In recent years, sustainability discourse has largely eclipsed environmental discourse. We trace the evolution of this shift, discuss its problematic implications and analyze it in Lacanian and other theoretical terms. We discuss the respective tendencies of environmental and sustainability discourse and argue that the latter, among many other flaws, is more prone to a social fantasy of reconciling ecological, economic, and social problems, and as a consequence, disavows the threat of ecological catastrophe. Since environmental discourse also sometimes slips into social fantasy, one predicated on balance and harmony, we make the case for a revival of an environmental discourse more grounded in concrete ecological problems — an ecological realism inspired by psychoanalytic theory.
Arias-MaldonadoM. (2013) Rethinking Sustainability in the Anthropocene.Environmental Politics22(3): 428–446.
2.
BrownT. (2016) Sustainability as Empty Signifier: Its Rise, Fall, and Radical Potential: Sustainability as Empty Signifier.Antipode48(1): 115–133. doi: 10.1111/anti.12164.
3.
BrownW. (2015) Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution.New York: Zone Books.
4.
BrulleR.J., and JenkinsJ.C. (2006) Spinning Our Way to Sustainability?Organization & Environment19(1): 82–87. DOI: 10.1177/1086026605285587.
5.
CampbellS. (1996) Green Cities, Growing Cities, Just Cities?: Urban Planning and the Contradictions of Sustainable Development.Journal of the American Planning Association62(3): 296–312. DOI: 10.1080/01944369608975696.
6.
CaradonnaJ.L. (2014) Sustainability: A History.New York: Oxford University Press.
7.
CohenM.J. (2006) “The Death of Environmentalism”: Introduction to the Symposium.Organization & Environment19(1): 74–81. DOI: 10.1177/1086026605285586.
8.
CrutzenP.J., and StoermerE.F. (2000) The Anthropocene.Global Change Newsletter (41): 17–18.
9.
CurtinD. (2005) Environmental Ethics for a Postcolonial World.Lanham, Maryland: Rowan & Littlefield.
10.
DavidsonM. (2010a) Hacking away at sustainability: science, ideology and cynical blockage.Human Geography3(2): 83–90.
11.
DavidsonM. (2010b) Sustainability as ideological praxis: The acting out of planning's master-signifier.City14(4): 390–405. DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2010.492603.
12.
DavidsonM. (2012) Sustainable City as Fantasy.Human Geography5(2): 12.
13.
DesJardinsJ.R. (2001) Environmental Ethics: An Introduction to Environmental Philosophy.3rd ed.Belmont: Wadsworth Thomson Learning.
14.
EckersleyR. (1992) Environmentalism and Political Theory: Toward an Ecocentric Approach.Albany: SUNY Press.
15.
ElkingtonJ. (1998) Cannibals With Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of the 21st Century Business.Gabriola Island, BC; Stony Creek, CT: New Society Publishers.
16.
FinkB. (1996) The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance.1st ed.Princeton: Princeton University Press.
17.
FinkB. (1999) A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique.1st ed.Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
18.
FishmanR. (1982) Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier.Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
19.
GuhaR. (2000) Environmentalism: A Global History.New York: Longman.
20.
GunderM. (2006) Sustainability: Planning's Saving Grace or Road to Perdition?Journal of Planning Education and Research, 26(2): 208–221. DOI: 10.1177/0739456X06289359.
21.
HaighN., and HoffmanA.J. (2014) The New Heretics: Hybrid Organizations and the Challenges They Present to Corporate Sustainability.Organization & Environment27(3): 223–241. DOI: 10.1177/1086026614545345.
22.
HawkenP., LovinsA., and LovinsL.H. (1999) Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution.New York: Little, Brown and Company.
23.
HelvargD. (1997) The War Against the Greens: The Wise Use Movement, the New Right, and Anti-Environmental Violence.San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
24.
InstituteT.W. (2017) EarthEd (State of the World): Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet.None edition.Washington, DC: Island Press.
25.
JacobsM. (1991) The Green Economy: Environment, Sustainable Development, and the Politics of the Future.Pluto Press.
26.
JamiesonD. (2003) Ethics, Public Policy, and Global Warming. In: LightA. and III H.R. (eds) Environmental Ethics: An Anthology.Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
27.
JamiesonD. (2008) Ethics and the Environment: An Introduction.Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press.
28.
KellerD.R. (2010) Introduction: What is Environmental Ethics? In: KellerD.R. (ed.) Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions.John Wiley & Sons.
29.
KuhlmanT., and FarringtonJ. (2010) What is Sustainability?Sustainability, 2(11): 3436–3448.
30.
LacanJ. (1998) Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis.1 edition.MillerJ.A. (ed.). New York, NY: WW Norton.
31.
LacanJ. (2006) The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious. In: Ecrits.1st ed.New York: WW Norton, pp. 671–703.
32.
LacanJ. (2017) Formations of the Unconscious: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book V.MillerJ-A (ed.). Malden, MA: Polity.
33.
LeopoldA. (1968) A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River. Second Edition.Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
34.
LewisM.W. (1994) Green Delusions: An Environmentalist Critique of Radical Environmentalism.Durham: Duke University Press Books.
35.
LukeT.W. (2005) Neither sustainable nor development: reconsidering sustainability in development.Sustainable Development13(4): 228–238. doi: 10.1002/sd.284.
36.
MacekuraS. (2012) A bibliographic essay on sustainability.The Hedgehog Review (Summer): 52–59.
37.
MarcuseP. (1998) Sustainability is not enough.Environment and Urbanization10(2): 10.
38.
MeadowsD.H., RandersJ., MeadowsD.L. (1972) Limits to Growth.New York: Universe Books.
39.
MeadowsD.H., RandersJ., and MeadowsD.L. (2004) Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update.3 edition. White River Junction, Vt: Chelsea Green Publishing.
MilneM.J., and GrayR. (2013) W(h)ither Ecology? The Triple Bottom Line, the Global Reporting Initiative, and Corporate Sustainability Reporting.Journal of Business Ethics118(1): 13–29. doi: 10.1007/s10551-012-1543-8.
42.
OrrD.W. (1992) Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World.New York: SUNY Press.
43.
PalmerC. (2003) An Overview of Environmental Ethics. In: LightA., and III H.R. (eds) Environmental Ethics: An Anthology.Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 15–38.
44.
PearceD. (ed.) (2013) Blueprint 2: Greening the World Economy.New York: Earthscan.
45.
PoliC. (2010) Sustainable Development: from Fallacy to Fraud.Human Geography3(2): 63–82.
46.
RedcliftM. (2005) Sustainable development (1987–2005): an oxymoron comes of age.Sustainable Development13(4): 212–227. doi: 10.1002/sd.281.
47.
RobinL., SörlinS., and WardeP. (eds) (2013) The Future of Nature: Documents of Global Change.New Haven: Yale University Press. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vm5bn (accessed 24 September 2018).
48.
RowellA. (1996) Green Backlash: Global Subversion of the Environment Movement.London; New York: Routledge.
49.
StablesA. (2013) The unsustainability imperative? Problems with ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ as regulative ideals.Environmental Education Research19(2): 177–186. DOI: 10.1080/13504622.2012.729813.
50.
StavrakakisY. (1997) Green Fantasy and the Real of Nature: Elements of a Lacanian Critique of Green Ideological Discourse.Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society2(1): 123–132.
51.
StavrakakisY. (1999) Lacan and the Political.1 edition. London; New York: Routledge.
52.
ThayerR.L.Jr. (2003) LifePlace: Bioregional Thought and Practice.Berkeley: University of California Press.
53.
United Nations Conference for Environment and Development (1992) Agenda 21.Rio de Janeiro: United Nations.
54.
Van PuttenM. (2005) Rebuilding a Mainstream Consensus for Environmentalism.BioScience55(6): 468–469. DOI: 10.1641/0006-3568(2005)055[0468: RAMCFE]2.0.CO;2.
55.
VogtP.W., and BaruchB.M. (2007) Road to Survival.Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing.
56.
WackernagelM., and ReesW. (1996) Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth.Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers.
57.
WardeP. (2011) The Invention of Sustainability.Modern Intellectual History8(1): 153–170. DOI: 10.1017/S1479244311000096.
58.
WeintrobeS. (ed.) (2012) Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives.1 edition.London; New York: Routledge.
59.
WelfordR. (1997) Hijacking Environmentalism: Corporate Responses to Sustainable Development.London: Earthscan.
60.
WhiteL. (1967) The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.Science155(3767): 1203–1207. doi: 10.1126/science.155.3767.1203.
61.
World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) Our Common Future.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
62.
WorsterD. (1994) Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
63.
ZerzanJ. (2008) Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization.Los Angeles: Feral House.
64.
ŽižekS. (2009) Ecology. In: TaylorA. (ed.) Examined Life: Excursions With Contemporary Thinkers.New York: The New Press, pp. 155–183.
65.
ŽižekS. (2013) Interrogating the Real.2 edition.ButlerR., and StephensS. (eds). London; New York: Blooms-bury Academic.
