Ecological Feelings: A Rhetorical Compendium

These days, earthly coexistence often feels bad. As environmental crises amass, they cast a shadow over an imagined future and the promises of better--or at least predictable--days to come. In times of climate chaos, mass extinction, and rampant environmental injustice, it is easy to despair. But, here and there, a glimmer of joy or optimism shines forth and reminds us that it is possible--even necessary--to love and to hope amid the ruins. The contributors to this volume grapple with a plurality of interrelated ecological feelings: care, concern, contempt, empathy, fear, grief, hope, joy, numbness, optimism, possessiveness, regret, and saudades. Informed by a rhetorical perspective, the essays collected here reveal what sets our ecological feelings into motion. Crucially, they also uncover some of the rhetorical practices through which we might collectively feel our way into a more harmonious earthly coexistence.

Joshua Trey Barnett is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at the Pennsylvania State University. An interdisciplinary scholar, he traverses the fields of rhetoric, critical theory, and the environmental humanities. His book Mourning in the Anthropocene: Ecological Grief and Earthly Coexistence won the 2022 Tarla Rai Peterson Book Award in Environmental Communication.