For the past month or so, I’ve been reading ‘Ecological Feelings: A Rhetorical Compendium’ edited by Joshua Trey Barnett and it completely flipped my understanding of ecological emotions on its head. Like most people, my understanding of ecological emotions came mainly from my own experiences which were mostly negative. Such as, after witnessing a disaster, or just random acts of destruction to our world. These kinds of feelings, ecological grief, dread, anxiety etc. tend to linger in the psyche for a long time, but it’s only one way of recognizing and understanding our ecological emotions.
To understand these emotions on a deeper level our lived experience needs to step to the side. Only then can we view these feelings through various lenses, one of which is rhetoric. For context, rhetoric as defined by Barnett is a container of world-making practices. These practices, through an ecological lens can be used to either promote terraphthoric (feelings that harm the earth and it’s co-inhabitants) or terranascient feelings (feelings that safeguard the earth and it’s co-inhabitants). So how do these ideas play out within rhetoric and how does it change how we understand ecological emotions?
Analyzing the rhetoric of various ecological feelings allows us to uncover the social, political, and cultural entanglements that define how we feel and why we feel a specific way. While also allowing us to use rhetoric to inspire those feelings in others. This of course is a double edged sword. While rhetoric can be used for immense good in the world, especially when it comes to promoting action against climate collapse, social justice etc. It can also be used to cause terraphthoric emotions like apathy and doomerism. Understanding how the broader culture that we live in leverages rhetoric both for and against us is vital and in ‘Ecological Feelings’ it plays center stage. I don’t want to share too much about this book, I’d rather you read it. But I do want to leave you with something to think about;
‘To this end, such structures, out of the necessity of the current ecological now, press humans and nonhumans to respond differently and engage particular (and peculiar) possibilities for a changed future.’ – Jennifer Clary-Lemon
When it comes to precarity, to situations of danger that we feel we cannot control, we are not left without resources. Rhetoric is one of them and one we can use to bring about hopeful futures free of the negative entanglements that prevent our inter-species coexistence. How has rhetoric influenced you? What ways can you creatively use rhetoric to allow terranascient feelings to thrive?