The Weather in Sedgwick

This article examines the psychoanalytic foundations of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s late essay “The Weather in Proust” and draws out the contradictions in its aesthetic claims. These claims are based on the object-relations theory of Melanie Klein, D. W. Winnicott, and others whom Sedgwick turns to in her departure from Freudian psychoanalysis. The latter, Sedgwick argues, is a closed system compared to the freedom afforded by a theory of weather. From this vantage point, Sedgwickian weather is exemplary of a broader turn away from psychoanalysis, especially Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, in the environmental humanities. I examine the limits to this turn and show why the version of eco-psychoanalysis on display in “The Weather in Proust” contradicts Sedgwick’s stated intentions. Though Sedgwick posits the weather as a source of freedom and creativity, her version of atmospheric criticism exacerbates the very conditions of anxiety that Sedgwick tries to ameliorate. This contradiction in reading points to a greater problem in the environmental humanities. I address this problem by returning to Sedgwick’s rejection of Sigmund Freud.