Environmental crisis, narcissism and the work of grief

• Published in: Cultural geographies Vol. 23; no. 4; pp. 565 - 579
• Main Authors: Shaw, Wendy S, Bonnett, Alastair
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE 01.10.2016; SAGE Publications; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Creativity; Culture; Environment; Environmental perception; Geography; Grief; Psychology; Anthropocene; daunting loss; narcissism; work of grief; environmental crises
• ISSN: 1474-4740; 1477-0881
• DOI: 10.1177/1474474016638042

This article explores the relationship between environmental crisis, narcissism and the work of grief. In the first section, we provide an overview of the way narcissism has re-emerged in recent scholarship within cultural geography and environmental psychology. Developing and in part challenging the normative focus on selfish, self-destructive consumption that we identify as a major strand in the literature, we draw out themes of daunting loss. In the second section, these themes and processes are explicitly framed in terms of grief and connected to recent conceptualisations of the ‘Anthropocene’. We argue that narcissistic responses can be usefully reframed in terms of a variety of grief responses. Hence, we address the work of grief as multifaceted and multi-directional – encompassing bewilderment, denial and also creative re-imaginings provoked by the experience of loss. This point is further developed in the third section using an example from an advocate of ‘re-wilding’.