Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism

By Kevin Michael DeLuca

Book Overview

Volume describes principles and practices of environmental activists, and the use of images to promote causes. For environmental studies, rhetoric, and political communication scholars and students. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1572304618
• ISBN13: 9781572304611
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: The Guilford Press
• Length: 205 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.8" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

Great, Creative Take on Work in Rhetoric!

In this book, DeLuca says that he aims to "perform a postmodern critical rhetoric" (and he does!) examining "image events" created by environmental activists such as Earth First!, Green Peace, and even more interestingly, anti-pollution activists (very grass roots) in Kentucky. In a nicely scattered array of chapters, DeLuca poses his argument that image events can do things (make change) while also being appropriated and rendered inert in various ways. Reading this book, one can only wonder how it would have been changed if the anti-WTO protests of N30, 1999 would have been considered -- but that is not a shortcoming: the book is thorough and very well written. Great scholarship!

Great work of profound importance (for enviros & academics)

Through a plethora of filters including cultural studies, rhetoric, political economy, postmodernism, critical studies, media studies, activism, and environmental studies, DeLuca strongly introduces the image event, an ideograph of profound political and social implications. The author explores these image events through the tactics and strategies of radical environmental and environmental justice groups. Expertly, he deconstructs the notion of a public sphere, as grounded in today's televisual mass mediated society. Rebuffing an ideal Habermassian public sphere in which all parties and sides can equally and civilly debate issues of any interest, DeLuca questions whether all individuals are welcome to enter into that debate, a debate which today occurs in the mass media. Looking at four nonviolent environmental and environmental justice groups, DeLuca argues that the success of their protests against hegemonic forces now lies in the image event itself rather than the immediate cessation of the offense in question. Success comes about through a direct action: Forcing people (audiences) out of comfortable ignorance into a questioning of the status quo (pp. 1-3). The violent counterresponses (pp. 8-9) from the corporations and governments being protested, in light of the failed (inability to stop the present offense) direct actions by the environmental groups, underscores the author's contention of the redefinition of success. Through this challenge of the mainstream discourse (industrialism and progress) (p. 6), the direct actions of the groups DeLuca analyzes become symbolically charged, expected to fail in immediate terms. Success instead comes through increased visibility and public support. By challenging the legitimacy of the establishment" (p. 15), the groups are, according to DeLuca, considering "the implications for rhetoric of extralinguistic confrontational activities" (p. 15). To critical rhetorical scholars, DeLuca becomes one of the vanguards who asserts that the visual realm, which has for too long been ignored by the field, is not only as important, but more so than spoken or written rhetoric in the political public sphere. Through this analysis, DeLuca explores how radical environmental groups are reconstituting the identity of the dominant culture (p. 16) rather than forming their own. In conclusion, this work is of great importance to the academy, especially the field of rhetoric. DeLuca's book begins to fill the dearth of work on media and the environment. It begins anew the research of social movements in this postmodern era. Importantly, it gifts the activist groups legitimacy and credence, which does have the potential to greater effect social change, an ideal conditional for every work in the academy.