Affectivization and Climate Change: Theorising a ‘Thirdness’

Abstract

In this response I would like to take an academic, personal and Antipodean response to the paper The affectivization of the public sphere: the contribution of psychoanalysis in understanding and counteracting the current crisis scenarios, responding in particular to the potential for Semiotic Dynamic Cultural Psychology Theory to help us make sense of the variety of responses to the climate crisis, both denialism and apocalypticism. As I write we are now experiencing climate change-induced flooding, after recent catastrophic bushfires, and find ourselves experiencing the direct trauma of these events. I will argue that negotiating the affective and semiotic complexities of this phenomenon is a critical step towards climate action, one that also demands a novel theorizing beyond the field of psychology into contemporary post-human ontologies. I will argue for multi-species thinking and for a mourning that leads to response-ability.