Atmospheric Intra-vention : Reimagining Solar Geoengineering Through Feminist New Materialism - Thesis

[Geoengineering News]

https://helda.helsinki.fi/items/b4029edc-1eb0-4a24-a1a0-d6d7715540a1

Author: Pokela, Anni

25 February 2026

Abstract

This thesis reimagines feminist engagement with solar geoengineering through Karen Barad's agential realism using Donna Haraway's speculative feminism. While existing feminist critiques effectively expose the masculinist, technocratic dimensions of geoengineering discourse, they often result in categorical rejections that may sideline the survival needs of vulnerable communities facing catastrophic climate impacts. Through an integrative literature review and theoretical-conceptual analysis of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), this thesis identifies three critical limitations in previous feminist engagement: the deterministic conflation of problematic ideologies with technological mechanics, ontological inconsistencies regarding human-nature relationships, and an unresolved ‘scale problem’ privileging local solutions while struggling to engage with planetary atmospheric physics.

Applying Barad's concepts of intra-action, material-discursive practices and agential cuts reconceptualizes SAI not as human control over passive atmosphere, but as ongoing atmospheric intra-actions in which we are already entangled participants. This framework dissolves the binary between ‘natural’ and ‘engineered’ systems, and reveals that different research practices literally produce different atmospheric phenomena. By reframing central ethical discussions around geoengineering, this thesis offers tools for response-able participation in atmospheric becoming rather than purist rejection of technological atmospheric approaches.

The thesis demonstrates how feminist new materialist principles can inform the reconfiguration of climate intervention research, introducing a novel conceptual framework, ‘climate intra-vention’, to signal purposeful human participation in atmospheric becoming. This work contributes innovation through theoretical advancement in bridging feminist ethics with planetary-scale challenges and practical frameworks for response-able research, equipping feminist climate politics with the capacity to stay with the trouble of atmospheric intervention in an age of accelerating climate impacts.

Source: Helda, University of Helsinki