The problems of, and remedy for, hope in the Anthropocene Age: a psychoanalytic–political perspective

Abstract

The Anthropocene Age exposes a fundamental problem and contradiction of Western political philosophies, which is the production of an ontological rift between human beings and other species that undermines care and hope. This rift becomes especially evident when we become aware of the devastating effects of climate change. To further understand this rift, I rely on what I call a psychoanalytic–political hermeneutical framework that identifies the conscious and unconscious aspects of agency, motivation, and illusion as they emerge from and exist within public–political spaces of speaking and acting together that maintain the ontological rift and its distortions of care and hope. I turn to a psychoanalytic developmental perspective of the relation between care and hope, which points to a remedy vis-à-vis the ontological rift.