Towards a Symptomatology of Globalization and its Discontents [Für eine Symptomatologie des Unbehagens an der Globalisierung]

Abstract

Through an analysis of imaginaries of geoengineering in Reinhard Jirgl’s novel Nichts von euch auf Erden (2012), this essay examines what I call the “latencies” of geoengineering, i.e. the hidden affective economies, social imaginaries, and political valences potentially determining its use, beyond the issue of climate change alone. Reading the novel as a symptomatic expression of deep-seated anxieties about the contemporary condition of globality, I suggest that representations of geoengineering emerge here as a form of defense mechanism against such anxieties. Focusing on the novel’s “immunological” discourse, its staging of a rhetoric and politics of walls and borders, and its concern with issues of sovereignty and territoriality, I probe the identitarian undercurrent of its vision of a geoengineered future, arguing that ultimately Nichts von euch auf Erden can be contextualized within a politically distinct form of radical anti-globalism.