Denial (Verneinung) and socio-environmental issues: questions for Environmental Education (EE)

Abstract

This essay aims to bring some elements of Freud and Lacan's psychoanalysis, in order to contribute to the discussion about negationism and its consequences in Environmental Education practices. The government in office in Brazil, since 2018, has used a denial narrative to legitimize a process of extermination not only of natural assets, but also of the most vulnerable populations, materialized in the trivialization and slowness in implementing protective measures. However, this way of governing is not exclusive to this government, it precedes us and evidences a political discourse, even if the subject in question does not intend to or recognize oneself literally as political. It is necessary, then, to question the Environmental Education, facing the malaise of denialism and its link with the unconscious.