Once upon a Time I Was a Nuclear Physicist: What the Politics of Sustainability Can Learn from the Nuclear Laboratory

This paper keeps pace with my personal history as a researcher: starting from the eagerness for knowledge of the nuclear physics PhD student I once was, continuing with my search for social relevance in policy-preparatory research I subsequently performed as a sustainability scholar, it finally leads to the topics of interest for the hybrid philosophy-sociology researcher I am today. Following these traces, I first of all rethink my life as a physicist in terms of science as a necessarily situated and engaged practice before laying bare the baleful scientisation of politics in sustainability discourse. Finally, I sketch the contours of a genuine politics of sustainability by repositioning the enigma of scientific production at the heart of its practice.