Degrowth and Psychoanalysis From Transition to Transformation

Multiple foundational concepts and authors cited as precursors to degrowthhave roots in psychoanalysis–from statements like ‘decolonising the imaginary’toassumptions about alienation, fantasies or desire. Today these strains are faint, as thecontemporary degrowth research programme flourishes among ecological econo-mists. What could a return to the psychoanalytic roots of degrowth do for researchand praxis in an era of‘bullshit jobs,’burnout, and climate grief? In this chapter, wereturn to the multiple, and at times opposed, repertoires of psychoanalysis that haveinformed degrowth thinking to deepen its analysis of growthist society. In doing so,we differentiate between discourses of human nature and offer tools for enrichingpost-growth subjectivities. We review three psychoanalytic contributions to degrowthfrom established Vienna, Frankfurt and Paris repertoires and amplify the contribu-tions of psychoanalytic theory situated in London, Zurich and Martinique. The aim isto help understand the persistence of repression, alienation and repetition compul-sion in personal and collective life–as well as the possibility of their transformationtowards post-growth subjectivities. From this position, we observe that the psychody-namics of growthism are more complex than what many ecological economists (andsome degrowthers) tend to acknowledge. We argue for the urgency of regeneratingdegrowth authors’images of human nature through the repertoires of feminist, eco-social and anti-colonial psychoanalytic authors–in service of a more reflexive, radi-cal and sustainable pace of degrowth transformation, including in academia