“HOPE TO DO SOME GOOD, NO MATTER HOW FUCKED UP YOU ARE”: ECOTERRORISM, TRAUMA AND ECOLOGICAL AFFECT IN THE MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE
Abstract
As climate change becomes increasingly evident, public awareness has grown and mobilized into the environmental movement. Familiar concepts like global warming, ocean acidification, and mass extinction shape a charged emotional landscape where love for nature coexists with fear and despair. This tension contributes to the rise of radical environmental activism, driven by disillusionment with ineffective policies and deep ecology’s biocentric philosophy. At its extreme, environmental direct action can culminate in ecoterrorism, defined as environmentally motivated violence or threats aimed at symbolic targets. The emotional balance underpinning environmentalism is increasingly unstable, shaped by eco-anxiety and climate trauma. This paper explores ecological affect through an ecocritical reading of the depiction of ecoterrorism in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, examining how climate trauma fuels radical responses and how such responses are portrayed, problematized, or legitimized in fiction.
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