Thursday (April 10, 2025 – July 17, 2025) | 14.00 – 15.30
Philosophikum, CIP-Pool PC74, Universitätsstr. 41
This course will take as its point of departure that partial or total climate collapse, i.e. global warming with such disastrous effects as to permanently alter most global social and political structures, is not only likely but increasingly inevitable. Today, science fiction, more so than most other forms of artistic or cultural expression, attempts to grapple with this proposition. In attempting to catch up with the reality of the rapidly worsening condition of our planet, this course will therefore pay sustained attention to a selection of near-future science fiction texts in an attempt to imagine more accurately a future of climate collapse in political, economic, cultural, and ecological registers. In doing so, we will focus on concretely imagining plausible scenarios for extreme climate events as well as the plausibility and ethics of various speculative responses. In conjunction with two central fictional texts by Neal Stephenson and Kim Stanley Robinson, the course will also include theoretical considerations on questions of the planetary, civilizational collapse, and the speculative affordances of sci-fi.
Further information for students of the University of Cologne: Klips