Abstract

Discussion of emotion and affect is rife in works of political ecology that draw on more-than-human geographic theory. While concern for psychological impacts or emotional well-being in relation to or caused by environmental destruction and change is present in the literature, it is a smaller body of work in political ecology that engages more explicitly with psychoanalytic theory. In this paper I make a claim for a need for greater attention to desire within political ecology, in part drawing on a robust tradition of Lacanian psychoanalytic geographies. By way of empirical example, I will seek to explain how and why it is as someone with a background in more-than-human geographies and political ecology, I have turned more recently towards Lacanian understandings of desire, anxiety, and the drives to study illegal wildlife trades in rare and endangered cactus and succulent plants. In developing these arguments I will reflect on several interventions by others researchers who have similarly turned to Lacanian thought to advance analyses of environmental change germane to political ecology.