On Apocalyptic Maneuvers and Ethics of Collapse

Sense of an Ending: On Apocalyptic Maneuvers and Ethics of Collapse Christine Hentschel On November 5, as U.S. votes were still being counted and Trump was losing key states while declaring his victory, Judith Butler noted: “The tyrant spiraling down calls for an end to testing, to counting, to science and even to electoral law, to all those inconvenient methods of verifying what is and is not true in order to spin his truth one more time. If he has to lose, he will try to take democracy down with him.” A week later, on November 13, when the tyrant spoke out publicly for the first time after the election was called for Joe Biden, he uttered a sentence that journalists came to interpret as the first sign toward ad- mitting that he might not reign after January 2021: “Whatever happens in the future—who knows which administration it will be, I guess time will tell” (Trump). When the American people had spoken, he wanted the future “to tell”; when the end of his presidency had been declared officially, he created an air of uncertainty and chaos. I want to read the nervous public statements from the last weeks of the Trump presidency as dimensions of an apocalyptic maneuver—both by Trump himself and his supporters—of denying, divining, awakening to, or longing for “the end.” I contrast this maneuver with an apocalyptic sentiment of a very different ethical and affective investment—namely, the concern with societal collapse or even the extinction of humanity through climate catastrophe. Apocalyptic Maneuvers: Cruel, Spectacular, and Messy Endings After Trump’s “sign,” the cruel final acts of claiming sovereignty were accelerating: the execution of people incarcerated at federal pris- ons, including a female survivor of sexual violence who suffered from Amerikastudien / American Studies 66.1 (2021): 265-69 265 Julie Sze mental illness; the diversification of methods of killing people on death row, including firing squads and poison gas; as well as the presiden- tial pardon of some of his most prominent allies and family members involved in the business of his presidency. Trump’s cruel last acts not only incorporate the actions of a narcissist and irresponsible tyrant, but are themselves expression of an “apocalyptic populism,” which Wendy Brown identified as one of three strains of white support of Trump in the 2016 elections. Apocalyptic populism is a resentful attitude out of a sense of an ending of white male rule. It “yearns for disruption and revenge” (5). The apocalyptic populists, Brown argues, “are animated more by humiliation and rage than by fear. They responded to the boor- ishness, the bravado, the swagger, the willingness to blow things up without caring where the pieces would land” (5-6). Their impulse is to “take the world with them as their domination comes to an end,” Brown writes (24). The announcement of indoor holiday parties at the White House in the midst of record-breaking numbers of COVID-19 deaths is just one of the many cynical convergences of this spectacular version of apocalyptic populism in the last days of Trump’s reign. These maneuvers to kill, avenge, punish, or celebrate in the midst of death emphasize an underlying characteristic of authoritarian populism that Eva von Redecker conceptualizes as the aggressive defense of “phantom possession,” a logic of property in which others “figure as ‘thieves’” trying to steal allegedly rightful power from actual oppres- sors. “[Phantom-owners] feel dispossessed and want to conquer—not to have and keep, but to wreck and break. Only in turning against the ob- ject in full destructiveness, only in the moment of violence, is their full sovereignty fleetingly realized: episodic absolute dominion” (57). From the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” rallies after the election to the storm- ing of the Capitol on January 6th, this logic of aggressively defending a phantom possession is laid bare: No matter who you have voted for, we own the power and the right to reign! (And in the meantime, we can already come and create chaos.) Apocalyptic populists, Wendy Brown writes, “seek restored white male entitlement, or at least its political af- firmation, even if it can’t be materially restored, even if it’s all they’ve got as the world goes to hell and they help take it there” (8-9). While look- ing on with jealousy at progressive identity politics (von Redecker 55), Stop the Steal protesters made a point of inundating Black Lives Matter Plaza with bodies to eclipse the massive words “Black Lives Matter” painted on the ground, as well as tearing down the plaza’s anti-racist and anti-police-brutality artwork. At the insurrection on January 6th by an almost entirely white mob, a makeshift gallow with a ready-made noose was part of the messages installed outside the Capitol building (Borger). A final dimension of such apocalyptic maneuvering transpires via the QAnon conspiracy cosmology, which has grown rapidly during the pandemic in the United States, but also in Brazil, the United Kingdom, and Germany, and is closely interwoven with anti-lockdown protests 266 Amst 66.1 (2021): 265-69 Monsters in a Moment of Danger: Global Climate Justice and U.S. Obligations and anti-vaccination movements. Adherents of the secret figure Q claim that a “deep state” has kidnapped and tortured thousands of children, so that Hollywood actors and Democrats can ingest the rejuvenating substance Adrenochrome that is harvested from the abducted children. Trump, in this story, is secretly fighting this cabal. According to Q’s prophecies, the “destruction of the global cabal is imminent” and a “Great Awakening,” and, ultimately, salvation lies ahead, as Adrienne LaFrance notes. Ritual phrases exhorted to the Q community such as “trust the plan,” “the calm before the storm,” “nothing can stop what is coming,” and “enjoy the show,” all suggest a force bigger than any human agency and a spectacular final show at the end of our world. A QAnon supporter in Germany explained to me in an interview that a race war of cosmic proportions is around the corner, that we have already “entered a new dimension” and that vaccination is a key strategy in the attempt to kill and enslave “us” (Silke). Apocalyptic projections, feminist theo- logian Catherine Keller writes, are about “some cataclysmic showdown in which, despite tremendous collateral damage, good must triumph in the near future with the help of some transcendental power” (11). The apocalyptic maneuver here is that of divining a final war of good versus evil, of freedom versus slavery, deciphering the signs and codes by both Q and Trump, and imagining the apocalypse as an epic show. In this air of apocalyptic maneuvering, the end is many things: that which the tyrant and his supporters refuse to accept, but when facing it, that which offers a pathway of cruelty; or that which is embraced and longed for, a great awakening and a spectacular final show. In the current climate of apocalyptic nervousness, a cruel excitement for the end and the allowance to destroy everything and finally take revenge manifests itself on the streets, in chatrooms, in the White House, and it culminated in the Capitol rampage. Apocalyptic Sentiments against the Tyranny of Denial “Apocalypse” means “to unveil, to reveal, to disclose”; in the brutal imaginary of the last moments, “truth blinks with cosmic excitement” (Keller 1). But as a deadly disease, widespread wildfires, racist violence, and violent polarizations prevail in the United States and elsewhere, apocalyptic sentiments seem to seep in from different sides. Doctors have talked about an “‘apocalyptic’ Coronavirus surge” (Rothfeld et al.); the Californian fires have been described as “orange hellscapes” ( Nijhuis); and public intellectuals, such as Jonathan Franzen, have called to stop “pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped” (Franzen). This is a different apocalyptic sentiment, without much of an expectation of triumph, revenge, or salvation. One that is more about the saddened realization that we are facing humanity’s end by way of the devastating effects of the climate catastrophe. Both apocalyptic engagements actively work through the end, but with a dramatically different affective and Amst 66.1 (2021): 265-69 267 Julie Sze ethical investment with regard to the urgency of the major existential and political crises we face. One is cynical, vengeful, and destructive on its way down; the other struggles to find orientation in the realization of collapse and extinction. Against the manifestation of strength, the thinkers and activists concerned with societal collapse in the face of climate change emphasize vulnerability: that of the human species, the particular vulnerabilities of long-marginalized groups, and that of all life on the planet. Against the promise to take back or reclaim a stolen future, they mourn what is lost forever: species, rainforests, polar icecaps, living environments. Instead of giving in to a “cruel optimism” (Berlant), their attitude is pessimistic, full of despair, anger, and fear, yet seeking attunement and care (Grove 233). Against the display of ultimate sovereignty, their existential state- ment is that “we are not in control anymore”: tipping points and cascad- ing effects have created such unforeseeable dynamics that all we can do is find orientation for “navigating the climate tragedy,” e. g., to organize resilience in a more collective way (Bendell 22). In total contrast to apocalyptic populism’s cruel celebrations of the end, this engagement with the end is driven by an ethics of collapse—ethics as a struggle for the common values on a damaged planet, or in Jairus Grove’s words, as “the means to intervene in the vitality of becoming, not to steer its course as captains of our destiny but as attempts to drag our feet in the water in hopes of going productively off course” (232).

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