Degrowth and Psychoanalysis: From Transition to Transformation

Multiple foundational concepts and authors cited as precursors to degrowth have roots in psychoanalysis - from statements like ‘decolonising the imaginary’ to assumptions about alienation, fantasies or desire. Today these strains are faint, as the contemporary degrowth research programme flourishes among ecological economists. What could a return to the psychoanalytic roots of degrowth do for research and praxis in an era of ‘bullshit jobs,’ burnout, and climate grief? In this chapter, we return to the multiple, and at times opposed, repertoires of psychoanalysis that have informed degrowth thinking to deepen its analysis of growthist society. In doing so, we differentiate between discourses of human nature and offer tools for enriching post-growth subjectivities. We review three psychoanalytic contributions to degrowth from established Vienna, Frankfurt and Paris repertoires and amplify the contributions of psychoanalytic theory situated in London, Zurich and Martinique. The aim is to help understand the persistence of repression, alienation and repetition compulsion in personal and collective life - as well as the possibility of their transformation towards post-growth subjectivities. From this position, we observe that the psychodynamics of growthism are more complex than what many ecological economists (and some degrowthers) tend to acknowledge. We argue for the urgency of regenerating degrowth authors’ images of human nature through the repertoires of feminist, ecosocial and anti-colonial psychoanalytic authors - in service of a more reflexive, radical and sustainable pace of degrowth transformation, including in academia.