“Nobody is spared from the logic of a mode of production built on exploitation. As Lacan put it, capitalism is the discourse or algorithm in which, instead of communicating to another person as a person, we are forced to negotiate through cloudy signifiers. We are workers relating to other workers in an environment mediated by meaningless metrics and soul-crushing tasks, alienated with daily humiliations of demerits and debts. We would like for it to go differently, Lacan said, we’d like for the master discourse to be less all-encompassing and ‘to say it all, not so fucking stupid.” —Tad Delay

The above passage comes from philosopher, Tad Delay’s book, Future of Denial: The Ideologies of Climate Change. As usual, Tad’s writing style is engaging and thought-provoking, and one of the things I like best about how Tad writes is that his prose is so clear and compelling that it allows one to dive into deep reflection without losing the captivating narrative flow.

With regard to the actual content of the book (which I’m only slightly half done with, just started chapter 8!), I must be honest in admitting that it’s a challenging read. Delay has written a book that confronts the reader with one uncomfortable truth after another by delving into the mechanisms of denial that function in our personal lives and larger societal frameworks. Ultimately, Delay effectively argues that denial is not just a passive state but an active process that influences our decisions, relationships, and worldviews. Considering the amount of data in this book, which imo seriously exemplifies the extraordinary ecological deep dive Tad has underwent for this project, and also taking into account that Climate Change is just such a complex and multifaceted topic to begin thinking through, one can understand the despair that might begin to set in.

That said, Delay is not just a Lacanian scholar and an environmental humanities scholar, but a Marxist scholar as well, and for my money, this interdisciplinary approach is where the book really shines! Future of Denial offers a nuanced critique that aligns with a Marxist analysis of how denial functions within capitalist society and its ideological superstructures by adeptly exploring the ways in which denial perpetuates class structures and obscures the realities of economic exploitation and social inequality. Additionally, and perhaps best of all, Delay provides one of the most insightful commentaries I’ve read on how denial reinforces capitalist values, such as consumerism and individualism, at the expense of collective well-being.

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Photograph above by Ukrainian photographers Tania Shcheglova and Roman Noven aka Synchrodogs.

Tags:climate changedenialecologyeconomicsexploitationLacanmarxnaturalismphilosophysynchrodogsTad Delay