Beyond deliberation: Why we need affect for ecological democracy

Abstract

In the context of growing affective polarization, climate backlash and emotionally charged climate mobilizations, this article argues that theorists of environmental democracy must take affect and emotions seriously. Drawing on early feminist and ecofeminist critiques of deliberative democracy as well as ecological agonism, we advance a theoretical and research-programmatic argument by exploring what might be gained by re-centring emotionality in our understanding of democratic responses to ecological crises. The argument unfolds in three steps: We first identify the underestimation of emotions as a persistent blind spot within environmental deliberative democracy. Second, building on this literature review, we highlight two ways in which taking affects seriously may reshape ecological democracy. At a practical level, centring emotions could reshape whose knowledge is recognized or excluded in the framing of ecological issues. At a theoretical level, attending to affects opens pathways to consider political agency in less anthropo- and androcentric terms. Finally, we turn to radical feminism to broaden the democratic imagination in response to ecological breakdown, exploring the example of feminist consciousness-raising as a method for politicizing emotions and fostering affective counterpublics as an alternative to deliberative mini-publics.