On the Natural History of Denial

Uli Plass • Wesleyan University

February 3rd @ 6pm • Daniel Family Commons

2024 was the year when the “preferred limit” of the Paris Agreement on climate action was effectively nullified: the pre-industrial average global temperature was exceeded by 1.5°C. Nothing is stopping the fossil fuel industry from driving up global temperatures even more. Alarmingly, extreme droughts, floods, and fires are now occurring even in places that previously had been considered safe. Yet denialism prevails, in silences, words of false comfort, scapegoating, magical thinking, and also in acts of deadly, spectacular violence (often, on wheels). Drawing on W. G. Sebald’s On the Natural History of Destruction, Freud’s theories of libidinal economy, and the Frankfurt School’s work on “pathic projection” and latent fascism, this talk seeks to make sense of the current configurations of denialism, ranging from right-wing historical revisionism (denying traumatic pasts) to “realist” anti-utopianism (denying “ideal” futures).

Energy and Exhaustion
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