From c0bd49166ff53f06638c0e4aae214432c4b56468 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Joe Carstairs Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2026 13:47:23 +0100 Subject: link chp1 and chp2 --- chapter2.md | 48 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------------------- 1 file changed, 28 insertions(+), 20 deletions(-) (limited to 'chapter2.md') diff --git a/chapter2.md b/chapter2.md index 213a66f..7f6c82b 100644 --- a/chapter2.md +++ b/chapter2.md @@ -2,13 +2,15 @@ Among the numerous complaints commentators have expressed about catastrophic green rhetoric, I will examine three in particular. First, 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. +catastrophic language encourages a fatalistic outlook and therefore persuades +audiences that no proposed solution can be credible. Second, catastrophe is +supposed to promote business as usual and shut down radical discourses, +preventing rhetors from proposing truly credible solutions. Third, critics argue +that catastrophic thinking flattens out power relationships and thus contributes +to the 'death of politics,' driving rhetors to use the universal 'we' instead of +identifying an appropriate audience. 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 @@ -87,13 +89,9 @@ important features of apocalyptic language as exemplified by John, but for now it is worth noting that some rhetors use allusions to the Apocalypse in order to function as a catastrophic symbol. -Recently, academics examining green rhetoric have raised concerns with green -catastrophism: namely, that it encourages fatalism, conservatism, and -contributes to the 'death of politics.' - It has been claimed green catastrophism is fatalistic: that the catastrophe is -implicitly inevitable, thus encouraging despair over hope and therefore mere -ritual over action. To be sure, most green rhetors do not explicitly say this; +implicitly inevitable, and therefore no solution a rhetor might propose can ever +be worth pursuing. To be sure, most green rhetors do not explicitly say this; rather, they tend to say the very opposite, that it is not too late to avert the catastrophe: that's why we have to act now! The problem is not that green rhetors _assert_ that the catastrophe is inevitable, but that inevitability is @@ -169,15 +167,17 @@ certain pre-millenialist beliefs [@unveiling-empire, p. 5]) might be a minority pursuit, but it is a response to the same apocalyptic storytelling which is a widespread phenomenon in mainstream American media. This media landscape neutralises what might have been active concern and transforms it into apathetic -fatalism [@american-apocalyptic, p. 60]. +fatalism [@american-apocalyptic, p. 60]. Good rhetoric must persuade its +audience that the proposed solutions are feasible: fatalism persuades the +audience that no solution is feasible at all. A second problem with catastrophic language is that it is conservative. For some rhetors, the urgency of the crisis means that established power structures must be supported to work at full throttle, and we -certainly haven't got time to replace or radically transform them. But if, as +certainly haven't got time to replace or transform them. But if, as many political analysts contend, green harms are an inevitable consequence of business as usual, then such narratives obstruct the radical -political critique which will be necessary for a lasting solution to green +political critique needed to propose a truly credible solution to green issues. For example, the International Monetary Fund recently reported: > Aligning capital flows on a low-carbon trajectory has become a critical policy @@ -190,7 +190,10 @@ sector, ignoring the fact that historical economic transformations have been driven by command-and-control. Tacitly, the IMF assumes that the neoliberal order, in which governments are held hostage by markets, is permanent and inevitable. The figure of climate catastrophe functions here to attempt to -foreclose radical imagination. +foreclose radical imagination. This contributes to the tendency of green rhetors +to propose incredible solutions, such as voluntary austerity, impossible global +agreements, or 'smart' market fixes isolated from a sustainable political +programme. But perhaps the most vicious criticism of green catastrophism is that since green catastrophism reverberates strongly with 'Anthropocene' discourses, such @@ -212,9 +215,14 @@ the biological species, such as greed or the ability to make fire. In reality, the climate catastrophe is not the result of a biological trait, but an historical process, and therefore an economic structure. +Green catastrophism, because of its Anthropocene tendencies, blinds rhetors to +social differentiation. Rhetors are therefore driven to use the imaginary +universal human 'we' and ignore social stratifiers such as class, preventing +them from identifying an appropriate audience, a fundamental of successful +rhetoric. + In sum, green catastrophism is accused of encouraging a fatalist outlook, disarming radical discourses in favour of business as usual, and deepening the 'death of politics' by obscuring the importance of power relationships. -In all these ways, catastrophic language in green rhetoric can work to actively -de-motivate audiences to play their part in bringing about the green movement's -desired outcomes. +In all these ways, catastrophic language in green rhetoric can help explain +why green rhetors are getting the fundamentals of successful rhetoric wrong. -- cgit v1.2.3