Stengers encourages her audience to see beyond the superficial fallback excuses and typical ways of viewing the problems of the climate crisis. She invites us to catch common phrases which do us no good, but rather keep us in different forms of division. She sees the consistent default being that there is no confidence in “the guardians,” there is no choice, there are no alternatives (save the “infernal alternatives,” resulting in different forms of division).
Her sharp terms “cold panic,” “infernal alternatives” play on the situation as metacommentary on the climate crisis. They operate in the rhetoric of the climate crisis, and, by such a way, remind us of the layered political issues that result from the debates.
In her chapter on capitalism, Stengers writes that an idea or party will mobilize, claiming to transcend the conflicts and unite everyone. She writes: “I anticipate and equally dread such appeals to sacred unity and the accusations of betrayal that automatically accompany them” (57). Alliances, as she sees them, are inevitable. I follow Stengers by adding that choice of alliance, it seems, could fall on minor issues, but, with the current lack of accurate information, access, and trust, the general arguments seem stuck on the topical surface—is climate change really happening? what do we call this climate issue? Etc.
Image by Garry Knight
Reflecting on Democracy, Corruption and Climate Change in the COVID-19 Era
In his article “Will Climate Change Destroy Democracy?,” Damon Linker writes: “There’s an oddly apolitical character to most of our talk about environmental threats… Arguably the problem of politics is getting individuals and groups in a given political community to put aside their own self-interest in favor of the common good.”
Linker’s argument meshes well with Stengers’s understanding of what is actually going on with climate change issues. We are stuck in the theory side of “climate change”–remote, inaccessible, and, therefore, apolitical. The “right to not to pay attention,” as Stengers calls it, is deeply protected by default from these conditions. This right being upheld leads to incremental corruption, further instability, and an inability to trace where it all went wrong (Povitkina). The right to not pay attention to climate change stems from “the guardians'” policy of not paying attention to citizens: it has become a mutual looking away.
The point, however, is to understand what does not work, in order to fix the issue—capitalism, the impossibility of “meddling with” governance by asking questions (55), lack of clarity and trust in leadership…
Fair, efficient assemblage on the climate crisis has been foreclosed for a long time, but it is Stengers’s hope that with open interactive questions and with reconceptualizations of “the guardians” as human, citizens as participants affected, and of capitalism as an evil spirit preventing unity and stability, collaborative efforts to mitigate panic and to establish a proactive defense against climate change and political risk-offsetting could be achieved.
Stengers’s underlying message could be read as a call for a true, active democratization of climate crisis discussions. Her chapters here advance the discourse by demonstrating alternative ways to seeing oneself (whether “guardian” or citizen) in the space of climate change discourse and participation.
References:
Linker, Damon. “Will Climate Change Destroy Democracy?” The Week.
https://theweek.com/articles/839648/climate-change-destroy-democracy
Povitkina, Marina. “Reflecting on Democracy, Corruption and Climate Change in the COVID-19 Era,” E-International Relations. 6 May 2020.
I agree that inertia or deactivation on the part of our “guardians” or people in charge of governance stems from what Stengers accurately diagnoses as a “cold panic.” The response to all modern catastrophes – from 9/11 attacks to recession to climate disaster to now pandemic – from the top has been one of confusion and always in service of the economy over humanity, packaging shopping as an act of patriotism. With the clock running out on us to change our ways in a fundamental way before the planet has her revenge, we the citizens have to be co-authors of the messaging and drown out conspiracies and climate deniers. There are no both sides to Climate Crisis!
Great synthesis of Stengers and additional sources here. Linker’s points about democracy relying on optimism are important – brings to mind Lauren Berlant’s Cruel Optimism, which would be interesting in dialogue with Stengers.
This is an incisive reading of Stengers’ text and I admire your interpretation, especially the point about the right to not pay attention and I think the fact this is framed as a “right” makes it an inherently valuable position to take.
This, coupled with the many avenues we have to essentially distract ourselves (I’m thinking about baseless theories that circulate in dark passages of the Internet) make it difficult to establish ourselves as “Guardians” and the political framing of this system is greatly explicated by you and Stengers.