Title: Making Sense of the People's Climate March: Towards an Aesthetic Approach to the Rhetoric of Social Protest.
Authors: Paliewicz, Nicholas S.
Abstract: This essay contributes to participatory critical rhetoric (PCR) by offering a Rancièrian aesthetic approach to the rhetoric of social protest at the 2014 People's Climate March (PCM). Although the PCM has been praised for its democratic commitments to social change, I argue that police reinforced a consensual aesthetic order that acquiesced with the status quo by partitioning sensibilities of space and mobility. Demarcating acceptable spaces for protest and requiring marchers to keep moving at all times enforced a hierarchical aesthetic order that limited possibilities of dissensus. However, there was one ephemeral moment of dissensus when all of the protesters stopped and observed a moment of silence. This rhetorical performance temporarily ruptured dominant intelligibilities of police order and consummated new subjectivities, demonstrating the radical possibilities of dissensus through silence for climate change advocacy.
Subjects: ANTI-Trump protest movements; SOCIAL movements; SOCIAL change; CLIMATE change mitigation; RHETORIC
Publication: Western Journal of Communication, 2019, Vol 83, Issue 1, p94
ISSN: 1057-0314
Publication type: Academic Journal
DOI: 10.1080/10570314.2018.1446548

Making Sense of the People's Climate March: Towards an Aesthetic Approach to the Rhetoric of Social Protest.

Paliewicz, Nicholas S.