Overview

This exceptional volume examines “image events” as a rhetorical tactic utilized by environmental activists. Author Kevin Michael DeLuca analyzes widely televised environmentalist actions in depth to illustrate how the image event fulfills fundamental rhetorical functions in constructing and transforming identities, discourses, communities, cultures, and world views. Image Politics also exhibits how such events create opportunities for a politics that does not rely on centralized leadership or universal metanarratives. The book presents a rhetoric of the visual for our mediated age as it illuminates new political possibilities currently enacted by radical environmental groups. Chapters in the volume cover key areas of environmental activism such as: *The rhetoric of social movements; *Imaging social movements; *Environmental justice groups; and *Participatory democracy. This book is of interest to scholars and students of rhetorical theory, media and communication theory, visual theory, environmental studies, social change movements, and political theory. It will also appeal to others interested in ecology, radical environmental politics, and activism, and is an excellent supplemental text in advanced undergraduate and graduate level courses in these areas.

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9780805858488

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Reviews

Blending theoretical perspectives from diverse disciplines...DeLuca crafts a highly useful 'critical rhetorical' approach that allows subtle and complex analysis of relatively underexamined kinds of environmental activism.... Image Politics...substantially revises recent traditions in rhetorical studies, which have tended to center on the orator/public speaker rather than the 'image event, ' and to operate from an 'organizational studies' model....Further, Deluca extends the critiques of various cultural theorists and post-structuralist rhetoricians....Ultimately, DeLuca demonstrates how a 'critical rhetorician' might use the critical tools of post-structuralism to understand the political leverage representational rhetorics provide--and thus how environmental activists might shift systems of shared meanings, even against the full cultural weight of industrial capitalism. -- ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment ... DeLuca makes an easy connection to the reader and minimizes any pretense such an erudite discussion could involve. He offers chapters as 'meditations' that need not be read in order, allowing flexible classroom use....The book is full of interesting and useful information--for instance Abbie Hoffman's realization in the 60s of the power of the televised image and the later 'yippie' connection to Earth First!....Having taught both environmental resource courses in a geography program and environmental reporting classes in journalism schools, I believe this text could be used to challenge students in a wide array of courses. -- Journalism and Mass Communication Educator ... presents a detailed analysis of the use of video images to advancethe objectives of activist organizations ranging from little-known groups like the Allegheny County Non-violent Action Group to the internationally recognizable Earth First! And Greenpeace....Recommended for libraries serving higher education programs in political science, mass communications, and environmental science. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. -- Choice

Blending theoretical perspectives from diverse disciplines...DeLuca crafts a highly useful 'critical rhetorical' approach that allows subtle and complex analysis of relatively underexamined kinds of environmental activism.... Image Politics...substantially revises recent traditions in rhetorical studies, which have tended to center on the orator/public speaker rather than the 'image event, ' and to operate from an 'organizational studies' model....Further, Deluca extends the critiques of various cultural theorists and post-structuralist rhetoricians....Ultimately, DeLuca demonstrates how a 'critical rhetorician' might use the critical tools of post-structuralism to understand the political leverage representational rhetorics provide--and thus how environmental activists might shift systems of shared meanings, even against the full cultural weight of industrial capitalism. -- ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment <br>... DeLuca makes an easy connection to the reader and minimizes any pretense such an erudite discussion could involve. He offers chapters as 'meditations' that need not be read in order, allowing flexible classroom use....The book is full of interesting and useful information--for instance Abbie Hoffman's realization in the 60s of the power of the televised image and the later 'yippie' connection to Earth First!....Having taught both environmental resource courses in a geography program and environmental reporting classes in journalism schools, I believe this text could be used to challenge students in a wide array of courses. -- Journalism and Mass Communication Educator <br>... presents a detailed analysis of the use of video images to advancethe objectives of activist organizations ranging from little-known groups like the Allegheny County Non-violent Action Group to the internationally recognizable Earth First! And Greenpeace....Recommended for libraries serving higher education programs in political science, mass communications, and environmental science. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. -- Choice<br>

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DeLuca, Kevin Michael

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