I am a German political theorist pursuing a PhD at the University of Innsbruck. My dissertation is situated at the intersection of far-right studies, political theory, and gender studies, and focuses on the far right in the context of the climate crisis. The climate crisis generates profound uncertainty about humanity’s future, destabilizing expectations, undermining predictive horizons, etc. In my dissertation, I examine how far-right ideologies respond to this uncertainty by mobilizing specific conceptions of “nature.” I argue that the desire to dominate nature provides a crucial link between climate-related uncertainty and the growing appeal of far-right ideologies. Drawing on Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, I analyze the significance of dominion over nature in modernity and show how the climate crisis, as a moment in which the promise of mastery over nature collapses, produces subjective uncertainty. Far-right ideologies seek to compensate for this loss by appealing to notions of a fixed, hierarchical, and unchanging nature, thereby offering imaginaries of control and certainty in a moment of climate crisis.
Other areas of research interest include anti-feminism and radical libertarian ideologies.
During my time at UC Berkeley, I am working on two projects. First, I examine how the U.S. far right addresses the climate crisis and compare its ideological references to nature with those of the German far right. Second, I focus on the extreme right’s appeal to women, a project I am currently working on and plan to continue during my time in Berkeley.
