Littérature à potentiel heuristique pour temps incertains

Abstract

While the present time seems marked by high and even growing uncertainty, how to (re)gain holds on what is in the making and could form the future? This paper aims to show that science fiction provides a material which also has relevance and which can be tailored to be incorporated into a process of knowledge production. Science fiction texts can indeed be taken as both a reservoir of thought experiments and as forms of problematizations (in the sense of Michel Foucault). Based on a corpus of French and English texts directed towards a more or less close future and generally considered as carriers of engaged positions (speculative fiction, social anticipation, cyberpunk and postcyberpunk, biopunk, etc.), a first demonstration base specifies the reflexive apprehension that can be made of science fiction beyond the cultural form and its literary expression. A second step then advances a series of methodological proposals to seize the matter and be able to translate these imaginary visions into experimental holds on the future.

Keywords

• future
• knowledge
• problematization
• science fiction
• thought experiments
• philosophy