Imaginary Ecologies: Futuristic Technological Dwellings, Persistent Residual Entanglements

Project TANDEM “Home Beyond Species”, with Chloé Mondémé and Petr Gibas.

Ange Pottin holds a PhD degree from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris. His research focuses on philosophy of technology and Science and Technology Studies. It deals primarily with analyzing energy and chemical industries from the perspectives of their materiality and the imaginaries that they bear.

From the first methods of synthetic chemistry in the 18th century to the present-day discourse on circular economy, modern industry has often represented itself as evolving into a system independent of natural resources with an optimal externality management. By doing so, it has paradoxically brought about new cycles of waste extraction and proliferation. The principal hypothesis of the research project is that such imaginary ecologies can be studied as a confrontation between two conflicting sets of representations and practices of our technical and ecological household: futuristic technological dwellings on the one side, residual entanglements on the other. More specifically, the aim is to analyze two fields of investigation: certain promises of circularity advanced by the oil and petrochemical industries, and the imaginary associated with the maintenance and dismantling of certain nuclear power plants.

More information here.

 

CV

Education

2022: PhD, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris, “Matière fertile. Le résidu radioactif, le capital fissile et l’écologie imaginaire de l’industrie nucléaire”.

2016: MA in History and Philosophy of Science, Université de Paris

2012-2018: Student at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris

 

Publications

French version: “Le pouvoir et les opérations : Simondon et les imaginaires de l’industrie nucléaire”, Revue d’anthropologie des connaissances, 15-2, 2021

English version: “Power and Operations: Simondon and the Imaginaries of the Nuclear Industry”, Trilogia, Ciencia Tecnologia Sociedad, 13-25.