Presentation short abstract

How psychoanalytic insights can help confront obstacles that inhibit and thereby enable post-capitalist transformation in pursuit of degrowth.

Presentation long abstract

Rapidly expanding discussion of the potential to enact degrowth within political ecology and related fields has thus far focused primarily on political, economic, cultural and environmental dynamics either inhibiting or facilitating degrowth at both micro and macro scales. While such issues are of course important, researchers have also highlighted the significance of attention to more intimate (inter- and intra-personal) dynamics influencing potential to realize degrowth in practice. Within this latter line of inquiry, however, psychoanalytic perspectives have been relatively absent thus far. Yet psychoanalysts, particularly those in the Lacanian tradition, have long emphasized how a demand for infinite growth can be seen as inscribed not only in the capitalist political economy but also in the very structure of human subjectivity. Lacanians view the subject as defined by an essential lack that can never be filled but which individuals still nonetheless seek to satisfy through various forms of enjoyment, thus giving rise to an insatiable desire. This understanding of the subject has important implications for degrowth politics that have yet to be systematically explored in the literature, highlighting the importance of transforming our relationship with enjoyment as an essential aspect of the degrowth project. I explore how Lacanian insights can help to confront obstacles that inhibit and thereby enable post-capitalist transformation in pursuit of degrowth.

Presentation short abstract

How the ideal ecotourism experience and “authenticity” are nothing more than fantasies.

Presentation long abstract

In tourism studies, authenticity is an often-recurring topic. Especially ecotourism claims to sell ‘authenticity’ by offering experiences of pristine nature, exotic people, and simple(r) lifestyles. However, ecotourism destinations are repeatedly commodified and ‘spectacularized’, adapting them to the (mostly Western) tourist’s consumptive wishes. Following Debord, ‘the spectacle’ is the triumph of images, representations, and appearances in modern capitalist societies that, through endless repetition, creates its own reality. This reality also conceals uncomfortable elements: the spectacularization of ecotourism destinations frequently results in tourists and locals believing that pre-existing images are ‘the' reality rather than a representation. Arguably, then, the ideal ecotourism experience and even authenticity itself are just fantasies—stories that help us comprehend the world. They sustain their appeal through desires yet are unattainable in practice. Using the spectacle and psychoanalysis to theorize authenticity as a fantasy, this study analyzes the ecotourism discourse surrounding the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA). Covering parts of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, KAZA TFCA was created for conservation, peace-building, and socio-economic development purposes, largely relying on ecotourism. This research examines the discourses of diverse national and international organizations and governments involved in the project. We argue that what is presented as authentic ecotourism in KAZA TFCA is not a stable quality found in pristine landscapes, local cultures, thrilling experiences, or attempts to do good by way of consumption, but a spectacular fantasy: a story producing and sustaining desire by promising wholeness, while ensuring its persistent suspension by concealing underlying hierarchies and contradictions.

Presentation short abstract

Highlights the importance of attending to desire in addressing the tension between hunting and biodiversity conservation.

Presentation long abstract

This paper highlights the importance of attending to desire in addressing the tension between hunting and biodiversity conservation. While some position hunters as conservationists and passionate stewards of nature, others assert that killing animals for fun is incompatible with conservation. Here, I use a psychoanalytic political ecology approach to move beyond these arguments by focusing on hunters’ underlying desires towards the hunting process and the animals being hunted. Drawing on qualitative research with Maltese bird hunters - including those who also express their passion via bird photography and others who seek catharsis abroad through hunting tourism - I show that while some hunters claim to be fully governed by their insatiable desires, others express their desires in more disciplined ways, setting limits on how much and what they hunt, or even shifting the object of desire from hunting to birdwatching. Distinguishing between such disciplined desire and unrestrained desires that lead to greedy overhunting, I contend, opens the possibility of reconciling hunters’ desires with pursuit of conviviality, where meaningful long-lasting human-nonhuman relations are nurtured. Following Lacan, I argue that when hunters take responsibility for their desires, accept the impossibility of complete fulfillment, and learn to live with this lack, conviviality might be possible. Wholesale rejection or condemnation of hunters’ desires, on the other hand, overlooks the potential to channel their passion for birds away from destructive violence and towards coexistence.

Presentation short abstract

How political ecology has generally evaded the unconscious trouble that sits at the heart of abjection.

Presentation long abstract

Psychoanalyst and feminist philosopher Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection has recently received greater attention in scholarship on the political geographies and ecologies of non-human life. Developed in her canonical book, Powers of Horror, Kristeva’s conceptualizing of abjection as the casting off that which is seen as repulsive, unwanted, and disgusting in the subject—that which is both part and not-part of ourselves—is not new to geography. However, I argue the psychoanalytic primacy of abjection has been largely reduced to a biopolitical reading of abjection through the politics of bordering and exclusion. Lacking a deeper recognition of the abject as a confrontation with psychoanalytic anxiety, fear, and horror, in this paper, I seek to show how contemporary literature in geography and political ecology on ‘abject species’ has generally evaded the meaning and makings of unconscious trouble that sits at the heart of abjection, which is necessary for a richer and truly psychoanalytic development of an abject political ecology. To develop this argument, I will present a psychoanalytic reading of Kudzu (Pueraria montana), the well-known vining plant known colloquially in the United States as the “plant that ate the South.” Drawing on a rich body of geographic and environmental humanities literature on Kudzu and its spread across the US South, I will show how the horror of plant species (re)cast as invasives provide an opportunity for a distinctly psychoanalytic political ecology reading of more-than-human abjection. I conclude with suggestions for an abject political ecology research agenda.

Presentation short abstract

Seeks to consider the question of political acting in the face of the socio-environmental emergency.

Presentation long abstract

The paper seeks to consider the question of political acting in the face of the socio-environmental emergency. Despite widespread and often seemingly radical socio-environmental resistance and action in many parts of the world, they do not make much of a dent in altering the history of the world’s socio-environmental future. The paper examines the question of (political) resistance and the content of what constitutes ‘radical’ forms of action. Starting from the realities of the present climate emergency, the paper develops a series of interrelated arguments, articulated around the psychoanalytic notion of ‘acting’ and the subsequent distinction between ‘action’ and ‘act’ in Lacanian psychoanalysis. Through this, we argue that psychoanalytic theory can shed light on how act(ion) is influential in stabilizing and/or changing the status quo. In the paper, we distinguish the act from acting-out and passage-à-l’acte. In acting-out, the subject appears to know exactly what it seeks in order to escape a certain situation but remains desperately attached to an Other who holds the power to provide it. In contrast, the subject in passage-à-l’acte loses its connection to desire, and instead solely revolves around the break from (and destruction of) the situation altogether. It is only through the act that the subject can overcome itself, subscribe to a new situation, and be truthful to its own desire. We conclude that the act opens the terrain of radial political transformation, one that permits a re-organization of socio-ecological political order.

Presentation short abstract

How denial, repression and dismissal of waste positions it as a site of radical political potential for environmental and social justice.

Presentation long abstract

More than one million tons of hazardous waste are traded among Canada, Mexico, and the United States each year. In addition to managing a significant proportion of their own waste, all three North American countries are now net hazardous waste importers. In this paper, I examine how transnationally traded hazardous waste is managed as both a risk to local communities, governed by local, state/provincial and national institutions and an internationally traded good, the transboundary movement of which is facilitated by supranational trade agreements. I trace how this imbrication of environmental risk and economic value help to produce distinct flows of hazardous materials across North America.

More broadly, I draw on Marxist and psychoanalytic analyses to connect refuse and refusal and argue that, rather than an afterthought, waste is a necessary component of modern capitalism whose necessity is denied by claims about recycling and circular economies; repressed by distancing and removal (out of sight, out of mind); and dismissed as an unfortunate externality. I further argue that it is in part these processes of denial, repression and dismissal of the fundamental importance of waste that positions it as a site of radical political potential for environmental and social justice.

Presentation short abstract

Dwells on the crucial linkage between socionature’s volatility and subaltern politics to ask what it might entail in our age of ecological crisis.

Presentation long abstract

Drawing on the Lacanian notion of “extimacy,” which denotes that which is both intimate and exterior, this paper aims at contributing to the bourgeoning field of psychoanalytic political ecology by emphasizing two extimate features: the instability of—or extimacy in—the socionatural world, rendering impossible notions of natural unity or harmony; and the priority of the Excluded, viewed as symptomatic of—extimate to—the ills of global capitalism: those upon which the System vitally depends yet repudiates. The paper dwells on the crucial linkage between these two extimate elements—socionature’s volatility and subaltern politics—asking what it might entail in our age of ecological crisis. What political-ecological structures would need to be in place for addressing ecological turbulence while also tackling the socioeconomic antagonisms that produce the Excluded? And how might the social and environmental commons have to be regulated to better ensure that the subaltern does not pay the highest price in order that the wealthiest pay the lowest? By addressing these questions through the lens of extimacy, the paper probes the emancipatory potential of political ecology.

Presentation short abstract

Shows how psychoanalytic insights can challenge the entrenched human/nonhuman binary without idealising nature or seeking reconciliation with it.

Presentation long abstract

In the speculative zone between psychoanalysis and new materialism, this paper proposes a posthuman concept of the unconscious. de Vries and Kapoor have recently argued that ‘the relation of nature to society is characterized by the coincidence of two lacks’, in that neither human subjects nor ‘nature’ corresponds to a coherent whole (p. 2). And yet, in most psychoanalytic work, the recognition of lack and its consequences remains fully located on the side of the human. The unconscious remains tied to the ‘speaking being,’ whose alienation from the environment is cast as uniquely human. This paper at once challenges psychoanalytic thought to reach beyond the human while introducing the disruptive force of unconscious knowledge into the predominantly phenomenological realm of new materialisms. Drawing evidence from fields of scholarship that have addressed questions of elemental behaviour, I propose the idea of a posthuman unconscious that is manifest (that is, observable) in the effects to which it gives rise. To articulate this, I turn to Lacan’s later work on the real unconscious, or the unconscious in the real, where Lacan elaborates the unconscious not in terms of repressed meaning but as enigmatic enunciation: something that has arisen from ‘the body’ (or the material sensorium) and has ‘a sense beyond meaning’ (Moncayo, 2017: 57). I thus aim to show how psychoanalytic insight can challenge the entrenched human/nonhuman binary without idealising nature or seeking reconciliation with it.