Theories of Global Collapse: Closing Down or Opening Up the Futures?

Fabrizio Li Vigni (1) , Enka Blanchard (2) , Cyprien Tasset (3)

1 CIS - Centre Internet et Société
2 LAMIH - Laboratoire d'Automatique, de Mécanique et d'Informatique industrielles et Humaines - UMR 8201
3 Territoires - Territoires

In this essay, we first ask what kind of rhetorical styles the theories of global collapse have when talking about futures. We claim that these theories manifest in one of three forms: prospective, prophecy, and science-fiction. We then ask if such theories tend to close down or rather open up the space of possible futures. While some observers have argued that they reduce the trajectories of human development to a unique catastrophic one, we will show that they actually give rise to a number of alternative imaginaries for the post-capitalist and post-oil era.

Mots clés: Collapse; Futures regimes; Prospective; Prophecy; Science-fiction

Domaines: Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences; Sociologie

Fabrizio Li Vigni, Enka Blanchard, Cyprien Tasset. Theories of Global Collapse: Closing Down or Opening Up the Futures?. Journal of Futures Studies, 2022, 27 (1). ⟨hal-03920263⟩