Reimagining Climate Futures Beyond Post-Politics – Strategic and Affective Responses to Dilemmas in Climate Activism

Climate change is an urgent and existential threat; however, policy responses and societal action remain inadequate, despite recent mobilizations. There are signs indicating a decline of the ‘promissory legitimacy’ of the post-political consensus that endorsed technocratic and market-driven solutions. However, alternative emancipatory imaginations have yet to gain traction and contour. Although social movements are often seen as vital spaces for cultivating transformative discourses, research remains inconclusive, revealing concerns about prevailing post-political and apocalyptic narratives. This raises a critical question: how can we account for the apparent scarcity of emancipatory futures? Given the pressing need for more transformative responses to the socio-ecological crises, it is essential to deepen our understanding of ‘futuring’ practices —specifically, how futures are constructed and enacted, and how actors engage with diverse anticipatory knowledge claims.

Through an in-depth analysis of German and US climate movements, utilizing documents, semi-structured interviews, and observations, this study explores the intersection of strategic and affective responses within climate activism. I identify a variety of future imaginations formulated within climate movements, as well as a series of tensions faced by activists, including an ‘urgency dilemma', a 'system dilemma', an ‘epistemic dilemma' and a 'spatial dilemma', all of which stem from the ‘super wicked’ nature of climate change. 'Theories of change' inform how climate activists mobilize both strategic and affective responses to construct, perform, and enact climate futures. The findings contribute to our understanding of societal agency in driving transformative changes. They suggest that the potential for popularizing emancipatory visions in climate discourses hinges on effectively navigating these inherent tensions. While the study highlights structural barriers for change-oriented actors to popularize alternative visions within the 'politics of non-sustainability', it also calls for further investigation into the subtle practices through which activists challenge dominant perspectives and are able to cultivate reimagined climate futures.