Future Imaginaries of Negative Emission Technologies and Folklore Myths in Icelandic Basalt: Provisional Order Emerges from the Possible Magma in the Age of ‘Hauntology’ and Broken Time

Abstract: Why do we in the Western part of world today tend to believe in technology’s mythical promises rather than in folklore myths? Imaginaries of the future influence political subjects’ actions in the present and play a key role in composing the trajectory towards the future. I have critically applied this notion to the implementation of negative emission technologies in the climate-neutrality strategy. This thesis is a critical social science enquiry into discourses on NETs future imaginaries in Iceland and their affect on present nature and communities in Iceland. It is initiating a Spinozist-Marxist critique of NETs and argues that NETs via myths are depoliticised by stakeholders with interests in fossil capitalism, installing NETs as climate technologies sustaining green capitalism. This critique is supported by ethnographically collected data on local peoples’ alienation from carbon capture and mineralisation (CCM) in Iceland — party due to the experience of not being represented and included in decision-making processes. It is culminating in an edifying push for pluralist metaphysics channelled through storytelling, partly told by a local self-proclaimed spiritual medium.