Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism [Hardcover]

Kevin Michael DeLuca PhD (Author), Kevin Michael DeLuca (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1572304618 | ISBN-13: 978-1572304611 | Publication Date: October 1, 1999 0

From Greenpeace protesters confronting whaling ships to Earth First! activists occupying trees to stop logging, radical environmentalists increasingly rely upon attracting mass media coverage to gain visibility and public support. This book examines the use of "image events" as a rhetorical tactic, one that often supplants written or spoken arguments. Widely televised environmentalist actions are analyzed in depth to illustrate how the image event fulfills fundamental rhetorical functions in constructing and transforming identities, discourses, communities, cultures, and world views. Beyond the rhetorical power of image events, DeLuca also shows how they create opportunities for a politics that does not rely on centralized leadership or universal metanarratives. Illuminating the new political possibilities currently being enacted by radical environmental groups, the book lays out a rhetoric of the visual for our mediated age.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Kevin DeLuca sets out on a brave quest to understand the social forces unleashed in the postmodern age, as mediated reality constantly postures as Real Reality. Image Politics shows how the earth itself is given voice--a multiplicity of voices, actually--as environmentalists, capitalists, and the press do battle in the public square. DeLuca is a reliable guide to the resulting political fury." --Roderick P. Hart, Liddell Professor of Communication and Government, University of Texas at Austin

"DeLuca offers a penetrating reading of image events and their centrality in the rhetoric of new social movements. Using detailed case studies drawn from environmental activism, DeLuca analyzes 'imagefare' as an inevitable component of the struggle over the meaning of key political ideas. This book will be useful reading for students of rhetoric and media studies." --Dilip Gaonkar, PhD, Department of Communication Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

About the Author

Kevin Michael DeLuca, PhD, has taught at the University of Virginia and the Pennsylvania State University and is currently an assistant professor of Speech Communication at the University of Georgia. His major area of interest is how industrial cultures relate to the natural world and construct visions of "nature." He has published articles on environmental politics, technology, the media, and postmodernism.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 205 pages
• Publisher: The Guilford Press (October 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572304618
• ISBN-13: 978-1572304611
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #348,022 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great, Creative Take on Work in Rhetoric!, January 19, 2006

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s.5 "spenceronehalf" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism (Hardcover)

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!

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great work of profound importance (for enviros & academics), April 27, 2000

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Virginia Rodino (Syracuse, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism (Hardcover)

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.