Axelle Germanaz
Axelle Germanaz is a doctoral researcher in American Studies at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg. She is currently working on a dissertation with the working title “Inside the Environmental Imaginary and Cultural Spaces of the White Power Movement in the United States.” Her research examines the instrumentalization of environmentalism and the deployment of sentimentality by US far-right groups in an era of climate emergency.
Project: “Inside the Environmental Imaginary and Cultural Spaces of the White Power Movement in the United States”
My doctoral thesis examines the use of environmental rhetoric, imagery, and themes in contemporary US far-right ideology and culture. I analyze the ways adherents deploy environmentalism to naturalize and legitimize white supremacism as a viable solution to the ongoing climate crisis. In this context, I further argue that the movement is relying on sentimental aesthetics and politics to disseminate its propaganda. Members tend to deploy sentimental narratives and tropes to produce strong emotional responses from their audiences and to mobilize them toward illiberal actions. My project uses an interdisciplinary methodology and a transnational approach. I rely on various fields of research –from cultural studies, affect theory, and ecocriticism, to political science, sociology, and history– to survey the intersections between environmentalism, sentimentality, and contemporary reactionary politics in the United States. Following an approach of ideology critique, I examine the multifaceted conceptualizations and representations of the environment and climate change in the cultural products disseminated by the US white power movement between the 1980s and today.