Playing with Geoengineered Futures: Excogitations on Scenarios, Politics, and Postnormal Potentialities

Abstract

Given the terrifying potentialities linked to global warming, some have suggested that the only means of abating a worst-case scenario is to double down, so to speak. Geoengineering is the intentional manipulation and augmentation of the global climate system. Critics and enthusiasts have commenced a lively debate around this complex issue, and scenarios have recently emerged as a constitutive practice to confront the uncertainties permeating research, implementation, and prospective governance. Using a synthesis of critical political frames to engage with a range of geoengineered imaginaries, this dissertation employs both textual and practice-based modes of research to argue that there are more dynamic and efficacious means to engage people in thinking through the radical possibilities and postnormal potentialities inherent to geoengineering. Turning to games and deploying play as a modality for experimentation, this dissertation assembles a design for exploring the core themes of the debate and enacting an embodied politics for geoengineering. GeoFutr is an alternative futures-driven gaming platform designed to critique, create, and ultimately contest geoengineered imaginaries.