Earthly Powers and Affective Environments: An Ontological Politics of Flood Risk

• Published in: Theory, culture & society Vol. 30; no. 7-8; pp. 33 - 50
• Main Author: Whatmore, Sarah J
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.12.2013; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Constructivism; Cooperation; Disputes; Experimental methods; Experiments; Hazards; Knowledge; Natural Disasters; Odontology; Ontology; Philosophers; Political Theories; Political theory; Politics; Power; Research methods; Risk; Scientists; Studies; United Kingdom; affective environments; experimental constructivism; posthumanism
• ISSN: 0263-2764; 1460-3616
• DOI: 10.1177/0263276413480949

In this article I set out to trace some of the implications of recharging the political potency of nature in more-than-human terms. This shifts attention from a biopolitical focus on the inventiveness of the life sciences and what this means in terms of the emergence of ‘cyborg’ political subjects to an onto-political focus on the inventiveness of knowledge controversies and what these mean for techno-political practices. Specifically, the article examines the onto-politics of ‘natural’ hazard events and their capacity to force thought in those affected by them, and so to place new demands on research practices in terms of rendering such events affective and amenable to political interrogation. I work these arguments through the demanding experimental ethos of the philosopher Isabelle Stengers, for whom scientific practices produce reliable knowledge claims only in so far as the questions they address are at risk of being redefined by the phenomena mobilized in them, and who extends this ethos to elaborate an understanding of, even a test for, an adequate political theory and practice. I do so with reference to a recent research experiment in which I collaborated with social and natural scientists and people affected by flooding in the UK.