In defence of maladaptation and its emancipatory promises

The eco-emancipatory project is hegemonically predicated upon the signifier of socioecological “adaptation.” Given the importance of adaptation, maladaptation usually occupies a secondary and invariably negative role. If considered at all, maladaptations are understood as temporal (or occasionally structural) dysfunctions that interfere with the homeostatic striving of the adaptive process, thereby reducing a system's ability to effectively respond to stress. This article, in contrast, departs from the ontological centrality of maladaptation. Using insights from Lacanian psychoanalysis, Marxist theory, evolutionary biology, and political ecology, we insist that a fully adapted Nature (and Society) does not exist other than in its own inconsistency, contradictions, and out-of-jointness. Based on an approach that takes maladaptation for granted, we highlight the emancipatory potential of embracing maladaptation by traversing the infernal fantasy of adaptation. Such emancipation loses any hold in Nature and instead recognizes the “abyss of freedom” as the zero point for a radical and emancipatory political ecology.