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*

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