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| author | Joe Carstairs <me@joeac.net> | 2026-06-30 15:47:00 +0100 |
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| committer | Joe Carstairs <me@joeac.net> | 2026-06-30 15:47:00 +0100 |
| commit | 159f4405a716ffb857948ac9b1a986550c1089b9 (patch) | |
| tree | b52d0daed15c5320cc82e1981254734866eee738 | |
| parent | 080ffcc58edff91dad02ddc6cb1b3ce05ce2a5af (diff) | |
write summary
| -rw-r--r-- | chapter5.md | 61 |
1 files changed, 60 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/chapter5.md b/chapter5.md index f4b093b..e352acb 100644 --- a/chapter5.md +++ b/chapter5.md @@ -1 +1,60 @@ -## Conclusion +## Summary + +Green rhetoric is not working. The green movement is going backwards in many of +its key demands. + +Part of the reason for this, as I explored in chapter 1, is that green rhetors +aren't getting the fundamentals right. By focusing on individual consumption +choices and science denial, they mis-diagnose the root causes of green harms. +Their exhortations, apparently delivered to the universal human collective, +doesn't match up with the interests and powers of their real audiences, namely, +the Western middle classes. As a result, they end up proposing solutions that +aren't feasible. + +How could green rhetors be more effective? One common suggestion, explored in +chapter 2, is that green rhetors should avoid the motif of catastrophe, or, in a +certain sense, 'apocalypse.' Catastrophic rhetoric has been accused of creating +resignation, despair, apathy, and dismissal, and of killing genuine politics. +This line of thought, together with the fact that 'apocalypse' is treated as a +catastrophic symbol in popular culture, leads Frances Flannery to suggest that +green rhetors should avoid evoking apocalyptic associations. + +However, in chapter 3, I argued that the Apocalypse of St. John, the chief +source of apocalyptic language in the West, was not originally conceived as +catastrophic, and did not create the aforementioned negative reactions, but +rather used apocalyptic language as an essential tool in the author's rhetorical +strategy. + +In chapter 4, I went further, and argued that in order to succeed now, green +rhetors must use similar apocalyptic rhetorical strategies. I did this through +the case study of arguing for a Green New Deal, arguing that in order to +convince UK citizens to take the political action necessary to bring a Green New +Deal about, green rhetors need to use minority cognition, tribulation language, +and utopian end-time speculation, in similar ways and for similar reasons as +once applied to St. John. + +My analysis has severe limits. As I explored in chapter 1, there are many +reasons why green rhetoric is too often failing at present, and there's no good +cause to think that any one solution will fix all. Nor have I made any attempt +to explain why catastrophic motifs are so consistently reproduced in green +rhetoric, nor have I provided a feasible means of ensuring that green rhetors +can and do adopt the apocalyptic strategies I have proposed. In chapter 1, I +warned that a great deal of contemporary green rhetoric does not successfully +identify a practical plan of action or the right audience to carry it out: I am +happy to confess my guilt in the same sin. I have also not given nearly as much +attention to people who hold millenialist worldviews as I would have liked, and +they deserve. + +What I do claim, is that, in defiance of the many critics of apocalypticism, a +better green rhetoric would be a more apocalyptic rhetoric, at least in the +sense that it uses similar rhetorical strategies to those deployed by St. John +of the Apocalypse. + +To put it another way, both St. John and contemporary green rhetors have the +same rhetorical goal: to motivate an ethic of martyrdom. This puts similar +constraints on the kinds of rhetorical strategies which will and won't work. To +better achieve their goals, green rhetors will have to find minority +epistemologies with which to fight fossil-think, steel their audiences for +tribulations, and engage in utopian end-time speculation to convince their +audiences that their potential sufferings are worth enduring. When they do so, +they will find the path well-trodden by St. John. |
