Beyond depoliticization and divisive antagonism: Rethinking fear, anger, and anxiety in environmental politics

Negative eco-emotions such as fear, anger, and anxiety are becoming increasingly widespread as the consequences of the ongoing climate crisis are getting progressively worse. Previous literature has warned that these emotions are best avoided in the public sphere, as they risk contributing to either depoliticization or divisive antagonism. In this article, I defend the political and democratic potential of eco-fear, eco-anger, and eco-anxiety. Using Chantal Mouffe's framework of agonistic politics as a lens, I examine how these emotions can be formulated to facilitate the formation of collective political identities and transform potentially destructive antagonism into democratic agonism. By bringing forward how these negative eco-emotions can enable politicization while avoiding destructive antagonism, this article contributes to the growing literature on eco-emotions and the literature on agonistic theory. Through a review of the existing literature on eco-emotions, I contend that fear can help to re-politicize environmental discourses when directed towards specific eco-political threats, such as technologies or political inaction. Anger, I argue, can strengthen collective identities through renewed agency and counter-hegemonic thinking, with “Lordean anger” mitigating some of its moralizing tendencies. Finally, I suggest that anxiety is most productive when tied to a sense of place and belonging, grounding political identities in our ecological interconnectedness.