Between Sabotage and State Power
A Critique of Andreas Malm
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32387/prokla.v52i208.2013Keywords:
Climate Crisis, Fossil Capital, Andreas Malm, Social Movements, StrategyAbstract
The article develops a critical reading of Andreas Malm’s strategic writings, which are symptomatic of broader dilemmas of contemporary radical climate politics. Malm’s catastrophist perspective and method predisposes us towards climate politics built around states of exception and exceptional, heroic actions. This action-orientated perspective relies on but fails to theorize its own conditions in processes of class formation and the construction of mass movements. Climate politics built around notions of scientific necessity and political justice are incomplete without strategies for building power starting from emergent needs and a transformation of desires.
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