Exploring possible future worlds with the practice of design fiction

The Blind Spot: Some Introductory Notes on Betting

Betting can be considered as an opposite (and maybe complementary) paradigm to the one of transparency. As a cultural form and media mythology about uncertainty, betting offers the ground for a willing suspension of transparency. The betting paradigm is the living archive of the transparency paradigm and the model of rationality it relies on. Therefore, we can illuminate the critical dimension of this living archive with regard to the model of the well-informed controversy and the transparent pursuit of truth.

François Provenzano

How can we still argue about the climate? Double irony and opacification of positions in a Pascal Praud’s topic launch

In this post, I want to highlight a particular use of irony as a polemical resource for constructing a sceptical position towards climate change. The issue of climate change seems to be relatively consensual in public opinion nowadays. How then can we still make it an object of controversy, without being trapped in a “climate sceptic” position, which is now largely disqualified? This is the rhetorical stake that I will study in the following lines, based on a specific case: Pascal Praud’s launch of a topic on global warming in the television programme L’Heure des Pros (C NEWS) on 16 May 2019.

Sébastien Chonavey