Lukas Slothuus
Biographic Data
| ID | 2532955 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lukas Slothuus |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lukas |
| FAMILY NAME | Slothuus |
| SIGNATURE | SLOTHUUS L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sussex |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6773-2244 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 13 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Rearguard Politics
Which kinds of leadership are appropriate for emancipatory politics? Moving beyond a dichotomy of vanguardism and horizontalism, I advance rearguardism. Supplementing vanguardism, rearguardism involves defensive leadership and legitimation of existing movements, protecting these from attacks by dominant forces and actively propagating their struggles without co-opting or directing these from the front. I first outline vanguardism, focusing on the…
Fossil fuel leadership or fossil-fuelled leadership? The limits of Denmark’s oil and gas production phaseout
Understanding the limits of existing fossil fuel phaseout policies is key for clarifying the challenges of phasing out fossil fuels. In this article, I focus on Denmark as a prominent example of the tension between ‘fossil fuel leadership’ and ‘fossil-fuelled leadership’ due to the conflict between its self-positioning as a first-moving global climate leader and continued and new oil and gas production despite its phaseout policy. I examine the o…
Why do countries adopt supply-side policies? The international political economy of fossil fuel phaseouts
Ambitious goals to limit global heating cannot be achieved without significant efforts to cut fossil fuel production. Yet, comparative analysis of the international political economy dynamics that explain why and how different states adopt such supply-side policies is lacking. Drawing on original interview-based research in four countries that have unilaterally adopted supply-side climate policies and led international initiatives to limit the pr…
Symbolic wins as stepping stones toward material gains
Sweden successfully implemented a ban on fossil fuel exploration and extraction. • The ban was driven by a combination of symbolic, material, and international motivations. • Proponents conceived of the ban as a stepping stone on the path to more ambitious climate and energy policy. How and why do some countries without ongoing fossil fuel exploration and extraction decide to unilaterally ban such activities? As part of a global momentum toward f…
Facing a fossil free future through the past
The study of policies limiting the production of fossil fuels must be appropriately historicised. Contextualising these policies within a longer-term historical and wider geopolitical perspective helps illuminate the political dynamics and trajectories that variably give rise to, or prevent, such supply-side policies. Attention to this longer history furthermore helps understand the origins of the long-standing, powerful resistance to moving away…
Power in Fossil Fuel Supply-Side Policy
Supply-side climate policy initiatives that restrict fossil fuel production are gathering momentum. A growing body of academic scholarship seeks to understand this new frontier in global climate governance, including several recent papers on the topic published in the Global Environmental Politics journal. As part of the future-facing content of this anniversary special issue, we address a missing aspect of this debate: deeper analysis of the rel…
Political fatalism and the (im)possibility of social transformation
How can the world be improved if the people inhabiting it do not believe they can transform it? A belief in such political fatalism is an important obstacle to social transformation, yet underexplored in the contemporary political theory literature. Political fatalism can be understood as a commitment to the belief that human agency cannot effectuate social transformation. In this article, I provide a typology of such political fatalism, consider…
Who Should Phase Out Fossil Fuels First? A Geopolitical Approach to Determining the Sequencing of Fossil Fuel Phaseouts
Fossil fuel production must be phased out globally to decarbonise human society. Yet some countries should phase out sooner than others. Determining the order in which countries should phase out production is a crucial question yet has no single objective measure. The existing literature has begun to propose and assesses metrics for determining this sequencing. However, although the global fossil fuel system exhibits strong geopolitical character…
Under pressure
Comradely Critique
What does it mean to disagree with people with whom you usually agree? How should political actors concerned with emancipation approach internal disagreement? In short, how should we go about critiquing not our enemies or adversaries but those with whom we share emancipatory visions? I outline the notion of comradely critique as a solution to these questions. I go through a series of examples of how and when critique should differ depending on it…
Black Intellectuals in the Age of Crack’
The existing research on the role of intellectuals in alleviating suffering has overlooked contributions by prominent Black intellectuals from the United States in the early 1990s. Two roundtable debates co-organised under the auspices of the Boston Review at Harvard and MIT in 1992 and 1993 in response to Eugene Rivers’ essay “On the Responsibility of Intellectuals in the Age of Crack” were central to these contributions, counting a star-studded…
Eugene Rivers and the responsibility of intellectuals
No series of analyses, papers, discussions, and books will stop the slaughter in our streets, or children from having children, or men from beating up women. The role of intellectuals is limited; excessive expectations will only produce disappointment. But that limited role is crucial, and fears of disappointment should not serve as an excuse for continuing along the current course. (Rivers, 1995, p. 18) Some 25 years ago, Edward Said claimed tha…
Faith between reason and affect
This article argues that faith is a crucial concept for understanding the relationship between reason and affect. By allowing people to learn from religious faith for secular ends, it can help generate political action for emancipatory change. Antonio Gramsci's underexplored secular-political and materialist conception of faith provides an important contribution to such a project. By speaking to common sense and tradition, faith avoids imposing a…
Comradely Critique
What does it mean to disagree with people with whom you usually agree? How should political actors concerned with emancipation approach internal disagreement? In short, how should we go about critiquing not our enemies or adversaries but those with whom we share emancipatory visions? I outline the notion of comradely critique as a solution to these questions. I go through a series of examples of how and when critique should differ depending on it…
Facing a fossil free future through the past
The study of policies limiting the production of fossil fuels must be appropriately historicised. Contextualising these policies within a longer-term historical and wider geopolitical perspective helps illuminate the political dynamics and trajectories that variably give rise to, or prevent, such supply-side policies. Attention to this longer history furthermore helps understand the origins of the long-standing, powerful resistance to moving away…
Faith between reason and affect
This article argues that faith is a crucial concept for understanding the relationship between reason and affect. By allowing people to learn from religious faith for secular ends, it can help generate political action for emancipatory change. Antonio Gramsci's underexplored secular-political and materialist conception of faith provides an important contribution to such a project. By speaking to common sense and tradition, faith avoids imposing a…
Political fatalism and the (im)possibility of social transformation
How can the world be improved if the people inhabiting it do not believe they can transform it? A belief in such political fatalism is an important obstacle to social transformation, yet underexplored in the contemporary political theory literature. Political fatalism can be understood as a commitment to the belief that human agency cannot effectuate social transformation. In this article, I provide a typology of such political fatalism, consider…
Eugene Rivers and the responsibility of intellectuals
No series of analyses, papers, discussions, and books will stop the slaughter in our streets, or children from having children, or men from beating up women. The role of intellectuals is limited; excessive expectations will only produce disappointment. But that limited role is crucial, and fears of disappointment should not serve as an excuse for continuing along the current course. (Rivers, 1995, p. 18) Some 25 years ago, Edward Said claimed tha…
Faith between reason and affect
This article argues that faith is a crucial concept for understanding the relationship between reason and affect. By allowing people to learn from religious faith for secular ends, it can help generate political action for emancipatory change. Antonio Gramsci's underexplored secular-political and materialist conception of faith provides an important contribution to such a project. By speaking to common sense and tradition, faith avoids imposing a…
Black Intellectuals in the Age of Crack’
The existing research on the role of intellectuals in alleviating suffering has overlooked contributions by prominent Black intellectuals from the United States in the early 1990s. Two roundtable debates co-organised under the auspices of the Boston Review at Harvard and MIT in 1992 and 1993 in response to Eugene Rivers’ essay “On the Responsibility of Intellectuals in the Age of Crack” were central to these contributions, counting a star-studded…
Eugene Rivers and the responsibility of intellectuals
No series of analyses, papers, discussions, and books will stop the slaughter in our streets, or children from having children, or men from beating up women. The role of intellectuals is limited; excessive expectations will only produce disappointment. But that limited role is crucial, and fears of disappointment should not serve as an excuse for continuing along the current course. (Rivers, 1995, p. 18) Some 25 years ago, Edward Said claimed tha…
Under pressure
Comradely Critique
What does it mean to disagree with people with whom you usually agree? How should political actors concerned with emancipation approach internal disagreement? In short, how should we go about critiquing not our enemies or adversaries but those with whom we share emancipatory visions? I outline the notion of comradely critique as a solution to these questions. I go through a series of examples of how and when critique should differ depending on it…
Facing a fossil free future through the past
The study of policies limiting the production of fossil fuels must be appropriately historicised. Contextualising these policies within a longer-term historical and wider geopolitical perspective helps illuminate the political dynamics and trajectories that variably give rise to, or prevent, such supply-side policies. Attention to this longer history furthermore helps understand the origins of the long-standing, powerful resistance to moving away…
Power in Fossil Fuel Supply-Side Policy
Supply-side climate policy initiatives that restrict fossil fuel production are gathering momentum. A growing body of academic scholarship seeks to understand this new frontier in global climate governance, including several recent papers on the topic published in the Global Environmental Politics journal. As part of the future-facing content of this anniversary special issue, we address a missing aspect of this debate: deeper analysis of the rel…
Political fatalism and the (im)possibility of social transformation
How can the world be improved if the people inhabiting it do not believe they can transform it? A belief in such political fatalism is an important obstacle to social transformation, yet underexplored in the contemporary political theory literature. Political fatalism can be understood as a commitment to the belief that human agency cannot effectuate social transformation. In this article, I provide a typology of such political fatalism, consider…
Who Should Phase Out Fossil Fuels First? A Geopolitical Approach to Determining the Sequencing of Fossil Fuel Phaseouts
Fossil fuel production must be phased out globally to decarbonise human society. Yet some countries should phase out sooner than others. Determining the order in which countries should phase out production is a crucial question yet has no single objective measure. The existing literature has begun to propose and assesses metrics for determining this sequencing. However, although the global fossil fuel system exhibits strong geopolitical character…
Rearguard Politics
Which kinds of leadership are appropriate for emancipatory politics? Moving beyond a dichotomy of vanguardism and horizontalism, I advance rearguardism. Supplementing vanguardism, rearguardism involves defensive leadership and legitimation of existing movements, protecting these from attacks by dominant forces and actively propagating their struggles without co-opting or directing these from the front. I first outline vanguardism, focusing on the…
Fossil fuel leadership or fossil-fuelled leadership? The limits of Denmark’s oil and gas production phaseout
Understanding the limits of existing fossil fuel phaseout policies is key for clarifying the challenges of phasing out fossil fuels. In this article, I focus on Denmark as a prominent example of the tension between ‘fossil fuel leadership’ and ‘fossil-fuelled leadership’ due to the conflict between its self-positioning as a first-moving global climate leader and continued and new oil and gas production despite its phaseout policy. I examine the o…
Why do countries adopt supply-side policies? The international political economy of fossil fuel phaseouts
Ambitious goals to limit global heating cannot be achieved without significant efforts to cut fossil fuel production. Yet, comparative analysis of the international political economy dynamics that explain why and how different states adopt such supply-side policies is lacking. Drawing on original interview-based research in four countries that have unilaterally adopted supply-side climate policies and led international initiatives to limit the pr…
Symbolic wins as stepping stones toward material gains
Sweden successfully implemented a ban on fossil fuel exploration and extraction. • The ban was driven by a combination of symbolic, material, and international motivations. • Proponents conceived of the ban as a stepping stone on the path to more ambitious climate and energy policy. How and why do some countries without ongoing fossil fuel exploration and extraction decide to unilaterally ban such activities? As part of a global momentum toward f…
Politics (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Fossil fuel (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Law (5 works) · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance (5 works) · Climate change (4 works) · Epistemology (3 works) · Global Energy and Sustainability Research (3 works)