Ecologies of Guilt in Environmental Rhetorics

Environmental rhetorics have expanded awareness of mass extinction, climate change, and pervasive pollution, yet failed to generate collective action that adequately addresses such pressing matters. This book contends that the anemic response to ecological upheaval is due, in part, to an inability to navigate novel forms of environmental guilt.

Combining affect theory with rhetorical analysis to examine a range of texts and media, Ecologies of Guilt in Environmental Rhetorics positions guilt as a keystone emotion for contemporary environmental communication, and explores how it is provoked, perpetuated, and framed through everyday discourse. In revealing the need for emotional literacies that productively engage our complicity in global ecological harm, the book looks to a future where guiltand its symbiotic relationships with anger, shame, and griefis shaped in tune with the ecologies that sustain us.

Clarifies how guilt functions rhetorically, culturally, and politically within environmental communication Offers principles for new emotional literacies that help us navigate complicity in a collective problem that is global in scope and unprecedented in scale Advocates for an ecological approach to the rhetorical study of emotion

Auteur
Tim Jensen is Assistant Professor and Director of Writing at Oregon State University, USA.

Contenu
Chapter 1. Guilt in/for Ecological Upheaval.- Chapter 2. Guilt's Plasticity.- Chapter 3. Eco-Friendly Scapegoats.- Chapter 4. Guilty of Shame in the Anthropocene .- Chapter 5. Guilty, Good Grief, New Mourning.