What Do Climate Change and Psychoanalysis Have to Do With Each Other?

The anthropologist Bruno Latour states that modernity – during which time psychoanalysis emerged – was characterized by a dualistic way of thinking, dividing the world into two opposing parts: body/mind, nature/culture, masculine/feminine, center/periphery, etc. According to him, one of these oppositions served as the basis from which all others were erected: that one between nature and culture. The establishment of these antagonisms had a political reason, pointed out by the philosophers Negri and Hardt in the United States, and by the Modernity/Coloniality group in Latin America. This latter one theorizes that coloniality is the dark side of modernity, and that the nature-culture divide was an important support for the establishment of modern colonialism. The separation between nature and culture runs through psychoanalytic theory and has consequences for its practice. However, the nature and culture divide has been called into question in the Anthropocene era, the moment when we recognize how much human action participates in and degrades the geological and climatic environment. Can we continue, in our theory and in our practice, to affirm and transmit the separation between nature and culture and the other dualisms they have engendered? These are the questions this article seeks to discuss.