Psychoanalysis and the geography of the anthropocene : fantasy, oil addiction and the politics of global warming

In this chapter, drawing largely on work of Lacanian clinicians and Stavrakakis’s (2007) Left Lacanian theorists, I argue that it is important to take oil addiction seriously if we are to address the ecological challenge of global warming. Contemporary Lacanian theory asserts that the addict’s relationship to substance or habit is mediated through language and fantasy and is thus open to analytic intervention (Loose 2011). This chapter is an intervention into “oil addiction” that attempts to understand the fantasies animating the politics of global warming: fantasies of carbon markets solving the problem, fantasies of adapting to climate change through sustainable cities, and fantasies that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by people with a nefarious agenda. Psychoanalytic theory allows us to understand the underlying architecture of these disparate familiar fantasies and their connection to addiction. Certainly they are palliative fantasies that promise an “easy fix,” but more centrally, each fantasy is connected to addiction in so far the promised solution allows the subject to avoid entering the social bond of language, confronting and assuming responsibility for their own desires in relation to others. Entering into relation with others is precisely what is required to shift our relationship with oil and to address the challenge of global warming.