The Sense of the End: Revisiting Ernesto De Martino’s Legacy in Navigating Eco-Emotions

Resumen

In recent years, the climate emergency has fueled a widespread sense of the end, generating collective emotions that reflect an experience of existential precariousness and historical disorientation. The so-called eco-emotions—such as eco-anxiety, solastalgia, and eco-angst—are not merely individual responses to the ecological crisis but symptoms of a historical and existential rupture. This article proposes interpreting these emotions through Ernesto De Martino’s concept of the crisis of presence, which describes how the risk of the world’s dissolution translates into an affective experience of displacement and disorientation. From this perspective, eco-emotions appear as manifestations of a crisis in temporal orientation and the continuity between past, present, and future, amplifying the apocalyptic perception of climate collapse. However, De Martino’s thought offers a key to recognizing these emotions not only as signs of crisis but also as potential instruments of redemption and transformation. Through social mobilization, the construction of new forms of ecological belonging, and the creation of alternative narratives, eco-emotions can be transformed into  practices of resistance, enabling a redefinition of the relationship between humanity and the world—even in the face of the looming sense of the end.