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.

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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.

Research area 3 – Objects, traces, mapping : evereyday experience of spaces

Joseph holds a PhD in political anthropology from Leiden University (2019). His research interests include the intersections of extraction, environment, climate change and governance in and around the Congo Rainforest and Basin. As the 2^nd largest tropical rainforest in the world, The Congo Basin is critical to global ecological systems and the longevity of human life on Earth, yet the Basin remains under threat. While six different states—Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon—occupy the Congo Basin, all pursue extractive and conservationist policies to quite varying degrees.

How and why do these policies and attitudes evolve? How does the past inform the present, and hopefully the future? Last but not least, which ethnological, political anthropological, and political economic approaches can best help us understand the path to global resilience and sustainability?

Joseph is also working with CEFRES and Charles University to help build CUNI’s study of, and research capacities for, African Studies. Africa’s importance to world affairs has grown with trends in immigration, climate change, demographics, and renewed scrambles for African resources in the past decades, and CUNI is well placed to potentially become a leader in these fields. Please contact Joseph if you are interested in joining the Africa-Charles Project.

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Refereed Publications

“Rural Rentierism? The Rentier State Theory and Its Applicability to Local Spaces in Gabon.” In Oil-Age Africa, pp. 59-83. Brill, 2022.

“The Pitfalls of conservation in an African rentier state: The case of Gamba, Gabon (1960s-2015).” The Extractive Industries and Society 8, no. 4 (2021): 100995.

“Workshop Report: Tracing Legacies of Violence in French Equatorial Africa.” Africa Spectrum 54, no. 2 (2019): 162-172.

“Equatorial Guinea.” In Africa Yearbook Volumes 11-18. Brill, 2015-2022. (8 chapters)

“Equatorial Guinea Country Report.” Bertelsmann Transformation Index (2020,2022). https://bti-project.org/fileadmin/api/content/en/downloads/reports/country_report_2022_GNQ.pdf (2 reports)

Blog Posts

“Neoliberalism and the March of Impunity in Equatorial Guinea.” Africa is a Country, July 2019. https://africasacountry.com/2019/07/neoliberalism-and-the-march-of-impunity-in-equatorial-guinea

“Tropical Oppressors: State Violence in Equatorial Guinea.” ASCL Africanist Blog, 27 May 2019.  https://www.ascleiden.nl/content/ascl-blogs/tropical-oppressors-state-violence-equatorial-guinea

Professional Background

Liaison Officer, Project Rethink, Czech Business Council for Sustainable Development—Prague (2021-2022)

Guest Researcher, Leiden University (2019-present)

Country Expert, ViEWS, A Political Violence Early-Warning System, Uppsala

University (2019 – 2021, Remote)

Lecturer of Academic Writing, University of Regensburg (2018)

Lecturer of Business and Economics in Africa, Institut National Supérieur des Etudes Economiques et

Commerciales – Paris (2013-2016)

Lecturer of Legal English, Université de Panthéon-Assas Paris 2 (2013-2017)

Lecturer of Legal English, Université de Panthéon-Sorbonne Paris 1 (2013-2015)