The New Discursive Space

Abstract

This chapter argues for the necessity of an ‘epochal consciousness’ to find ways forward. It identifies potential routes forward for environmental politics, arguing for the discursive capacity to redefine political interest and to reposition previously peripheral political dramaturgies as authoritative. It shows that there have always been alternatives, and that reconfiguring discourse and imaginaries is eminently possible (even if the material power to do so is unevenly distributed). It argues that the crisis of the imagination was never due to a lack of positive imaginaries but rather the ubiquity of the status quo, and its incessant reproduction through predominant techniques of futuring like modelling, target-setting, and gap analysis. Now those techniques are coming under increasing scrutiny, and the political centre no longer holds. This breeds opportunity, for better and for worse. Lasting political change does not result from a neat, stable categorization of the world. On the contrary, it almost inevitably coincides with dramatic shifts in discursive and dramaturgical conventions, which in turn lead to alternative imaginaries of social order. As such, this chapter takes its lead from several (more or less) successful examples of a politics of the imagination, both historical and contemporary, in which disrupting discursive stability and providing alternatives redefined politics. It broadens the discursive space of environmental politics, discussing three contemporary discourses—de/post-growth, eco-conservatism, and decolonial discourse, arguing their potential as political projects. In closing, it draws out implications for the future of environmental politics.