Walking journeys into everyday climatic-affective atmospheres: The emotional labour of balancing grief and hope

Abstract

The postapocalypse as a mobilising discourse for climate action operates largely out of anger over experienced and anticipated injustices as well as paradoxical hope that fuses loss and grief with freed-up solidarities in support of liveable futures. However, negotiating this emotional tension can be both draining and isolating. Here, we examine how white settler populations in Western Australia balance grief and hope in places they hold dear and the role emotions such as sadness, worry, disappointment, joy, and pride play in relational place making. Through an innovative in situ and mobile methodology we call Walking Journeys, we trace how participants navigate their climatic-affective atmospheres and make sense of their agency in changing ‘Places of the Heart’. We find evidence for emotional complexities of solastalgia where pessimistic outlooks for the future are wrapped up in prefigurative visions of a better world. By holding the tension between paralysis and restoration, urban and rural residents explore affective co-existence and differential belonging in their homes and the landscapes around them. We highlight the challenge of enfranchising emotions beyond individuals and conclude by endorsing entangled, reflexive, and (re-)generative responsibilities for hopeful postapocalyptic journeying.

Sustainability and impossible worlds

“…As described in the literature (e.g. Cassegård and Thörn, 2018;Tschakert et al, 2023), the emotional labour involved in environmentalism is complex and far from linear, involving, for example, near-romantic future-oriented optimism, based on the belief that threats can be averted. A better and achievable future is possible, the negative vision of an unavoidable forthcoming catastrophe producing despair and resignation, or post-apocalyptic attitudes, assuming that the catastrophe is already upon us and that coming to grips with inevitable loss is an essential component of active salvage and recovery.…”

“…This apprehension of impending disasters, aptly termed an 'ecology of fear' by Mike Davis, is increasingly reflected in urgent warnings about the perils of 'dangerous climate change' and a comprehensive securitisation of the environment (Grove, 2010). Using apocalyptic imagery to discuss global warming, a phenomenon fundamentally driven by economic growth and consumption, or nuclear annihilation, which is caused by international and global policy, is evidence of the inseparable connection between power, capitalism and its perpetual state of emotional crisis (Tschakert et al, 2023). As the prevalence of apocalyptic narratives leads to the social and cultural normalisation of the environmental apocalypse, it becomes normalised within our social and cultural fabric, resulting in the environment being irreversibly transformed into a predicament that necessitates management through various technical solutions.…”