Does the climate need consensus? The politics of climate change revisited. Symploke 20 (1-2): 151-165

In this paper, I interrogate the relationship between two seemingly separated themes playing an increasingly influential role in climate change related scholarship: a constructivist Science and Technology Studies (STS) approach to climate science (Wynne, Demeritt, Edwards) on the one hand and the debate in political theory on the depoliticization of the public sphere (Mouffe, Laclau, Swyngedouw) on the other. Drawing on Latour's juxtaposition of the concepts of 'matter of fact' and 'matter of concern', I argue how these approaches could be tied together in order to provide an enriched understanding of climate denial: rather than being a cause of dysfunctional climate politics, it constitutes a symptomatic outburst of the political in a depoliticised landscape. Moreover, this diagnosis points to what I believe is a fundamental flaw in the science-policy architecture of climate change: in attempting to translate the universal validity of science into the contours of an inclusive, consensual negotiation model, the constitutive role of exclusion in the emergence of scientific objectivity is overlooked.

Jaar van publicatie:2013

Trefwoorden:constructivism, climate denial, depoliticisation, politics of science