In Bad Environmentalism, Nicole Seymour focuses on works of art and performance which convey “bad affects” such as ambivalence, low humor, irreverence, irony, or disgust as a part of or in response to environmental discourse. This bad affect, according to Seymour, has much to teach us about our own expectations for thought and writing about the environment. For example, why do we expect to feel reverence when encountering wilderness and wild creatures? Or alarm and self-righteousness in response to invasive species or climate change? In some cases, bad affect exposes the values implicit in mainstream environmentalism, in particular its connections to whiteness, masculinity, and class privilege. Seymour asks us to think about how environmental discourse changes when we invite disgust, kink, and emasculation into the mix.

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