Kevin M DeLuca | University of Utah (original) (raw)
Papers by Kevin M DeLuca
The Argumentative Force of Image Networks: Greenpeace's Panmediated Global Detox Campaign, 2016
This essay engages the force of images as an important form of argumentation in the contemporary ... more This essay engages the force of images as an important form of argumentation in the contemporary mediascape, which is being constantly transformed by flows of image networks across various social media platforms. This mediascape requires tools that move beyond verbal architectures, inspiring new concepts and practices of analysis. In response, this essay proposes concepts for engaging the argumentative force of the rush of images transforming the world, including panmediated networks, wild public screens, affective winds, and image events. An analysis of Greenpeace’s global Detox campaign elaborates on the uses of these concepts.
Environmental Ethics, 2001
Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 2001
... More significantly, Southern Pacific land agent Daniel Zumwalt, a lover of wilderness and per... more ... More significantly, Southern Pacific land agent Daniel Zumwalt, a lover of wilderness and personal friend of Representative Vandever, in Washington DC to promote the formation of Sequoia National Park, proposed enlarging Yosemite Park beyond even Muir's initial proposal ...
Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 2000
Crit Stud Media Comm, 2000
... (Morton, 1886, p. 337) The process of producing the domes-ticated sublime, however, also pro-... more ... (Morton, 1886, p. 337) The process of producing the domes-ticated sublime, however, also pro-duces a technological sublime. ... The sublime experience depends on the feeling of terror or fear in the face of the sublime object. ...
Critical Studies in Media Communication, Oct 15, 2010
The WTO protests in Seattle witnessed the emergence of an international citizens' movement for de... more The WTO protests in Seattle witnessed the emergence of an international citizens' movement for democratic globalization. With the tactical exploitation of television, the internet, and other technologies, Seattle also witnessed the enactment of forms of activism adapted to a wired society. In the wake of Seattle, this essay introduces the “public screen” as a necessary supplement to the metaphor of the public sphere for understanding today's political scene. While a public sphere orientation inevitably finds contemporary discourse wanting, viewing such discourse through the prism of the public screen provokes a consideration of new forms of participatory democracy. In comparison to the public sphere's privileging of rationality, embodied conversations, consensus, and civility, the public screen highlights dissemination, images, hypermediacy, publicity, distraction, and dissent. Using the Seattle WTO protests as a case study and focusing on the dynamic of violence and the media, we argue that the public screen accounts for technological and cultural changes while enabling a charting of the new conditions for rhetoric, politics, and activism.
Women's Studies in Communication, 2006
ABSTRACT Armed with their personal experiences and community ties, the women of Environmental Jus... more ABSTRACT Armed with their personal experiences and community ties, the women of Environmental Justice have called into question the distribution of waste in the United States. In this essay, we explore the communicative practices that have enabled the movement to achieve change in extraordinarily difficult contexts. The women use what appears to be a liability, their gender, especially their role as mothers, to challenge practices and policies that threaten their homes, families, and communities.
The emergence of China and the advent of social media are two events that rupture the world as it... more The emergence of China and the advent of social media are two events that rupture the world as it is and force a rethinking of activism and public spaces. Environmental protests in China, often performed on a mediascape dominated by social media, suggest new conditions of possibility for activism and a need to adopt new methods and tools for understanding the myriad practices of activists in China that exceed the strictures of governmental control and offer hope for different futures. This essay theorizes emerging practices of citizenship and inventive imaginings of public spaces by introducing wild public screens. To do so, we analyze how Chinese environmentalists deploy Weibo, WeChat, and other social media platforms.
As air pollution engulfed the Salt Lake valley once again in the Winter of 2014, students, activi... more As air pollution engulfed the Salt Lake valley once again in the Winter of 2014, students, activists, engineers, global citizens, and residents joined three artists from Beijing on the University of Utah campus to begin a visual conversation about an issue both cities face—smog. This case study explores the three weeks artists collaborated with citizens to create art and provided people with a way to participate meaningfully outside the confines of sanctioned protest and lethargic legislators. Looking at engagement online and off, we will explore how a multi-media Living Gallery opened up new conversations and activated citizens.
The widely disseminated image of Emmett Till’s mutilated corpse rhetorically transformed the lync... more The widely disseminated image of Emmett Till’s mutilated corpse rhetorically transformed the lynched black body from a symbol of unmitigated white power to one illustrating the ugliness of racial violence and the aggregate power of the black community. This reconfiguration was, in part, an effect of the black community’s embracing and foregrounding Till’s abject body as a collective “souvenir” rather than allowing it to be safely exiled from public life.
In the age of industrialism, wilderness is the counterbalance to human excesses and the inspirati... more In the age of industrialism, wilderness is the counterbalance to human excesses and the inspiration for environmental activists. Today, wilderness is even more important and contested as people face multiple environmental crises on a planet with an exploding human population and voracious consumer appetite. Too often obscured by the technosphere that engulfs us, wilderness awaits its ecoteur filmmakers to give it greater presence on the public screens of the technoscape. After The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, wilderness still waits. By treating wilderness as an historical relic and vacation spot, the film saps it of its vital relevance and political power. Audiences must understand the foundational role of wilderness in their lives, instead of being pacified with an history drained of color that disconnects them from wilderness. As people wonder if there is a future for industrial civilization, wilderness provides the last best hope for rethinking our place on earth.
Amid a dizzying array of social media, the ground of activism has fractured into decentered knots... more Amid a dizzying array of social media, the ground of activism has fractured into decentered knots creating a cacophony of panmediated worlds. Our analysis of Occupy Wall Street
(OWS) offers a preliminary charting of the fragmenting of the old media world into a proliferation of social media worlds. On old media, OWS was stillborn, first neglected, and then frivolously framed. On social media, OWS’s emergence was vibrant, its manifestations much discussed, celebrated, and attacked. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube create new
contexts for activism that do not exist in old media. Plus, social media foster an ethic of individual and collective participation, thus creating a norm of perpetual participation. In
OWS, that norm creates new expectations of being in the world.
Ethics & The Environment, 2005
The Argumentative Force of Image Networks: Greenpeace's Panmediated Global Detox Campaign, 2016
This essay engages the force of images as an important form of argumentation in the contemporary ... more This essay engages the force of images as an important form of argumentation in the contemporary mediascape, which is being constantly transformed by flows of image networks across various social media platforms. This mediascape requires tools that move beyond verbal architectures, inspiring new concepts and practices of analysis. In response, this essay proposes concepts for engaging the argumentative force of the rush of images transforming the world, including panmediated networks, wild public screens, affective winds, and image events. An analysis of Greenpeace’s global Detox campaign elaborates on the uses of these concepts.
Environmental Ethics, 2001
Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 2001
... More significantly, Southern Pacific land agent Daniel Zumwalt, a lover of wilderness and per... more ... More significantly, Southern Pacific land agent Daniel Zumwalt, a lover of wilderness and personal friend of Representative Vandever, in Washington DC to promote the formation of Sequoia National Park, proposed enlarging Yosemite Park beyond even Muir's initial proposal ...
Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 2000
Crit Stud Media Comm, 2000
... (Morton, 1886, p. 337) The process of producing the domes-ticated sublime, however, also pro-... more ... (Morton, 1886, p. 337) The process of producing the domes-ticated sublime, however, also pro-duces a technological sublime. ... The sublime experience depends on the feeling of terror or fear in the face of the sublime object. ...
Critical Studies in Media Communication, Oct 15, 2010
The WTO protests in Seattle witnessed the emergence of an international citizens' movement for de... more The WTO protests in Seattle witnessed the emergence of an international citizens' movement for democratic globalization. With the tactical exploitation of television, the internet, and other technologies, Seattle also witnessed the enactment of forms of activism adapted to a wired society. In the wake of Seattle, this essay introduces the “public screen” as a necessary supplement to the metaphor of the public sphere for understanding today's political scene. While a public sphere orientation inevitably finds contemporary discourse wanting, viewing such discourse through the prism of the public screen provokes a consideration of new forms of participatory democracy. In comparison to the public sphere's privileging of rationality, embodied conversations, consensus, and civility, the public screen highlights dissemination, images, hypermediacy, publicity, distraction, and dissent. Using the Seattle WTO protests as a case study and focusing on the dynamic of violence and the media, we argue that the public screen accounts for technological and cultural changes while enabling a charting of the new conditions for rhetoric, politics, and activism.
Women's Studies in Communication, 2006
ABSTRACT Armed with their personal experiences and community ties, the women of Environmental Jus... more ABSTRACT Armed with their personal experiences and community ties, the women of Environmental Justice have called into question the distribution of waste in the United States. In this essay, we explore the communicative practices that have enabled the movement to achieve change in extraordinarily difficult contexts. The women use what appears to be a liability, their gender, especially their role as mothers, to challenge practices and policies that threaten their homes, families, and communities.
The emergence of China and the advent of social media are two events that rupture the world as it... more The emergence of China and the advent of social media are two events that rupture the world as it is and force a rethinking of activism and public spaces. Environmental protests in China, often performed on a mediascape dominated by social media, suggest new conditions of possibility for activism and a need to adopt new methods and tools for understanding the myriad practices of activists in China that exceed the strictures of governmental control and offer hope for different futures. This essay theorizes emerging practices of citizenship and inventive imaginings of public spaces by introducing wild public screens. To do so, we analyze how Chinese environmentalists deploy Weibo, WeChat, and other social media platforms.
As air pollution engulfed the Salt Lake valley once again in the Winter of 2014, students, activi... more As air pollution engulfed the Salt Lake valley once again in the Winter of 2014, students, activists, engineers, global citizens, and residents joined three artists from Beijing on the University of Utah campus to begin a visual conversation about an issue both cities face—smog. This case study explores the three weeks artists collaborated with citizens to create art and provided people with a way to participate meaningfully outside the confines of sanctioned protest and lethargic legislators. Looking at engagement online and off, we will explore how a multi-media Living Gallery opened up new conversations and activated citizens.
The widely disseminated image of Emmett Till’s mutilated corpse rhetorically transformed the lync... more The widely disseminated image of Emmett Till’s mutilated corpse rhetorically transformed the lynched black body from a symbol of unmitigated white power to one illustrating the ugliness of racial violence and the aggregate power of the black community. This reconfiguration was, in part, an effect of the black community’s embracing and foregrounding Till’s abject body as a collective “souvenir” rather than allowing it to be safely exiled from public life.
In the age of industrialism, wilderness is the counterbalance to human excesses and the inspirati... more In the age of industrialism, wilderness is the counterbalance to human excesses and the inspiration for environmental activists. Today, wilderness is even more important and contested as people face multiple environmental crises on a planet with an exploding human population and voracious consumer appetite. Too often obscured by the technosphere that engulfs us, wilderness awaits its ecoteur filmmakers to give it greater presence on the public screens of the technoscape. After The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, wilderness still waits. By treating wilderness as an historical relic and vacation spot, the film saps it of its vital relevance and political power. Audiences must understand the foundational role of wilderness in their lives, instead of being pacified with an history drained of color that disconnects them from wilderness. As people wonder if there is a future for industrial civilization, wilderness provides the last best hope for rethinking our place on earth.
Amid a dizzying array of social media, the ground of activism has fractured into decentered knots... more Amid a dizzying array of social media, the ground of activism has fractured into decentered knots creating a cacophony of panmediated worlds. Our analysis of Occupy Wall Street
(OWS) offers a preliminary charting of the fragmenting of the old media world into a proliferation of social media worlds. On old media, OWS was stillborn, first neglected, and then frivolously framed. On social media, OWS’s emergence was vibrant, its manifestations much discussed, celebrated, and attacked. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube create new
contexts for activism that do not exist in old media. Plus, social media foster an ethic of individual and collective participation, thus creating a norm of perpetual participation. In
OWS, that norm creates new expectations of being in the world.
Ethics & The Environment, 2005