Scale, Satire, and the Intimate Planetary in Transnational Youth Climate Movements

Keywords: Youth, Climate Justice, Political Geography, Geopolitics
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

In conversation with work from feminist and intimate geopolitics scholarship (Dimpfl and Smith, 2018; Pain, 2015), queer theory (Ahuja, 2015; Seymour, 2018), and political geographies of humor (Clark and Fluri, 2018; Bosworth, 2022), this paper elaborates a conception of the ‘intimate/planetary’ as a key scalar framing pervasive within transnational youth climate movements. The ‘intimate/planetary’ refers to a recognition and critique of the ways that the “reproduction of the ordinary” participates in “the extermination of various life-forms and forms of life” (Ahuja, 2015: p. 367). In this project, I trace conceptions of the intimate/planetary as they appear across the speeches, protest actions, and digital content creation of transnational youth climate movements. Further, I analyze how satire emerges as a key genre and modality through which youth movements articulate a generational politics and formulate a conception of the ‘intimate/planetary’ apart from adultist institutions, scalar processes, and temporalities.



References:

Ahuja, N. (2015). Intimate Atmospheres: Queer Theory in a Time of Extinctions. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 21(2–3), 365–385. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2843227

Bosworth, K. (2022). The bad environmentalism of ‘nature is healing’ memes. Cultural geographies. 29(3): 353-374.

Clark, J. H., & Fluri, J. L. (2019). Everyday political geographies of humor. Political Geography, 68, 122–124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2018.12.006

Dimpfl, M. & Smith, S. (2019). Cosmopolitan Sidestep: University life, intimate geopolitics, and the hidden costs of “Global” citizenship. Area 51(4): 635-643.

Pain, R. (2015). Intimate war. Political Geography, 44, 64–73. https://doi-org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1016/j.polgeo.

Seymour, N. (2018). Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.