Respect for Reality: Unfeeling and Ecological Catastrophe

The article illuminates the multiple dimensions of the affective relation that contemporary affluent societies develop with regards to the global ecological crisis. The central question is, how does it become socially possible and feasible to repress and deny a crisis that is unfolding with such force? Psychoanalytic theories of evasion, forms of social derealization through what I call “unfeeling,” and the colonial rule of nature are introduced as theoretical approaches to understand how such evasion is being naturalized and upheld despite experiences with and scientific knowledge about global warming.