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Nicole Seymour is assistant professor of English at California State University, Fullerton. She is author of Strange Natures: Futurity, Empathy, and the Queer Ecological Imagination.

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Glitter by Nicole Seymour does what every book in the Object Lessons series does, presents an everyday or common entity through a writer's particular lens. Seymour presents the topic in all of its actual as well as perceived meanings and uses, which of course really annoys Theeasinine who thinks always screaming "woke" actually means something other than just being a dog whistle. But small minds, you know.

From the environmental impact (real but usually overstated) to the steps taken to minimize that impact, from decoration for everything from greeting cards to eyelids (and just about everything else), and to the role in some political and social protests, glitter is examined through a broad cultural lens as well as Seymour's own personal engagement.

I would recommend this to those who understand that there is no object or entity that is entirely neutral and that understanding how things are used and abused in the name of the status quo or in opposing the status quo makes one better able to engage in the world without (falsely) blaming "wokefulness" or academia. But pseudo-intellectuals love to make hyperbolic statements that are purely meant to position themselves securely within the bigoted and closed-minded group, and Theemoronic is safely ensconced in that group. For those with functioning brain cells who want to better understand the world they share with other people, this book offers a glimpse using glitter as the vehicle.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
… (mere)
½
 
Markeret
pomo58 | Apr 4, 2022 |
I need to come clean.

I am a climate worker; this makes me sanctimonious and obnoxious. I see that now. My sincere concern and wish to have a positive impact in the world in some way is the very thing that has prevented progress on climate action. If only I had been funnier, more irreverent and ironic! Then we might not be teetering on the edge of disaster.

We all should have been taking better lessons from the pages of history. Yes, the Famous Five were known for their civil disobedience and campaigning on suffrage for women, but who could forget that incomparable parody skit of the inconsistencies in the suffrage platform that tilted public sentiment and won the day? Sure, MLK and Rosa Parks are lionized for their activism, but omg, they were just insufferable--right? So sanctimonious. They should have taken themselves much less seriously; they might have advanced the rights of African Americans much faster. And the abolitionists! They were awful. Standing on their stages talking about the evils of slavery (so seriously! Unforgivable) in their dresses and suits made from slave-harvested cotton, drinking their slave-harvested coffee with slave-harvested sugar! Even the slaves and the freed blacks wore clothes made by slavery! If only they had poked more fun at their own hypocrisies, we might not have needed a war to end slavery!

Maybe you think these comparisons are grotesque. Maybe you think I am tearing down your heroes. Indeed it is with my own heart breaking that I type these words. But my eyes have been opened: only edgy, irreverent, ironic, self-conscious communications can get through to the public on environmental (and I imagine any other) issues, just as Nicole Seymour writes.

Mind you, I do have questions. Why is it that the edgy, self-conscious, ironic, irreverent works of environmentalism she champions in these pages are so unknown? If Al Gore turns people off because of his sanctimony and hypocrisy, why is he famous all over the world for his activism, and why have so many signed up for Climate Reality training and gone on to implement it in their own communities? If environmentalists don't recognize the works Seymour prefers and have no sense of humour, why is it that I'm only aware of Wildboyz and Green Porno and the Lesbian Park Rangers etc. because my environmental and climate activist friends have told me about them approvingly? She seems so certain of her opinions on the effectiveness of the modes she prefers that I must believe she has some research to cite about their effectiveness, so where is it?

I'm similarly perplexed about why her own book hasn't been getting more coverage. Surely, as she says, she is finally pointing the way to progress! Yet her book was only reviewed in blogs and academic english journals. So confusing! Yet David Wallace Wells' The Uninhabitable Earth, published in the same year, has twice the google results and was reviewed in the NYT and The Guardian (among others) and hit several bestseller lists, even though it is dripping with sincerity and is (in my memory) quite devoid of jokes. Did he bribe someone?

I'll also admit to some confusion about why it is that this book takes itself so seriously. Isn't Seymour undercutting her own message by penning something so ... well ... dull?

No matter; I'll correct this single-handedly by pressing this book into the hands of everyone I know who needs it. It goes without saying that everyone I know in the climate and environmental spaces needs a copy (and that's a lot!) so they can stop this foolish experimentation with saying what they mean. But also! All of my married mom friends! For years I've heard them complaining about how their husbands never help around the house. Clearly the real problem all along is that they weren't funny enough when they said it! They weren't ironic and irreverent! They didn't poke at their own hypocrisies! How can their husbands be held responsible for their (in/)actions when there is anything at all in the message or messenger they can point to and disapprove of?

And please, someone, press this book into Ms. Thunberg's hands with all possible speed. Her sincerity will clearly be her downfall and this will doom us all to apocalypse. Imagine how successful she could be if only she were ironic! How can she expect anyone to pay attention to her when there is so much genuine rage in her words? We simply must save her from this appalling tendency to speak from the heart.

~~~~~

The above is for the author or her fans, if they ever come this way. For the rest of you:

Seymour is like the Christina Hoff Summers & Camille Paglia of environmentalism, only boring as sin. When her arguments weren't infuriating me, they were literally putting me to sleep. On the rare occasions she references a bit of academic research, she twists it. For example, she often refers to one of my favourite climate communications books, [b:Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life|10300309|Living in Denial Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life|Kari Marie Norgaard|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1367782919l/10300309._SX50_.jpg|15202275], and the research it cites showing that the knowledge deficit model is flawed and the problem isn't that people don't know enough. But I actually read that book, so I can say with 100% certainty that Norgaard isn't lecturing people on being funnier, uses the inconsistencies to discuss the construction of denial rather than using them to attack environmentalists, acknowledges that there are no clear winners in terms of turning opinions or motivating actions, and concludes that we'll have to "make the path by walking it." Strange how this doesn't ever turn up in Seymour's book. I guess that wouldn't support her point that the problem with environmentalism is that we're not funny enough.

The rest of the time she doesn't even try to provide evidence. How do we know that environmentalists aren't already trying to use humour? We don't. Is there any evidence showing that people respond better to funny messages than sincere ones? Not in here. And anyone who spends fifteen minutes with climate and environmental activists knows that a ritual unburdening of recent hypocrisies happens all the time (does Seymoure know *any*?). (This book is like a dude arguing that women invite sexual assault by how they dress and speak, and who writes of women in such a way that it's clear he's never spoken to a woman beside his mother ever in his life.) She never even contemplates that maybe, just maybe, the reason Al Gore and the "sincere" and "sanctimonious" environmentalists she decries are more well known is because PEOPLE RESPOND BETTER TO THEIR MESSAGES. Maybe people don't like irony, Nicole; maybe it's just you.

Over and over we hear about the fucking backlash and how people attack environmentalists with charges of hypocrisy etc., AND WE NEVER ONCE HEAR THAT MOST OF THOSE PEOPLE ARE WELL-FUNDED CLIMATE DENIERS BACKED BY FOSSIL-FUEL COMPANIES. We never hear of the hypocrisies in the charges of hypocrisy. We never hear any doubt or questioning of the legitimacy of the backlash. It's just, "I hear a lot about how they're sanctimonious hypocrites, and I'm going to take that 100% on face value as fact and proceed from there." It's shamefully shoddy scholarship.

I got 100 pages in (alternating fury and sleep), and then just started skipping and skimming, then read the Conclusion. Apparently 9/11 and the ensuring war show that irreverence, humour and satire are better ways to confront evil than sincerity or engagement. Yep. It was the stand-up comics that did it. The rest of us just got in the way.

Has it ever occurred to this woman that we don't need to turn it into a competition? That it's ok to have both? Again, has she EVER MET an environmental or climate activist? Or is her own social circle somehow the only one on the planet where they don't love satire and comedy, even if that's not how they're speaking up themselves?

This is a terrible book. I can't even give it one star. Normally a book like this would go straight from my hands to the give-away pile, but in this case, given her argument, maybe I'll use its pages as the basis for a very sincere piece of environmental/climate art.
… (mere)
 
Markeret
andrea_mcd | 1 anden anmeldelse | Mar 10, 2020 |
Denise Woodruff's review Sep 02, 2018 · edit
it was amazing

I wasn't sure about this one I entered the giveaway by accident. I won so I read it and I actually loved it. what you think you know you may be right and surprised me is what you don't think of when things are said. Some of the things they say don't they do. It's a easy read it's is kinda funny. I love the way the author put this together. I have never read books like this it has never.caught my interest but I won the book so out of respect I read it. I'm glad I won it now I got to find more like it… (mere)
 
Markeret
DeniseWoodruffPA | 1 anden anmeldelse | Sep 3, 2018 |

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