Post-Politics, Climate Movements, and the Problem of Radical Status-Quoism

This paper critiques what I conceptualize as radical status-quoism in left-leaning debates on the climate crisis. In particular, it pursues a critical analysis of the post-political critique of climate movements, which contends that these movements have become depoliticized and are complicit in sustaining an “unsustainable status quo.” The paper argues that this broad critique (and dismissal) of climate movements’ political agency prevents deeper engagement with both their benefits and shortcomings, and thus denies the opportunity to rethink how critical political engagement could look in a time of climate crisis. As a result, and counterintuitively, the post-political critique inadvertently leads to “radical status-quoism”—a recognition of the need for radical change, but a failure to account for the agency of political actors who contribute to or hinder this change. Furthermore, in response to the post-political critique’s tendency to present individual moral responsibility as a distraction from more important and necessary structural changes, the paper argues that the former in fact presents an important locus of analysis within any effort to achieve structural change on the climate crisis. Climate movements can, for example, mobilize individual moral responsibility and provide a vehicle for individual agency to affect broader structural transformation. The paper argues that by examining these different levels of analysis, we can identify a way out of radical status-quoism and provide a constructive critique of existing political agents such as climate movements. At a time of climate crisis, this form of engaged critique offers both a theoretical and practical alternative to radical status-quoism and despair.