Knowing-without-reaction in the face of climate change: Minor-art as a model for political subjectivization

Despite broad public awareness of climate change as a critical issue, we paradoxically observe public inertia as a social pattern, particularly in the wealthy-industrialised Global North. Critical scholarship commonly attributes this phenomenon, knowing-without-reaction, in the context of climate change to ideology, suggesting that the distorted image of reality produced and circulated by the capital-state nexus leads to the dearth of progressive political action at the public level. The proposed solution, correspondingly, often takes the form of ideology-critique. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari, this paper offers an alternative diagnosis, positing that the phenomenon pertains more to the organisation of desire within capitalism and hence the capitalisation of subjectivity than to the alignment of interests between the capital-state nexus and the public through ideological manipulation. In response, the final section proposes the production of subjectivity (ourselves) anew as a potential remedy. Drawing on Guattari’s insights into art and politics, this section reflects on the lessons that we can draw from the techniques and practices of ‘minor art’ as a pathway to political subjectivisation in the context of climate change. In particular, the final part speculates transversally on two technologies of self-transformation in response to the question, ‘What is to be done?’: opening up through minor art and becoming-a-minor-artist.