Pedagogies of snark: learning through righteous, riotous rage in the youth climate movement

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we examine the relationships between rage and humour as politicizing forces among youth climate activists. In the context of FossilFree UofT, a university-based climate action campaign, we traced the learning and political development of activists engaged in a Women's Caucus. We argue snark served the pedagogical purpose of grievance construction and identity development as it enabled participants to express rage, take an agentic stance toward solutions, and build solidarity. We argue that snark should be understood as a pedagogically productive process through which participants developed a political analysis, shared identity as feminists, shifted their epistemological orientations, and became practiced at being angry and advocating for their own leadership.

KEYWORDS:

• Politicization
• rage
• humour
• learning

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the members of the RadLab who have collaborated with us in analysing this data and provided feedback on our ideas as they developed, including Jody Chan, Amil Davis, Keara Lightning, Jade Wong. Thanks to Justin Fraser for transcription and coding support, Sarah Cooper, Anjali Helferty, Andrew Kohan, and Maddy Whetung for feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Snark is absent in academic theorization, so we draw on popular definitions. Denby (2009) argues that snark is ‘mean’, ‘filled with invective’ and ‘nasty’. Billig (2005) argues that all humour is ridicule, while other humour scholars note the prevalence of irony as humour and describe its functions (Dynel 2014). Attempting to draw out a less polemical theory of snark, Tsiveriotis (2017) suggests that snark is similar to sarcasm and irony, but less refined. He situates snark as a social practice implicated in humour, insult, trolling, shaming, and outrage, but, unlike Denby, suggests that snark can be a pro-social behaviour (2017). Snark is, like all humour (and human communication), culturally bound, and so our interpretations rely on shared context, including community, place, age, and other indicators that enable us to hear snarkiness in the delivery. While readers may read the decontextualized texts otherwise, we use the tone, facial expressions, use of space and other communication to identify instances of snark.

* Signifies a pseudonym. Otherwise names are real, per participants’ request on consent forms.

2 A reference to the movie Mean Girls, a common point of reference in Fossil Free UofT, which refers to a book or site that hosts mean comments about other people.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded through the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, the University of Manitoba Research Grant Program, and the UofM Research Development Fund.

Notes on contributors

Joe Curnow

Joe Curnow is an activist scholar and Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba.

Tresanne Fernandes

Tresanne Fernandes works as a community organizer and workshop facilitator in Toronto.

Sinéad Dunphy

Sinéad Dunphy is a community worker and graduate student in Social Work at York University.

Lila Asher

Lila Asher is a graduate student in Urban Planning at the Ohio State University.