Love and rage in the Anthropocene: On resistance and moral emotions in the face of global crisis

The urgent and existential nature of the ecological crisis easily inspires fear and desperation, begging for radical interventions. According to Theodor Adorno, such interventions easily relapse into actionism, which reproduces the instrumental and self-centred thinking that undergirds our contemporary crises. This paper engages with these hesitations about actionism to reflect on the limitations and potential of activism in the Anthropocene by elaborating on Adorno’s hesitations about actionism. I subsequently examine how these hesitations led him to endorse a negativistic form of resistance revolving around saying “no” to the present. By turning to Eve Sedgwick’s concepts of paranoid and reparative reading, this paper considers why such negativism alone might not be sufficient because it can stultify and paralyse those engaging in activism. As such, this article argues that critically (self-)reflecting on activism is crucial today, but that such efforts must always be paired with affirmative searches for a reparative otherwise.