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Death becomes us: constituting death and imagining wellbeing through global youth environmental activist discourses

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dc.contributor.authorAmedée, Emily, author
dc.contributor.authorVasby Anderson, Karrin, advisor
dc.contributor.authorHughes, Kit, committee member
dc.contributor.authorDickinson, Greg, committee member
dc.contributor.authorSchneider, Lindsey, committee member
dc.date.accessioned2024-05-27T10:32:50Z
dc.date.available2024-05-27T10:32:50Z
dc.date.issued2024
dc.description.abstractIn this study, I analyzed death as a rhetorical strategy and emphasized the speaking power of youth environmental activists and their unique contributions to public discourses. I argued that the stories we tell about death constitute particular identities, ways of living/life chances, and ways of imagining the world. I explored the persuasive power of death in and of itself—death as rhetoric—and how rhetoric constitutes death, even as death functions to elide and enable the very discourses that call it into being. I narrowed my focus by consciously "placing" death on the edges of environmental issues and highlighting the ways discourse about the natural world constructs ecological realities and gives shape to environmental ideologies and human/environmental interaction. To enlarge the existing rhetorical criticisms of youth voice, I featured the discourses of three individuals: Greta Thunberg, Autumn Peltier, and Isra Hirsi. Each orator's intercultural and international contexts ensure that the relationships and experiences each girl has with their environmental context are diverse and span a variety of ecological and intersecting social issues. My study suggests that when youths employ the persuasive power of death, they do one or more of the following: (1) Constitute a space of inbetweenness and a process of becoming; (2) Harness the rhetorical significance of the material, spatial, and temporal aspects of everyday life; (3) Highlight the consequences of placelessness, disconnection, and detachment; (4) Call forth a politics of relation centered in an ethic of responsibility, intersectionality, and shared accountability; and (5) Imagine more just, sustainable, and flourishing futures for all our relations. Considering the rhetoric of this diverse set of young women rhetors, I synthesized the significant findings and key implications of my analyses to suggest a rhetorical theory of eudaimortia, which reveals the persuasive power of death to challenge and reconstitute how to live, how to become, and how to make, move, and imagine bodies, worlds, and time.
dc.format.mediumborn digital
dc.format.mediumdoctoral dissertations
dc.identifierAmedxE9e_colostate_0053A_18241.pdf
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10217/238488
dc.languageEnglish
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherColorado State University. Libraries
dc.relation.ispartof2020-
dc.rightsCopyright and other restrictions may apply. User is responsible for compliance with all applicable laws. For information about copyright law, please see https://libguides.colostate.edu/copyright.
dc.subjectenvironmental justice
dc.subjectrhetorics of death
dc.subjectyouth rhetoric
dc.subjecteudaimortia
dc.subjectclimate change
dc.subjectyouth activism
dc.titleDeath becomes us: constituting death and imagining wellbeing through global youth environmental activist discourses
dc.typeText
dcterms.rights.dplaThis Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights (https://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/). You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
thesis.degree.disciplineCommunication Studies
thesis.degree.grantorColorado State University
thesis.degree.levelDoctoral
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

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