Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope : Experiencing the Twin Disasters of COVID-19 and Climate Change

This timely volume examines the conflict between human individual life and larger forces that are not controllable. Drawing on recent literature in phenomenological and existential psychology it calls for a more nuanced understanding of the human predicament. Focusing on the co-occurring crises of climate change and the COVID-19 epidemic, it explores the nature of widespread anxiety and the long-term human consequences. It calls for an expansion of current research that would include the arts and humanities for critical insights into how this essential conflict between humanity and nature may be reconciled. Introduction: Eco-anxiety, Climate, Coronavirus, and Hope 5 The Question of “Hope” 7 Research About Eco-anxiety, COVID-19, and Hope 8 Arts and Coping with Global Anxieties 9 Part I: Phenomenologies of Eco-anxiety 11 Part II: Beyond Birth, Existence, and Environment 12 Part III: Eco-Poetry and Creative Writing 13 References 14 Contents 18 Part I: The Experience of Eco-anxiety 20 Chapter 1: Not to Be Unworthy of the Event: Thinking Through Pandemics with Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze 21 Before and After 21 Epi-demos and Pan-demos 22 Pandemic as Ereignis/Event 22 The Body as Event 25 The Event in the Body Politic 27 Ethics and Pandemic 28 References 30 Chapter 2: We Breathe; Therefore, We Are: The Gasp of Life 32 Introduction 32 COVID-19 33 I Can’t Breathe 35 Eco-anxiety and Angst 37 New Ways of Being and Acting 38 Conclusion 39 References 39 Chapter 3: Atmospheres of Anxiety: Doing Nothing in an Ecological Emergency 41 Atmosphere 42 Nothing 45 References 47 Chapter 4: Anxiety and the Re-figuration of Action: Living in a Crisis-Shaped Present 49 Anxiety, Human Action, and the Projection of Risks 49 Affective Genres as a Kind of Everyday Knowledge 51 Anxiety and the Re-figuration of Action 54 References 56 Chapter 5: Authentic Compassion in the Wake of Coronavirus: A Nietzschean Climate Ethics 58 The Problem of Intergenerational Climate Ethics 59 Nietzsche and Environmental Ethics 60 Reconstructing the Genesis of the Argument 61 Plagues and Eternal Recurrence 65 Conclusion 67 References 67 Part II: Beyond Birth, Existence, and Environment 70 Chapter 6: Birth Strike: Holding the Tension Between Existence and Non-existence 71 Motherhood or Childfreedom? 74 Existential Responsibility 74 Natality 75 Existence Is Contextual 76 References 78 Chapter 7: Stillbirth Grief, Eco-grief and Corona Grief: Reflections on Denialism 80 References 87 Chapter 8: Saving the Other, Saving the Self: Exploring Children’s and Young People’s Feelings About the Coronavirus, Climate, and Biodiversity Crises 89 References 96 Chapter 9: Participating in the Wound of the World: A Matrixial Rethinking of Eco-anxiety 98 In this Darkest Hour 99 Weaving Threads, Weaving Threats 100 Towards the Psycho-planetary 102 Snowcomfort: Embracing the Night 104 References 107 Chapter 10: From Oppression to Love as Mother Earth Joins the Time’s Up and #MeToo Movements 109 The Liberation of Women and the Ecosystem are Linked 109 Sociocultural Parallels of Oppression in Binary Oppositions 110 Even the “Word of God” Validates Man’s Subjugation of Women 110 Early Human Relational Dynamics and Erotics in the Container 112 Our Relationship to the More-Than-Human World Exists on Two Levels 113 References 116 Part III: Eco-Poetry and Creative Writing 118 Chapter 11: Ecoprogramming the Vulnerable Bodies 119 Ecoprogramming: Toward an Ecotopian Future 124 References 125 Chapter 12: Anxiety in Isolation: Anointing with Ecocentrism 127 The Challenges of Eco-Anxiety 127 Nature in a Therapeutic Role 129 The Curative Spell of Ecocentrism and Eco-Poetry 130 Conclusion 132 References 133 Chapter 13: “Narrative Medicine” in the Age of COVID-19: The Power of Creative Writing to Reimagine Environmental Crisis 136 Narrative Medicine 136 Eco-anxiety 137 Corona Writing as Narrative Medicine 138 Conclusion 142 References 143 Chapter 14: Solastalgia and Soul Suffrage: A Narrative Eco-Poem 146 Reference 154 Index 155