The escalation of ecological, military, and capitalist destruction has dominated current developments in many places. This issue of TEXTE ZUR KUNST puts forward two psychanalytical concepts that lend themselves to describing destructive tendencies, as well as to possible ways of redirecting aggression away from violence and into creative work: the death drive and sublimation. Contributions subject these concepts to a discursive stress test and set them in relation to historical and contemporary examples of artistic production. Although this does not alleviate structural hopelessness and its affective dimension, it makes these amenable to negotiation.