The emergence of terms such as “alternative facts”, the passing of policies and laws against grassroots groups and environmental organizations, and the rise of right-wing anti-science rhetoric in the US and in Europe suggest that ‘we’ have not only entered a new phase in the geological history of the Earth—that is, the Anthropocene, or the “Age of Man”—but also a new phase in the political debate on climate change and environmentalism. What we are witnessing currently is not only a rise in attacks against the scientific community, especially against women—as, for example, handbooks and manifestos published by far-right groups focusing on strategies of delegitimizing and threatening female scientists, journalists, and activists demonstrate—but also a deep mistrust in scientific knowledge production. Focusing on the question what it means for feminist and other critical scholars if today it is far-right and masculinist groups who are not only emphasizing the social construction of facts and the impossibility of separating science from politics, but also arguing that allegedly “uncomfortable, non-hegemonic” epistemic positions would be marginalized, in this paper, I will explore the relationship between a specific form of hegemonic masculinity, expistemic ignorance, and misogyny in the context of climate change denialism. How is climate change denialism, the rejection of scientific method, and antifeminism informing one another? And how are objectivity, facts, truth, and critique being hijacked and reconfigured in this debate?

Josef Barla holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Vienna. Currently, he is postdoc researcher in the Biotechnology, Nature and Society research group based at the Institute of Sociology at Goethe University Frankfurt. He was a visiting researcher the GEXcel International Collegium for Advanced Transdisciplinary Gender Studies at Linköping University in 2015, and at the Science and Justice Research Center at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 2012/2013. His research focus lies at the intersection of feminist epistemologies, technoscience studies, the philosophy of technology, and the environmental humanities.

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