authoritative fact and moral common sense. Such an examination forces a reappraisal of the relationships between apocalyptic truth and the political as well as between science and propaganda. Focusing on potential environmental cataclysms, namely climate and biodiversity change, I characterize the past, present, and potential future of apocalyptic politics. How has political catastrophism shaped policy, political interactions, and members of democratic societies as political beings? Which new stories and metaphors might better reconcile the challenges posed by complex, uncertain, and potentially catastrophic environmental challenges with the conditions of possibility for democratic politics? And how might societies more productively accommodate broad disagreement regarding both the character of “nature” and the place of human beings within it?