Direct Action as Conceptual Art?: An Examination of the Role of the Communiqué for Ecodefense (Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture)

This book offers an avenue for understanding the parameters, scope, meanings, and impacts of environmental protest. Focusing on ecodefense, it explores the significance of the communiqué (the written explanation of the reasons for an act of ecodefense), comparing the communiqué to written texts in Conceptual art. It presents and seeks to evaluate the following analogy: act of ecodefense : communiqué :: work of conceptual art : written declaration/statement. By considering the communiqué in this light, this book helps us better comprehend the rationales for “radical environmentalism” undertaken for the purposes of reducing environmental harms, natural resource exploitation, and animal abuse.

Avi Brisman is Professor at Eastern Kentucky University, USA.