Reclaiming Fear in the Age of Climate Breakdown: From the Biopolitics of Catastrophe to Affective Self-Defense

Contemporary diagnoses of resurgent authoritarianism frequently attribute it to the political mobilization of fear, drawing on a long tradition that casts fear as the antithesis of freedom. This article argues that such a framework is conceptually inadequate in the face of climate breakdown. It critically engages scholarship that cautions against environmental fear and catastrophist discourse, identifying three key assumptions underpinning most of these critiques: that environmental fears are politically homologous to other historically theorized forms of fear; that fear directly fosters authoritarian tendencies at the individual level; and that fear consolidates reactionary power while weakening emancipatory movements at the collective level. Against this affective determinism and threat functionalism, the article draws on ecofeminist and anti-militarist thought to reconceptualize fear not as a regressive affect opposed to democratic agency, but as an ambivalent, critical orientation toward shared vulnerability. In this context, affective self-defense emerges as key: a mode of political praxis grounded in the open, collective acknowledgement and articulation of fear - rather than its suppression or instrumentalization - as a first step in the organization of resistance and care.