Title: The fear of uselessness and the enjoyment of ecological destructiveness
Protest against the mitigation of climate change has become a core issue for right-wing populism across the globe. In the attached paper, Simon Schaupp argues that such politics can mobilise a widespread normalisation of ecological destructiveness.
Drawing on Frankfurt School critical theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis, the author argues that protests demanding climate protection provoke outrage because they appear to negate all the sacrifices that had to be made for the world of work. Thus, the normalisation of destructiveness relates to a fear of uselessness common to the modern subject.
The above fear is taken up by the right-wing anti-climate and anti-pesticide reduction organisations and turned into something positive to be enjoyed.
The author illustrates the argument with interviews with Swiss construction workers about their experiences with climate change.
It is concluded that, in the current political climate, the subjugation of external and internal nature is so completely intertwined, any restriction of this expansive utilisation – be it in the form of a reduction in working hours, decarbonisation or pesticide reduction - is perceived as an existential threat, and therefore, making it worse becomes a source of a weird, dysfunctional enjoyment.
For example, the phenomenon discussed by Schaupp can be commonly found operating among ecologists who gain a perverse pleasure from pesticiding the life they are supposed to be looking after, hence my cartoon.
The solution to this psychological problem will be found in broadening the range of spaces in which we can discuss and criticise pesticiding practices that are destructive, and in the process de-normalise the enjoyment and security of poisoning protocols that pay well, but ultimately poison us.
Schaupp, S. (2025). The fear of uselessness: From the normalization to the enjoyment of ecological destructiveness. Thesis Eleven, np.
