The Climate Polycrisis and the Question of Whether We Are Alone: A Psychoanalytic Perspective

This article argues that the question of whether we are alone in the universe is a symptom of Western apparatuses that produce an ontological rift between human beings and other species. This rift comprises instrumental, ruling epistemologies that depersonalize other species, thus legitimating our indifference to their manifold intelligences and communications. The Western apparatuses that produce the rift can be understood in terms of a normative and historical unconscious, as well as the defenses of weak dissociation and projection. These defenses operate to secure a conscious and preconscious sense of existential significance while rendering unconscious the terrifying reality of existential insignificance. This analysis also provides a partial explanation for the sources of the climate polycrisis and the strong resistance to effective climate action. That is, dissonant subjects have an antagonistic relation to “nature,” deeming all that falls under this abstraction mute and dumb (unintelligent).