Cover not available

Article published In: Discourse Theory: Ways forward for theory development and research practice
Edited by Benjamin De Cleen, Jana Goyvaerts, Nico Carpentier, Jason Glynos, Yannis Stavrakakis and Ilija Tomanić Trivundža
[Journal of Language and Politics 20:1] 2021
► pp. 79–94

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

The political nature of fantasy and political fantasies of nature

ORCiD logo with link | Wageningen University
 | Stockholm University
Published online: 18 December 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.20049.beh
Abstract
Within post-structuralist discourse theory, there has been an ongoing interest in fantasy and the fantasmatic logic. We propose a new way forward and suggest a focus on fantasies of ‘nature’ and what is deemed ‘natural’. Fantasies are structurally entwined with language, desire, and political ontologies. Discourses of nature hold a privileged position in this entwinement. We use the psychoanalytic concept of fantasy to explore how symbolic engagement with the world is supported by fantasmatic mechanisms. We argue that political fantasies express political subjects and objects via the imaginary mechanisms of splitting and projection. In an era of ecological crises and global pandemics, we find that fantasies that create a split between nature and society are a central part of the transformation of political imaginaries and discourses. Studying fantasies of various “naturecultures” and the politics of nature is thus an important new direction for discourse theory to explore anti-essentialist ontologies.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Fantasy in PDT
  • 3.Fantasy in psychoanalysis
  • 4.Political fantasies
  • 5.Fantasies of nature
  • 6.Political fantasies in the Anthropocene
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (52)
References
Agrawal, Arun. 2005. “Environmentality: Community, Intimate Government, and the Making of Environmental Subjects In Kumaon, India.” Current Anthropology 46 (2): 161–190. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Arfi, Badredine. 2010. “Fantasy in the Discourse of ‘Social Theory of International Politics’.” Cooperation and Conflict 45 (4): 428–448. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Behagel, Jelle Hendrik, Bas Arts, and Esther Turnhout. 2019. “Beyond Argumentation: A Practice-Based Approach to Environmental Policy.” Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 21 (5): 479–491. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Behagel, Jelle Hendrik, and Esther Turnhout. 2011. “Democratic Legitimacy in the Implementation of the Water Framework Directive in the Netherlands: Towards Participatory and Deliberative Norms?” Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 13 (3): 297–316. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Braidotti, Rosi. 2018. “Ethics of Joy.” In Posthuman Glossary, edited by Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova, 220–224. Bloomsbury Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burke, Anthony, Simon Fishel, Audra Mitchell, Simon Dalby, and Daniel J. Levine. 2016. “Planet Politics: A Manifesto from the End of IR.” Millennium 44 (3): 499–523. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Büscher, Bram, Robert Fletcher, Dan Brockington, Chris Sandbrook, William M. Adams, Lisa Campbell (a4), Catherine Corson, Wolfram Dresslerf, Rosaleen Duffy, Noella Gray, George Holmes, Alice Kelly, Elizabeth Lunstrum, Maano Ramutsindela and Kartik Shanker. 2017. “Half-Earth or Whole Earth? Radical Ideas for Conservation, and their Implications.” Oryx 51 (3): 407–410. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Daly, Glyn. 1999. “Ideology and its Paradoxes: Dimensions of Fantasy and Enjoyment.” Journal of Political Ideologies 4 (2): 219–238. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dean, Mitchell. 1999. Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. London: SAGE.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Descola, Philippe. 2013. Beyond Nature and Culture. University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dryzek, John S. 1997. The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eberle, Jakub. 2017. “Narrative, Desire, Ontological Security, Transgression: Fantasy as a Factor in International Politics.” Journal of International Relations and Development 22 (1): 243–268. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Epstein, Charlotte. 2008. The Power of Words in International Relations: Birth of an Anti-Whaling Discourse. MIT Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Escobar, Arturo. 1999. “After Nature: Steps to an Anti-essentialist Political Ecology.” Current Anthropology 40 (1): 1–30. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fletcher, Robert. 2018. “Beyond the End of the World: Breaking Attachment to a Dying Planet”, in Psychoanalysis and the Global, edited by Ilan Kapoor, 48–69. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Galvin, Raymond James. 2011. Discourse aAnd Materiality in Environmental Policy: The Case of German Federal Policy on Thermal Renovation of Existing Homes. PhD Diss., University of East Anglia.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glynos, Jason, and David Howarth. 2007. Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glynos, Jason, and Yannis Stavrakakis. 2008. “Lacan and Political Subjectivity: Fantasy and Enjoyment in Psychoanalysis and Political Theory.” Subjectivity 24 (1): 256–274. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glynos, Jason. 2001. “The Grip of Ideology: A Lacanian Approach to the Theory of Ideology.” Journal of Political Ideologies 6 (2): 191–214. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. “Ideological Fantasy at Work.” Journal of Political Ideologies 13 (3): 275–296. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. “Theory and Evidence in the Freudian Field: From Observation to Structure.” In Lacan And Science, edited by Jason Glynos and Yannis Stavrakakis, 13–50. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Griggs, Steven, and David Howarth. 2008. “Populism, Localism and Environmental Politics: The Logic and Rhetoric of the Stop Stansted Expansion Campaign.” Planning Theory 7 (2): 123–144. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gunder, Michael. 2015. “The Role of Fantasy in Public Policy Formation.” In Evolutionary Governance Theory, edited by Raoul Beunen, Kristof Van Assche, and Martijn Duineveld, 143–154. Cham: Springer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hajer, Maarten A. 2005. “Coalitions, Practices, and Meaning in Environmental Politics: From Acid Rain to BSE.” In Discourse Theory in European Politics, 297–315. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1995. The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernization and the Policy Process. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 2015. “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin.” Environmental Humanities 6 (1): 159–165. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huxley, Thomas H. 1869. “Nature: Aphorisms by Goethe.” Nature 11: 9–11. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Isaacs, Susan. 1948. “The Nature and Function of Phantasy.” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 291: 73–97.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jasanoff, Sheila (ed.). 2004. States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and the Social Order. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kapoor, Ilan. 2014. “Psychoanalysis and Development: An Introduction.” Third World Quarterly, 35 (7): 1117–1119. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Klein, Melanie. 1975. Envy and Gratitude. And Other Works 1946–1963. London: The Hogarth Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques. 2002. Ecrits: A Selection. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Harvard: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mallory, Chaone. 2008. “Ecofeminism and a Politics of Performative Affinity: Direct Action, Subaltern Voices, and the Green Public Sphere.” Ecopolitics Online Journal 1 (2): 2–13. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mert, Ayşem. 2019. “Participation(s) in Transnational Environmental Governance: Green Values versus Instrumental Use.” Environmental Values 281 (1): 101–121. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mert, Aysem. 2015. Environmental Governance through Partnerships. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Methmann, Chris, and Delf Rothe. 2012. “Politics for the Day after Tomorrow: The Logic of Apocalypse in Global Climate Politics.” Security Dialogue 43 (4): 323–344. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, Jacques-Alain. 1992. “Duty and The Drives.” Newsletter of The Freudian Field, 6 (1/2): 5–15.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Remling, Elise. 2019. “Adaptation, now? Exploring the Politics of Climate Adaptation through Poststructuralist Discourse Theory.” PhD diss., Södertörn University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Salter, Leon and Andrew Dickson. 2020. “The Fantasy of Healthy Food: Desire and Anxiety in Healthy Food Guide Magazine.” Critical Public Health, Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scott, Bruce. 2016. “The New Klein-Lacan Dialogues.” European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling. 18 (4): 427–430. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smith, Jonathan Z. 1972. “I Am a Parrot (Red).” History of Religions 11 (4): 391–413. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Spillius, Elizabeth Bott. 2001. “Freud and Klein on the C0oncept of Phantasy.” The International Journal of Psychoanalysis 82 (2): 361–373. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stavrakakis, Yannis. 2005. “Passions of Identification: Discourse, Enjoyment, and European Identity.” In Discourse theory in European politics, 68–92. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Swyngedouw, Erik, and Henrik Ernstson. 2018. “Interrupting the Anthropo-Obscene: Immuno-Biopolitics and Depoliticizing Ontologies in the Anthropocene.” Theory, Culture and Society 35 (6): 3–30. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tsing, Anna, Heather Swanson, Eliane Gan, and Nils Bubandt, eds. 2017. Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wamsler, Christina, and Ebba Brink. 2018. Mindsets for Sustainability: Exploring the Link Between Mindfulness and Sustainable Climate Adaptation. Ecological Economics 1511: 55–61. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Watts, Jonathan. 2019. “Jair Bolsonaro Claims without Evidence that NGOs are Setting Fires in Amazon Rainforest”. The Guardian, August 21, 2019.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, Edward. O. 2016. Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life. New York: WW Norton and Company.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yusoff, Kathryn. 2018. A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zoja, Luigi. 1995. Growth and Guilt: Psychology and the Limits of Development. London: Psychology Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (11)

Cited by 11 other publications

Feine, Julia Maria Charlotte & Ayşem Mert
2025. Changing marine imaginaries during COVID-19 and the ocean science decade: a study on political fantasies. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 25:4 ► pp. 575 ff. DOI logo
Hurtado Hurtado, Joshua & Jason Glynos
2025. Navigating desires beyond growth: the critical role of fantasy in degrowth’s environmental politics and prefigurative ethics. Environmental Politics 34:2 ► pp. 367 ff. DOI logo
Kanarp, G. C. S., Steffen Böhm & Annette Löf
2025. Contested adaptation futures: the role of global imaginaries in climate adaptation governance. Sustainability Science 20:2 ► pp. 525 ff. DOI logo
Hawkins, Benjamin & May CI van Schalkwyk
2024. Politics and fantasy in UK alcohol policy: a critical logics approach. Critical Policy Studies 18:1 ► pp. 5 ff. DOI logo
Malherbe, Nick
2024. Fantasy and anti‐capitalist resistance: Some implications for psychoanalytic liberation psychology. International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 21:4 DOI logo
McMillan, Chris
2024. Inclusivity, diversity, and the absent presence of class: a logics approach to England and Wales cricket Board (ECB) policy discourse. Sport in Society 27:11 ► pp. 1774 ff. DOI logo
Tervasmäki, Tuomas
2024. Anticipatory policy rhetoric: exploring ideological fantasies of Finnish higher education. Critical Policy Studies 18:4 ► pp. 536 ff. DOI logo
Woroniecki, Stephen, Victoria Wibeck, Kristin Zeiler & Björn-Ola Linnér
2024. The lived experiences of transformations: The role of sense-making and phenomenology analyses. Environmental Science & Policy 159 ► pp. 103797 ff. DOI logo
Horn, Laura, Ayşem Mert & Franziska Müller
2023. The Realism of Our Time? Futures, Fictions, and the Mid-Century Bang. In The Palgrave Handbook of Global Politics in the 22nd Century, ► pp. 407 ff. DOI logo
Kaminskas, Dominykas
2023. “We Will Die as Free People”. Communist and Post-Communist Studies 56:4 ► pp. 11 ff. DOI logo
De Cleen, Benjamin, Jana Goyvaerts, Nico Carpentier, Jason Glynos & Yannis Stavrakakis
2021. Moving discourse theory forward. Journal of Language and Politics 20:1 ► pp. 22 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue