signposting at beginning of chp2

2 files changed, 26 insertions, 6 deletions

diff --git a/chapter1.md b/chapter1.md
index 86d3b63..0cb1ee1 100644
--- a/chapter1.md
+++ b/chapter1.md
@@ -390,6 +390,17 @@ powers and interests for such exhortations to be feasible.
 This begs the question: if green rhetoric is failing, how might it be fixed? In
 what follows, I will not be proposing a practical manifesto for transforming the
 green movement, but I will be engaging in blue-sky thinking, imagining what a
-more successful green rhetoric might look like. In the next chapter, I will
-examine the popular suggestion that a more successful green rhetoric would look
-less apocalyptic.
+more successful green rhetoric might look like.
+
+One common suggestion is that green rhetoric needs to be less catastrophic. Since
+apocalyptic language is often assumed to be more or less equivalent to catastrophic
+language, it is easy for commentators such as Frances Flannery to infer that
+successful green rhetoric should avoid apocalyptic language. In chapter 3, I'll
+argue that Flannery's argument ignores the possibilities of apocalyptic language,
+including, and going well beyond, its catastrophic aspects. Then, in chapter 4,
+I'll argue that green rhetors today must use John's rhetorical techniques in order 
+to make change happen. But first, in the following chapter, I'll explore how
+catastrophism appears in contemporary green rhetoric, and why critics allege that
+catastrophic language is counter-productive in this context.
+
+
diff --git a/chapter2.md b/chapter2.md
index fda44ca..48b4d3f 100644
--- a/chapter2.md
+++ b/chapter2.md
@@ -1,8 +1,17 @@
 ## Chapter 2
 
-Catastrophe is a prominent literary feature of contemporary green rhetoric. The
-word 'catastrophe' first entered English through early modern translations of
-Greek plays, meaning the denouement of a plot. Through association with
+Among the numerous complaints commentators have expressed about catastrophic
+green rhetoric, I will examine three in particular. One, it is alleged that
+catastrophic language encourages a fatalistic outlook and therefore
+discourages effective political action. Second, catastrophe is supposed to
+promote business as usual and shut down radical discourses. Third, critics
+argue that catastrophic thinking flattens out power relationships and thus
+contributes to the 'death of politics.' I will examine each of these
+complaints in turn, but first I will explore where catastrophic language comes
+from and how it ends up featuring in contemporary green rhetoric.
+
+The word 'catastrophe' first entered English through early modern translations
+of Greek plays, meaning the denouement of a plot. Through association with
 tragedies, it came to acquire connotations of disaster, and in the nineteenth
 century, became closely associated with the (now antiquated) 'catastrophic'
 theory of geological time, according to which distinct geological epochs were