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Browsing by Author "McIvor, David W., committee member"

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    Hydraulic fracturing and the corporate colonization of the subsurface
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Fryer, M. Zoe, author; Macdonald, Bradley, advisor; Mumme, Stephen, committee member; McIvor, David W., committee member; Bubar, Roe, committee member
    The United States presidential election of 2000 played a prominent role in determining the trajectory of the country for the next quarter of a century. The new millennium ushered in a new era with the George W. Bush administration chosen by the courts and the electoral college, the proliferation of hydraulic fracturing, Citizens United which flooded politics with money, restrictions in democracy, and persistent global climate crises. This dissertation will explore the role of the state in facilitating the corporate colonization of the subsurface. Drawing upon the ideas within Ralph Miliband's The State in Capitalist Society, this dissertation will critically analyze American pluralism and the state to reveal the many ways in which American democracy by the people has become democracy by the corporations. Analysis will be conducted using power structure research wherein key governmental positions held by the gas and oil elite will be identified, while using the overall framework of Miliband's state apparatus, including the five areas of the executive, the administrative, the coercive, the judicial, and the sub-state. The primary argument maintained throughout this dissertation is that the gas and oil industry elite have commandeered American democracy and policies to provide for their own benefit, at the expense of the American people and the health of the environment. The conclusion will include the work of Michael Lowy to argue for an eco-socialist leaning future wherein the gas and oil and subsurface are reclaimed as property of the state to be held in preservation.
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    LGBTQ+ power, and justice, and knowledge! Oh, my! -or- Liberal and progressive factions of the LGBTQ+ movement: a study of power, justice, and knowledge
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Lockwood, Emery Edison, author; Daum, Courtenay W., advisor; McIvor, David W., committee member; Kasser, Jeff, committee member
    Social movements are important to understand when studying the reification of democracy because they are a mode of political action that is frequently utilized for a wide variety of causes by diverse sets of people. This work explores the differences of power, justice, and knowledge in the progressive and liberal factions of the LGBTQ+ Movement and what that means for both the LGBTQ+ community and society. Using a historical analysis of the strategies and actions of the liberal and progressive factions of what has grown to be the LGBTQ+ Movement an examination with a lens of power provided by Lukes (2021), justice as fairness advocated for by Rawls (1958; 1971;2001), justice as recognition and redistribution put forth by Fraser (1997) and Honneth (2004), epistemic injustice theorized by Fricker (2007), and willful hermeneutical ignorance formulated by Pohlhaus (2012) will be conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of change the two factions are able to create.
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    Pessimism and the Anthropocene
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Witlacil, Mary E., author; Macdonald, Bradley J., advisor; Daum, Courtenay W., committee member; Dickinson, Gregory, committee member; McIvor, David W., committee member
    This dissertation provides an intellectual history of critical pessimism in the twentieth century to develop a novel theory of ecopessimism sensitive to the challenges of the climate crisis. To theorize ecopessimism, I have considered pessimism alongside the critical philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Walter Benjamin. By theorizing alongside post-foundationalist philosophers and critical theory, pessimism challenges monolithic concepts, suprahistorical narratives, and technological optimism. As well, pessimism invites us to be a part of this world and to see it as it truly is—for all its sinister violence, injustice, and misery—but also to relish in the beauty of existence without specific expectations. In this manner, and drawing on Nietzsche, pessimism is a life-affirming ethos of spontaneity, which aims to will differently, while being deeply attuned to suffering and injustice. Critical ecopessimism is a form of weak theory that emphasizes contingency and historical discontinuity. Furthermore, because pessimism engages with and accepts the possibility of worst-case scenarios, it provides the intellectual and political resources necessary to deal with environmental crisis, as well as the collective grief for all we stand to lose. Ecopessimism uses critique to cut through the outmoded narrative of progress, the cruelty of technological optimism and ecological modernization, as well as the eco-authoritarianism of the overpopulation alarmists. This dissertation theorizes a critical pessimism that asks us to expect nothing specific as the present dissolves into the future; beckons us to live as though the worst were possible and to live joyfully in the face of adversity; and calls us to be sensitive to the injustice and suffering of human and more-than-human others while being critically attentive to the world we have inherited.
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    Re-imagining the ecological subject: toward a critical materialism of entangled ecologies
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) DeCarlo, Chelsea Loren Welker, author; Macdonald, Bradley J., advisor; McIvor, David W., committee member; Stevis, Dimitris, committee member; Ishiwata, Eric, committee member
    Given the severity of contemporary environmental degradation, especially climate change, a new understanding of the human-nature relationship is necessary for halting this destruction. Political theorists have tried to explain and rethink this relationship by turning to the social, the political, the structural, the historical, the ethical, the individual, the cultural, and the economic realms. At the same time, the production of subjectivity as both an explanation for environmental degradation and a possible domain where cultivating a better human-nature relationship could be found, remains under-examined by political theorists concerned with the environment. The purpose of my project expresses three different but interrelated trajectories of inquiry, each of which represents a dearth in ecopolitical theory generally. First, I interrogate how various radical ecopolitical theories have understood the production of ecological subjectivity and the consequences of these understandings of subjectivity for producing ecological subjects in the context of capitalism, specifically. If who we are and who we think we are matters for how the human-nature relationship plays out, then it becomes vitally important to understand how radical ecopolitical theory conceptualizes the relationship between the causes of environmental degradation, the production of human subjectivity, and the ecological context in which humanity finds itself. In short, I argue that the production of subjectivity has been neglected as one important political component that must be theorized much more robustly for its utility in creating more ecologically minded societies. Second, I would argue that one of the most powerful and intransigent forces preventing humans from re-imagining the human-nature relationship is capitalism, which in addition to its material production, also aggressively targets the production of subjectivity. This assertion constitutes both a starting point of this project, yet also something that requires greater attention from political theorists concerned with environmental degradation and the human-nature relationship. Given this assertion, the task of critically examining the relationship between capitalist subjectivities and the creative production of ecological subjectivities remains necessary to any attempt at the cultivation of an ecological politics. To this end, and thirdly, I argue that Félix Guattari's work engenders the creative impulse necessary for reconceiving of our own subjectivity in the context of the new ontology presented by Deleuze, Guattari himself, and the new materialists. Furthermore, I explore the possibilities for producing eco-subjects through innovative receptive practices attended to by both Guattari and the new materialists in the context of the capitalist overcoding of being. For instance, "becoming receptive" to a rhizomatically (dis)organized world could produce new sensitivities to environmental ecologies through a fundamental acceptance of existential uncertainty. Importantly, Guattari's work, though deeply committed to ecological goals and the production of ecological subjectivities, has been largely neglected by political theorists seeking a solution to environmental degradation and an ethically and politically bankrupt human-nature relationship. Ultimately, ecopolitical praxis requires a further theorization of the numerous ways that capitalism orders and limits human existence in the context of contemporary life. The triad under examination in my project, namely, subjectivity, ecology, and capitalism, represents a necessary contribution to ecopolitical theory which can re-invigorate Guattari's work for its utility in re-imagining the ecological subject, combating capitalism, and working towards a real ecopolitics.
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    The affect and effect of Internet memes: assessing perceptions and influence of online user-generated political discourse as media
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Huntington, Heidi E., author; Martey, Rosa Mikeal, advisor; Anderson, Ashley A., committee member; Burgchardt, Carl R., committee member; Long, Marilee, committee member; McIvor, David W., committee member
    In our modern media environment characterized by participatory media culture, political internet memes have become a tool for citizens seeking to participate actively and discursively in a digital public sphere. Although memes have been examined as visual rhetoric and discursive participation, such political memes' effects on viewers are unclear. This study responds to calls for research into effects of internet memes. Specifically, this work represents early, foundational research to quantitatively establish some media effects of internet memes as a form of political, user-generated media. This study focuses on memes' influence on affect, as well as perceptions of internet memes' persuasiveness to look for evidence of motivated reasoning in consuming political memes. To establish effects of viewing political memes, an online, post-test only, quasi-experimental design was employed to test the relationships between viewing political internet memes, affect, and perceived persuasiveness of memes. To better attribute results to specific genres (e.g. political vs. non-political) and attributes of memes (i.e., the role of images), the main study (N = 633) was comprised of five experimental conditions – to view either liberal political memes, conservative political memes, text-only versions of the liberal memes, text-only versions of the conservative memes, or non-political memes – with a sixth comparison group, who did not view any stimuli at all. Before running the main study, a pilot study (N = 133) was conducted to determine which memes to use as the stimuli in the main study, based on participants' ratings of the memes' political stances and similarity to their text-only versions. Results indicate that political internet memes produce different effects on viewers than non-political internet memes, and that political memes are subject to motivated reasoning in viewers' perceptions of memes' persuasiveness. Specifically, viewing political internet memes resulted in more feelings of aversion than did viewing non-political memes, and political internet memes were rated as less effective as messages and their arguments were scrutinized more than were non-political memes. However, non-political memes were significantly discounted as simple jokes more than were political memes. This suggests that participants understood political memes as attempts at conveying arguments beyond mere jokes, even if they were unconvinced regarding memes' effectiveness for doing so. Additionally, participants whose own political ideology matched that of the political memes they saw, as well as those who stated they agreed with the ideas presented by the memes, rated the memes as being more effective as messages and engaged in less argument scrutiny than did participants whose ideology differed from that of the memes, or than those who disagreed with the memes. This finding indicates that memes are subject to processes of motivated reasoning, specifically selective judgment and selective perception. Political memes' visuals, or lack thereof, did not play a significant role in these differences. Finding the memes to be funny, affinity for political humor, and participants' meme use moderated some of these outcomes. The results of this study suggest that political internet memes are a distinct internet meme genre, with characteristics operating in line with other humorous political media, and should be studied for effects separately or as distinguished from non-political memes. The results of this study also indicate that user-generated media like political internet memes are an important influence in today's media environment, and have implications for other forms of political outcomes, including concerns about opinion polarization, civic discourse, and the public sphere. The study presents one method for conducting quantitative research with internet memes, including generating a sample from existing internet memes, and for considering political memes' effects as media. Suggestions for future research building on this work are offered.