A crisis of crisis management: The polycrisis, the organization of pessimism, and the defensive turn

In an attempt to systematize the widespread, though analytically vague diagnosis of a “polycrisis,” the article theorizes the current condition as the outflow of a “crisis of crisis management.” In this reading, the paradigm of financialization, established in the 1970s and increasingly overwhelmed by economic risk, geopolitical complexities, and ecological devastation, is no longer trusted to reconcile the competing objectives of emancipation, democratization, sustainability, and growth—thus giving rise to a plethora of co-constitutive crises. Meanwhile, institutional erosion has unleashed affective energies that drive increasingly fierce attempts at political re-articulation. Together, these constitute a defensive turn, in which a revisionist-populist, an eco-modernist, and an eco-emancipatory project appear increasingly entrenched. Yet, given the depth of the crisis and its added ecological complication, likely none of these will prevail. With a further “controlled burning” in the cards, the “organization of pessimism” (Benjamin) will likely move beyond the well-known political options of the present.