Paper short abstract:

This paper emphasises desire in assemblage theory to explore how climate justice is negotiated in the transition to renewable energy in South Africa. It elaborates a situated, non-universalist justice theorisation based on incompatible justice claims by actors pursuing renewable infrastructure.

Paper long abstract:

This paper advances a situated study of climate justice as it is contested via renewable energy transitions in South Africa. Assemblage theory is increasingly used to analyse climate change policy. Desire is central to the process of assemblage, as conceived by Deleuze and Guattari (1988), who argue that it animates the power and agency of people and things. Desire is often unaccounted for in human geographers’ application of assemblage theory which leads to descriptive ‘systems of things’ (Buchanan, 2020). Desire is analytically useful for understanding justice claims as it can reveal incompatibilities between seemingly aligned positions. Two overlapping policy assemblages are analysed: Green Climate Fund (GCF) project development and the national Just Transition Pathway. Both target the roll-out of renewable energy infrastructure. Data was collected between 2018-2020, consisting of interviews, participant observation in events related to each and key documents. The paper seeks to demonstrate the productive effect of desire in these assemblages. Desire for environmental and human health; reliable and affordable electricity; the propagation of an African green banking model; and the reproduction of the GCF. These contribute to infrastructural citizenship (Lemanski, 2020): a shared expression of that desire, albeit one in conflict. Actors are motivated by in-justices or by actions perceived as self-evidently just: subtly different positions, but the limits of these desires and the incompatibility between these positions elaborate tensions in climate justice. The spatial dimension of this, as desires territorialise in a national context, should be central in human geography’s application of assemblage theory.