25th April 2019

Dear Érik,

I note that the media hype about the climate crisis serves to mask the essential problems: enmity, a dynamic which implies that we cannot live without enemies; the repression of naturalness, particularly and primarily in children; the loss of sensibility; the flight into artificiality and therefrom the profound realization of the obsolescence of the species.

The Greta Thunberg "affair" is a profound illustration of this. This young woman used the gravity of the climate crisis to express her deep-seated pain: the fact that she was not recognised for her naturalness. She was immediately recuperated on this level, first by her parents, then by friends of theirs, green capitalism activists. Here are a few quotes that seem important to me.

She speaks with great conviction about the obvious horror of the situation and does not advocate any particular course of action. "It is not my job to say what needs to be done. I am a child."¹

“She suffered from an immense sense of loneliness,” her father says. “Doctors diagnosed her with Asperger’s syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder.” “As we began to take action, her anxiety eased.”²

However, loneliness is deeply informed by not being recognized. In fact, one feels isolated and useless. Every syndrome is an expression of the refusal to repress one’s naturalness.

"When I told my parents about my plans, they weren't convinced. They weren't in favour of a school strike and said that if I did it, I would have to do it alone and without their support."

"My parents were as far removed from climate activists as possible before I made them aware of the situation."

"My family wrote a book about how my sister Beata and I influenced the way my parents think and see the world, especially when it came to climate change. And about our diagnoses."

"There is another argument against which I can do nothing. And that is the fact that I am 'just a child and we should not listen to children.'"³

We can see that her parents give credence to her position on the climate crisis. She interprets this as recognition but this is where she gets caught in a trap.

"The young Swedish high school student had a revelation one evening at home while watching a speech on global warming by the good-natured social democrat Stefan Löfven, the prime minister, who is nevertheless allied with the environmentalists. "He's lying!" she suddenly shouted. "Not everyone is responsible, only a few are, and to save the planet we must fight them, as well as their companies and their money."⁴

The following is interesting for situating her rebellion: "I am not responsible for the horror; it existed long before me.”

The following quote echoes all the suffering she has endured, her immense panic at what may appear to be her extinction due to not being recognized: "I don't want you to despair, I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear that lives in me every day and to act, as if there were a fire, because there is. […] There is still a small chance of stopping greenhouse gas emissions so as to avoid suffering for a large part of the planet's population."

After highlighting the repression of Greta's naturalness, its recuperation, the fear of adults in the face of an "autonomous" demonstration by children is imposed: parents, psychologists, teachers, etc., have, so to speak, pounced on this demonstration by saying – as recuperation obliges – that they recognize the relevance of the children's position, but that they must be supervised so that they don’t overstep the mark, etc. The adults expressed their fear of children, even their hatred. And this is crucial because there can be no initiation of inversion if this profound phenomenon is not recognized. And we return to the question of enmity. And underlying this is the fear of dependence, the refusal of childhood.

What I am aiming for is the possibility of a relationship of inversion. Greta's demonstration  signals that a possible has "appeared" only to be immediately stifled. But it is not certain (1) that Greta lets herself be completely stifled; in the midst of a profound inner turmoil (again replaying what she experienced) she can question her path because she has great power (2) that the phenomenon will not recur and on a larger scale. It is curious that something similar has already happened: "The teenager Severn Cullis-Suzuki at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio: "You adults say you love us. I challenge you: make your actions reflect your words." Greta, however, declared:  "You are not mature enough"... "You say you love your children above all else and yet you are stealing their future."⁵  You are taking away their naturalness: denunciation of ambiguity.

For the near future, I consider that the regressive movement involving the rolling-back of social gains, the impasse of the liberation movement initiated from the end of the C18th (the Enlightenment) and the return to a more repressive phase with the accession of extreme-right currents in the USA, Brazil etc... equivalent to the passage from the extreme-left to the extreme-right on the individual level – from liberating emancipation to salvific repression – will result in increased parental repression, coupled with the continual process of artificialization and separation. This will have an enormous impact on the situation of children which will cause the appearance of other syndromes and other Gretas. In other words, the possible will be re-actualised. This in no way implies that we are dependent on this phenomenon as that would reactivate a messianism and lead us to view children not in their naturalness but as saviours, and thereby reactivate the dynamic of negating that childhood state.

I'm not forgetting the historical dimension and the fact that a replay is beginning. In the 1960s, there was a vast youth movement that challenged the dynamics of hostility advocated by adults: ‘make love, not war.’ The dominant forces got around this by legalizing drugs, supposedly conquering the moon, and appropriating the slogan ‘everything is possible.’ This was intended to show that the possibilities which young people affirmed could not be ruled out (and therefore could not be denied). This was assisted by the exaltation of innovation and by an ever more advanced artificialization.

Curiously, the youth protest movement began in Sweden with a large demonstration of young people on January 1, 1956, where, in silence,  they destroyed everything (see E. De Martino, who wrote about the Swedish fury in his book: Furore, Simbolo, Valore). There's a certain determinism in replays!

All of this could be the subject of an article: Inversion and Possibility.

Jacques

Supplement

        To carry out this project it will be necessary to take into account the phenomenon of dissolution that presents itself as a response to the protest movement of women and young people since the 1960s and, now, that of children which is emerging. The media intervenes intensively into this phenomenon by granting it a formal and fragmentary recognition.

The revolt of children against their parents is expressed in an unconscious and totally mystified way in the rebellion against adults who impose everything on them, and particularly, it is manifested in the refusal of sexuality which is expressed in gender theory. Thus, a man may experience himself as being of the female gender and claim it, just as a woman may experience herself as a man and claim it; but likewise, a man or a woman may refuse to be gendered—that is to say, to be "shut in" in a gender.

Dissolution operates by making everyone a child, and therefore dependent. Thus, there is a tendency to replace the terms ‘man’ and ‘woman’ with ‘boy’ and ‘girl’.

Dissolution has always provoked a reaction consisting of a strengthening of repressive authoritarian structures (as in the last century) that is intended to ‘save’ men and women. It replays the dynamics of parental repression as well as that of protecting oneself against the threat of extinction. The same is true today, as noted above.

The progressive emancipation movement, which aims to lift humanity out of minority status, has led to dissolution; the reactionary, authoritarian movement keeps men and women at the stage of children who must be educated, repressed. Progress and regression balance each other out. This leads us to consider the extent to which the theory of progress arouses and necessitates enmity.

The fact remains that the permissiveness which flourishes with the autonomization of the capital-form allows for what could be called passive revolts, but, during a dynamic not weighed down by mystification, these can grow into profound challenges.

20th May 2019

Translated by Howard Slater
Original article: http://www.revueinvariance.net/thunberg.html