The shame of the world in ordinary climate politics

Studies in the recent turn to emotions and affects in environmental politics have mostly focused on anxiety, guilt, and grief. I make the case for shame as an unaccounted, and potentially mobilising, force in climate change politics. The argument proceeds in three steps. I first look at individual forms of shame and their manifestation in ordinary climate politics: shame as ‘green guilt’ and shaming as a political tool. Then I examine in more detail Greta Thunberg’s original use of shame and at the phenomenon of ‘flight shame’. Finally, I turn to Primo Levi’s writings on the shame of the world as a structural and dialectical form of shame. In his work we find the conceptual resources to create new symbolic bonds with other humans and nonhumans. To illustrate the theoretical argument, I discuss the idea of dialectical shame in relation to the alarming situation of pollution season in Delhi, India.