Climate Katechon Politics: Carl Schmitt in Narratives of the Environmental Crisis

Journal article

Narratives of the anthropogenic environmental crisis (Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene) are driven by the same structural logic: they all locate the theoretical origins of the environmental crisis in an improper relationship between a class of human subjects and ‘natural’ objects. Some scholars like Latour attempt to use Schmitt’s political thought to address this dualism and build an emancipatory political framework. However, I argue that this project is necessarily doomed to failure because Schmitt’s political and legal thought, once plugged into the eschatological character of the environmental crisis, cannot escape his authoritarian political theology. Arguments that try to detach Schmitt from his authoritarian and apocalypse-withholding katechon fail because the internal logics of Schmitt’s thought always drive towards state consolidation and internal homogenization in the face of existential crisis. Therefore, I argue that Schmitt’s thought cannot be used for an emancipatory politics in the context of the environmental crisis.

Authors: Liu, JT

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Journal: Theory, Culture & Society
• Volume: 43
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 21-42
• Article number: 02632764251399781
• Publication date: 2026-01-04
• DOI: 10.1177/02632764251399781
• EISSN: 1460-3616
• ISSN: 0263-2764
• Language: English
• Keywords: Schmitt; katechon; climate change; Climate Leviathan; Hobbes; Latour; environment