---
title: "Critical Ambivalence"
description: "The evaluative stance Antikythera's scenario work sets for itself."
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/critical-ambivalence"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/critical-ambivalence"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Critical Ambivalence

> A working definition written for this wiki from the reading notes; not Antikythera's own wording. From Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki/terms/critical-ambivalence), an independent guide to Antikythera's published work.

The evaluative stance Antikythera's scenario work sets for itself. *Hemispherical Stacks* says the scenarios it needs "should also be neither really utopian nor dystopian but rather a bit of both, more ambivalent than activist," and the journal's definition of Scenario Fiction repeats the rule: provocations, not prescriptions, "meant to be ambivalent rather than activist." Bratton gave the fuller form at the program's launch: utopian speculative design offers "performative utopian wishes," dystopian design codifies an "official dystopia," and the ideal project is one its makers are "critically ambivalent" about — unsure whether its coming true would be the best or worst thing, a *pharmakon* whose resolution is suspended on the bet that undecidable projects generate more durable ideas. Companion to *Scenario Fiction* and *Self-Depresentation*.

## Appears in

- [Hemispherical Stacks](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/hemstacks) (2025-11-21)
- [A New Philosophy Of Planetary Computation](https://antikythera.wiki/work/media/noema-a-new-philosophy-of-planetary-computation) (2022-10-05)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._