By exploring the genealogy of the 'tragic contradiction' between knowledge and acting in von Wright's sense, I outline how some of the problems regarding the negative consequences of sustainable development find their similar interpretation in the works of some of the most prominent Norwegian philosophers and environmental activists such as Hartvig Saetra, Arne Naess, Sigmund Kvaløy and Gunnar Skirbekk. This paper analyzes the theory of provocative pessimism, as displayed by the Finnish philosopher Georg Henrik von Wright, which concerns, among many other issues, the justification of what he defines as environmental hysteria. Ultimately, I argue that it is through film as a conceptual and psychoanalytic apparatus or form of thinking that we may begin to address these frequently unthought dimensions of human experience. This essay engages the recent films Arrival (Denis Villeneuve), Aniara (Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja) and High Life (Claire Denis) in order to consider subversive questions relating to time, taboo and the death drive in the vastness of the universe. More than just concerns with the gaze, desire and ideology as is traditionally associated with Lacanian film theory, cinema can offer scope to think through psychoanalytic and philosophical questions in a way that empirical research simply cannot. Given its shared ability to engage the unconscious and allow us to experience (as dreams so often do) forms of time and space altering logic, often the way to approach these questions is through cinema.
The persistent mischaracterization of psychoanalysis as reducing grand theoretical, political and philosophical concerns into petty subjective questions of personal experience has meant that the radical conceptual possibilities of it are missed. Psychoanalytic theory is often wrongly accused of being a ‘humanism’ and therefore not capable of addressing the new conceptual challenges that the post-human, post-apocalyptic, post-Anthropocenic era may present us with.
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