Reaction, Resilience, and the Trumpist Behemoth: Environmental Risk Management from “Hoax” to Technique of Domination

Abstract

The election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency has led to significant changes in environmental governance, unleashing an authoritarian, nationalistic, and business-deregulating juggernaut aimed at destroying various forms of environmental protection. We seek to name and explain this juggernaut as the Trumpist Behemoth. Using this terminology, we show how Neumann’s classic 1942 study of the Nazi Behemoth can be used to build a critique of the Trump administration’s approach to governance. We join this with the contemporary critique of Climate Leviathan by Mann and Wainwright along with diverse critical literatures on resilience to argue that the Trumpist Behemoth is further distinguished by its anti-Leviathan reactionary appropriation of the politics and practices of resilience. This creates a regime that retains certain neoliberal commitments to market rule but rearticulates and reterritorializes them nationalistically. Connecting business interests with a border-building vision of “America First,” it simultaneously reterritorializes nature as national in ways that obscure the global ecosystems and contradictions of the Anthropocene cum capitalocene out of which the Trumpist Behemoth has been birthed. Key Words: authoritarianism, climate Behemoth, green neoliberalism, reaction, resilience.

唐纳德．特朗普当选美国总统，带来了环境治理的显着改变，释放了一股威权主义、国族主义且商业去管制的毁灭力量，旨在摧毁各种形式的环境保护。我们企图将此般毁灭力量命名为“川普巨兽”（Trumpist Behemoth）并对此进行解释。我们运用此一术语，展现诺伊曼1942年对纳粹巨兽的经典研究，如何能够用来发展对特朗普政权治理方式的批判。此外，我们加入曼恩与温赖特对于气候利维坦的当代批判，以及有关恢復力的多样批判文献，以此主张特朗普巨兽进一步由其反利维坦式的反动政治与恢復力实践进行辨识。它创造了保有若干新自由主义对市场规则的承诺，但却以国族主义的方式重新接合并将之再领域化的政体。它连结了商业利益与“美国优先”的边境打造计画，同时以掩盖川普巨兽从中诞生的全球生态系统和人类世与资本世的矛盾之方式，将自然再领域化为国族的。 关键词：威权主义，气候巨兽，绿色新自由主义，反动，恢復力。

La elección de Donald Trump a la presidencia de los EE.UU. ha producido cambios significativos en la gobernanza ambiental, desatando una endemoniada fuerza autoritaria, nacionalista y comercialmente caótica, que enfila a la destrucción de varias formas de protección ambiental. Buscamos nombrar y explicar tan descomunal despropósito como el Monstruo Trumpista. Usando esta terminología, indicamos cómo el clásico estudio de 1942 de Neumann sobre el Monstruo Nazista puede utilizarse para elaborar una crítica al enfoque de gobernanza de la Administración Trump. Unimos esto a la crítica contemporánea del Leviatán Climático de Mann y Wainwright, junto con diversas literaturas críticas sobre resiliencia, para argüir que el Monstruo Trumpista se distingue principalmente por su apropiación reaccionaria anti-Leviatán de las políticas y prácticas de la resiliencia. Esto genera un régimen que retiene ciertos compromisos neoliberales con el poder del mercado, aunque los rearticula y reterritorializa con criterio nacionalista. Al conectar los intereses de los negocios con la visión constructora de talanqueras de “América primero”, simultáneamente reterritorializa la naturaleza como bien nacional de formas que oscurecen los ecosistemas y contradicciones globales del Antropoceno, o Capitaloceno, de donde nació el Monstruo Trumpista.

Palabras clave:

• autoritarismo
• Monstruo climático
• neoliberalismo verde
• reacción
• resiliencia

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matthew Sparke

MATTHEW SPARKE is the Director of Graduate Studies in the Politics Department at the University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064. E-mail: [email protected]. The author of In the Space of Theory and Introducing Globalization, his most recent work has focused on neoliberalism, subcitizenship, and global health.

Daniel Bessner

DANIEL BESSNER is the Anne H. H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Assistant Professor in American Foreign Policy at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195. E-mail: [email protected]. The author of Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual, he works on intellectual and cultural history, U.S. foreign relations, and the history of democratic thought and the social sciences.