From Frames to Resonance Machines: The Neuropolitics of Environmental Communication

Abstract

George Lakoff 's work in cognitive linguistics has prompted a surge in social scientists’ interest in the cognitive and neuropsychological dimensions of political discourse. Bringing cognitive neuroscience into the study of social movements and of environmental communication, however, is not as straightforward as Lakoff 's followers suggest. Examining and comparing Lakoff's “neuropolitics” with those of political theorist William E. Connolly, this article argues that Connolly's writings on evangelical-capitalist and eco-egalitarian “resonance machines” provide a broader model for thinking about the relations between body, brain, and culture. Environmentalists, it concludes, should pluralize their “frames” and pay greater attention to the micropolitical and affective effects of their language and practices on the communities within which they act, communicate, and dwell.

Keywords:

• Neuropolitics
• Cognitive Science
• Environmental Communication
• Lakoff, George
• Connolly, Wilson

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adrian Ivakhiv

Adrian Ivakhiv (B.F.A., M.E.S., Ph.D., York University) is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Vermont, where he coordinates the graduate program in Environmental Thought and Culture. He is the author of Claiming Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona (Indiana University Press, 2001), executive editor of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (Thoemmes Continuum, 2005), and author of the forthcoming Ecologies of the Moving Image: Cinema, Affect, and Nature (Wilfrid Laurier University Press Environmental Humanities Series)