Many strategies for scientific communication (in both policy and education) still focus on mainly conveying facts more clearly. This despite the research on scientific education and communication that over the past 20 years clearly shows how this type of communication is limited in order to bring about real change and commitment (Fedele et al, 2019; Håkansson et al. 2020).  In relation to climate change which often is grounded within science education, this becomes problematic. Hence, since the fact-based science education brings its entangled objective, positivistic approach of understanding the world, (i.e., the subject/object, nature/culture divide, Latour 2014; 2018), this may risk the students to identify themselves as more or less passive observers and not part of the climate processes (Verlie, 2019). As well there still is the shadow of “the Truth”, revealing itself through the scientific knowledge, even in relation to complex issues as climate change.

Creating knowledge about the climate crises involves more than education of natural and social sciences. This means being attentive to the ways in which our knowledge and the material dimensions of the world around us, the social orders we live by, and the normative values we share are all intertwined (Barad, 2007; Haraway 2017). This study rests on the assumption that the different ways we live and act, also relates to what we know and how we experience the world around us. “Knowing is a matter of intra-acting” as Barad puts it (2017, p. 149).

This study deals with the phenomena of climate change as discursive practices entangled with social, ethical and material intra-actions, as relations that have a performative nature and real effects (Verlie, 2019). In this study time is of specific interest, revealing entanglements of socio-material intra-actions as different climate change becomings of response-ability.

Since 2018 new social movements of activists addressing the climate and ecological crises has rapidly grown.Extinction rebellion (XR) is an example of a grass root movement engaged in the climate and ecological crises and societal transformation, with a tremendous growth of international active members and a growing attention in media within a short time. Hence an interesting entrance of this study, is to explore intra-actions of climate change becomings in their actions. This is particularly interesting to investigate during a period when scientific facts about climate change and different requirements for environmental considerations are being questioned.

To explore how climate change may be (re)configured trough intra-actions, I started this relational exploration in the summer of 2021, when Extinction Rebellion (XR) rang the bell for a Nordic Rebellion. A call that echoed on social media to address the Nordic countries to uprise for a mass action of civil disobedience. Carbon as an economic oil resource and a threat to life were in the centre of these actions. The initiative called upon devoted and new rebels to make a difference in Oslo, in the arising time-window of opportunity, pending the nearby Norwegian parliamentary elections in September 2021.

To experience and take part of performed entangled assemblages, I placed myself in the middle of some of these performing actions. The central question guiding this study: How may phenomena of climate change becomings be experienced as meaning that matters during (intra-)actions of Extinction Rebellions actions?

With inspiration of the theoretical frameworks of Barad (2007) and Haraway (2017) I acknowledged phenomena of climate change as entangled ongoing time-space intra-actions within Extinction rebellion’s climate actions. In this study time is of specific interest. Time is an important part of the apparatuses in the socio-material intra-actions, showing different climate change becomings and its entangled response-ability of human action. Since intra-acting means that a phenomenon is continuously in the making, it is not possible to come up with a definite form of the phenomenon (Wagensveld & Jolink, 2018). Barad (2007) states that “Spacetimemattering” is a dynamic ongoing reconfiguration of a field of relationalities among “moments,” “places”, and “things” (in their inseparability), where scale is iteratively (re)made in intra-actions (p111). These material discursive apparatuses hence depend on how material processes in the atmosphere are affecting the temperature on earth as well as the social constructs of human’s meaning-making. This is resulting in different becomings of climate change with time as a central actor of how these assemblages makes meaning. Some concepts of interest for this study: “Diffraction, Barad (2007) suggests, is about the “entangled nature of differences” in the social world and how socio-material processes “intra-act” from moment to moment. Studies of such diffractions “highlight, exhibit, and make evident the entangled structure of the changing and contingent ontology of the world. In a diffractive analysis it is the relational result that are of interest. Accordingly, this involves looking for contrasts and connections, and is not about representation or classification. Barad (2007) points out that, close attention is paid to detail in a diffractive analysis, to the intra-actions and to the possibilities for new ideas to evolve. The empirical material consists of ethnographic data collected from actions of XR, mainly in connection to the mass action of the Nordic rebellion week in Oslo in august 2021 (interviews, observations, rhetoric texts, social media and fieldnotes).

The initial findings discuss how “time” intra-act in assemblages of different meaning. Time becomes a relational actor of different meaning of the urgency or emergency of climate change due to temporalities of time, e.g.: Carbon budget temporality, Generation gap, Eco-modernization, Desynchronized temporalities of ecology and market economy, Slow democracy and fast decisions. These are some examples of emerging temporalities showing different meaning in relation to climate crises and relations of truth, trust and response-ability. How we allow ourselves to see the world in new ways can be crucial in creating opportunities to address the challenges posed by climate change. Attention of how we understand the world, may create attention of values, inspiration, and visions to create new stories for the future. Hence, in the actions where Extinction rebellion encounters the world, time-space-mattering within the phenomenon of climate change reveal realities of matter related to temporalities. These temporalities marked by the difference of urgency and responsibility are existing as parallel ontologies. These realities of truth and trust carry experiences of empowerment for actions, sadness, fear and shame, frustration, and requirements of system change, as well as some of convictions of possibilities for innovation and growth.

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