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Article published In: Environmental Argumentation
Edited by Marcin Lewiński and Mehmet Ali Üzelgün
[Journal of Argumentation in Context 8:1] 2019
► pp. 12–39

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Environmental manifestoes

Argumentative strategies in the Ecomodernist Manifesto

 | ArgLab, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
 | ArgLab, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
 | ArgLab, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Published online: 14 February 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jaic.18036.rod
Abstract
In this paper, we analyze the argumentative strategies deployed in the Ecomodernist Manifesto, published in 2015 by a group of leading environmental thinkers. We draw on pragma-dialectics and Perelman’s rhetoric to characterize manifesto as a genre of practical argumentation. Our goal is to explore the relation of manifesto as a discursive genre to the argumentative structures and techniques used in the Ecomodernist Manifesto. We therefore take into scrutiny the elements of practical argumentation employed in the manifesto and describe the polylogical strategies of dissociation in negotiating the ecological value of nature and the modernist value of progress.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Manifesto as an argumentative genre
  • 3.The context of environmental debates: From a false dichotomy to a polylogue
  • 4.Case study: An Ecomodernist Manifesto
    • 4.1The Ecomodernist Manifesto
    • 4.2The decoupling argument
    • 4.3Practical argumentation
      • 4.3.1Circumstances
      • 4.3.2Goals and means
      • 4.3.3Values
      • 4.3.4The complex practical argument
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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