In Conversation with Isabelle Stengers: Ontological Politics in Catastrophic Times

In this conversation, Isabelle Stengers elucidates upon the ontological politics of scientific practice in this contemporary moment to remind us that another science is possible. Drawing from her own rich scholarship of sociology, history, and philosophy of science, Stengers makes the case that the scientific enterprise has been caught up since the scientific revolution in a practice of fast science which is premised on a particular kind of irresponsibility which has consequences for these catastrophic times. In turn, she calls for a slow science, one which is premised on redeveloping the art of paying attention to that which has historically and too easily bracketed out as “non-scientific” concerns. Not unlike the intrusion of Gaia, which Stengers offers as a critical alternative to the concept of the Anthropocene, slow science is an insistent stranger who can no longer be ignored, whose presence increasingly provides a productive irritation. Further, another science is not only possible, it is necessary: Stengers offers that it might be what is necessary to go beyond just surviving in the ruins.