In the latest wave of climate change activism, affects and time are everywhere. Most recent works have focused on these dimensions separately, the intersection between time and affectivity underexplored. This author argues that focusing on affects and emotions is crucial to understand the political implications of the temporal narratives drawn by climate activists in a way that complements the politicization vs. depoliticization binary in this context. To document the political labor performed by affects and emotions, the article discusses three aspects of the affective temporalities mobilized by Fridays for Future and Youth for Climate activists: the political potential of affective tipping points which trigger moments that “draw a line” and bring together the temporalities of mobilization and geological change; the politicizing effect of painful emotions, such as anticipatory nostalgia and grief, which challenge the “modern arrow of time”; and the constitutive power of these emotions in the construction of a terrestrial affective identity.
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January 1, 2023
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Research Article|
January 01 2023
The Fear We Feel Everyday: Affective Temporalities in Fridays for Future
Louise Knops
Louise Knops is a postdoctoral researcher at the Université Catholique de Louvain and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. She completed her PhD dissertation on the topic of political indignation, and her research interests range from affect and emotions to social movements studies and climate change politics.
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South Atlantic Quarterly (2023) 122 (1): 203–214.
Citation
Louise Knops; The Fear We Feel Everyday: Affective Temporalities in Fridays for Future. South Atlantic Quarterly 1 January 2023; 122 (1): 203–214. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-10242784
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